SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY

VOLUME 7 [In Three Parts]

PART ONE

SERIAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

The emphasis upon publications as a means of diffusing knowledge was expressed by the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. In his formal plan for the Institution, Joseph Henry articulated a program that included the following statement: “It is proposed to publish a series of reports, giving an account of the new discoveries in science, and of the changes made from year to year in all branches of knowledge.” This keynote of basic research has been adhered to over the years in the issuance of thousands of titles in serial publications under the Smithsonian imprint, commencing with Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge in 1848 and continuing with the following active series:

Smithsonian Annals of Flight

Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology

Smithsonian Contributions to Astrophysics

Smithsonian Contributions to Botany

Smithsonian Contributions to the Earth Sciences

Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology

Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology

Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology

In these series, the Institution publishes original articles and monographs dealing with the research and collections of its several museums and offices and of professional colleagues at other institutions of learning. These papers report newly acquired facts, synoptic interpretations of data, or original theory in specialized fields. These publications are distributed by mailing lists to libraries, laboratories, and other interested institutions and specialists throughout the world. Individual copies may be obtained from the Smithsonian Institution Press as long as stocks are available.

S. DILLON RIPLEY

Secretary

Smithsonian Institution

Under Mount Saint Elias:

The History and Culture of the Yakutat Tlingit

Frederica de Laguna

PART ONE

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION PRESS

City of Washington

1972

A Publication of the

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

National Museum of Natural History

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CARD 77–185631

United States GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, WASHINGTON: 1972

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Washington, D.C.     20402 -Price $16.50 per 3 part set.

Sold in sets only.

To the People of Yakutat

The day has long passed since the ethnographer could write in the confident expectation that the people whose culture he described would never read his book. The growing literacy and self-consciousness of peoples all over the world mean that, even in those remote areas of Melanesian jungle where today the missionary or trader has hardly penetrated, there will be a literate population, perhaps sooner than we expect. In Alaska, during little more than a lifetime, there has been the transformation of hunting and fishing peoples who could neither read nor write into literate fellow citizens. Whatever we as anthropologists or as historians write about Alaska will be read and judged by these Alaskans, and upon their verdict will depend the welcome and success of those ethnologists who may follow us.

The local critics will be more severe than our professional colleagues, since it is their own lives (or those of their parents and grandparents), their hopes and fears, their failings and triumphs that we, the anthropologists, describe. To my friends at Yakutat I must therefore address both my heartfelt thanks for their friendship and help in gathering the data used in writing this book, and my apologies for any mistakes I may have made. I also ask forgiveness if I have unwittingly offended anyone. In any community, large or small, there are bound to be differences of opinion, for, as one of my Tlingit teachers used to say: “There's always two sides.” For this reason alone, I know I cannot please everyone equally. In describing the potlatch given by one sib, other sibs may feel slighted, or other persons believe that they could have given a better account than the one I used. If there were dark pages in the ancient life, my Tlingit friends must remember that no cruelty toward witches or slaves, no blasphemous bigotry, no bloodthirsty violence of which their ancestors may be accused can equal those examples of which my own ancestors or other Whites have been guilty. As part of our history, these facts should not be forgotten.

Lest anyone suppose that I or anyone else is making any money from this book, let me explain that the Government Printing Office is not a commercial publishing house; it does not make a profit on books it sells, because to print them is the service which it must render to the people of the United States. In recommending this book for publication, the Smithsonian Institution does me a great honor, but no one has or ever will pay me royalties for it. Of course, I could not have gathered the information without the grants-in-aid that made travel to Alaska possible, nor written the book without the fellowship that permitted me to leave my regular job for a year. For this help I am truly grateful. But it has not enriched me. The additional labor through many vacations and the many extra expenses incidental to this work, I have gladly undertaken, for it is in work of this kind that anthropologists delight and in which they find their most precious rewards. Yet, I should like the people of Yakutat to feel that this is their book, too.

Needless to say, all notes involving personalities are held in confidence; all tape recordings of songs belonging to sibs or to individual composers will never be reproduced without permission from their owners. The purpose of this work has not been to gather material for personal gain, but rather to record in as truthful a manner as possible the history and customs of the people of Yakutat, so that not only our students today but also their own children and grandchildren might learn about this chapter in the history of our Alaska.

I have wanted this book to be accurate and scholarly, based upon what I was taught, not on what I guessed or imagined. Therefore, when quoting a statement or reporting some item of information, I should have liked to include the name or initials of the person from whom I heard it, just as I have cited the author of a book from which I have quoted. But I do not feel free to do this with my Yakutat friends, lest I inadvertently cause embarrassment to someone. Such specific credit to individual informants is given only to those who have died. These volumes are therefore a tribute to their memory. The living will find their names or initials only where I have quoted them on the history of Yakutat, on myths and tales, or on other subjects of public knowledge such as may pertain, for example, to the songs they recorded.

I do not want anyone to assume, however, that my debt to the living is less than that to those who have left us. To Olaf and Susie Abraham I owe knowledge about many topics including the old-style house, hunting, cosmology, and song composition. Harry K. Bremner taught me not only about history, sib territories, religion, the potlatch, and native beliefs of the afterlife, but also about the duties of the chief—his role in war, in the potlatch, and in the education of the young. No one could have been more helpful or patient in explaining the intricacies of social organization than was Helen Bremner. Maggie Harry shared her knowledge of preparing dried salmon, helping women in childbirth, and caring for babies. Emma Ellis and Annie George both gave valuable information about Dry Bay customs: the former was particularly helpful in matters pertaining to the life of women and to the making of peace; the latter gave information about sib heirlooms and the protocol of the potlatch. Information about hunting, fishing, food preparation, and native manufactures I also owe to these women, as well as to Olaf Abraham, Harry K. Bremner, Sampson Harry, Harvey Milton, William Thomas, and John Ellis. The last named, John Ellis, was both patient and skilled in questions pertaining to Tlingit linguistics; to him I owe many insights into the meanings of abstract terms and philosophical concepts.

To single out my friends mentioned above does not lessen my debt to the others. My special gratitude goes to all of the following native residents of Yakutat who showed so much patience in answering questions, interest in volunteering information, and kind friendship. I have identified each person with whom I worked according to sib affiliation (see pp. 217–229) and birthplace, although all have long been residents of Yakutat. Obviously, from some who were met only in 1949, or briefly in 1952 and 1954, only a little information was gained, while others gave much more. I have not included the many children and grandchildren who served, not so much as informants but as unconscious embodiments of Yakutat life. Finally, I must make special mention of Mrs. Katy Dixon Isaac, who shared with me her name, Kuánguwutàn, and who now lies in the cemetery at Ankau Point.

Olaf Abraham, Teqwedi, born Yakutat, 1886. In 1949 his son, David, was interpreter; in 1952 and 1954, his wife.

Susie Bremner Abraham, Kwacqwan, born Yakutat, 1903; wife of Olaf.

Harry K. Bremner, Kwacqwan, born Yakutat, 1893; lived in Controller Bay area, 1907–10.

Helen Italio Bremner, ałyI-Kagwantan, born Yakutat, 1900; wife of Harry.

John Bremner, Kwacqwan, born Yakutat, 1912; brother of Harry.

Maggie Dick, CAnkuqedi, born Dry Bay, 1897; moved to Yakutat in the 1930's; since deceased. Her husband, Frank Dick, Tł’UknaAdi, born Sitka, 1899; died 1964; acted as interpreter.

Ben Dirky, Kwacqwan, born Yakutat, 1890; educated by his father (White) at Katalla. Visiting his mother, Mrs. Annie Johnson, at Yakutat in 1954.

Jack Ellis, Tł’UknaAdi, born Sitka, 1892; died Yakutat, 1952.

Emma Ellis, Kagwantan, born Dry Bay, 1896; widow of Jack Ellis; has lived in Yakutat since 1911.

John Ellis, Kagwantan, born Yakutat, 1914; son of Jack and Emma Ellis.

Annie George, Tł’UknaAdi, born Yakutat, 1890; widow of a Dry Bay man.

Maggie Adams Harry, Kwacqwan, born Yakutat (or Juneau?), 1892; widow.

Sampson Harry, Kwacqwan, born Situk River, 1906.

Annie Nelson Harry, Kwacqwan, born Cordova, 1906; widow of Galushia Nelson with whom Dr. Birket-Smith and I worked at Cordova in 1933, now married to Sampson; speaks Eyak and Tlingit.

Paul Henry, Tł’UknaAdi, born Yakutat, about 1910.

David Henry, Tł’UknaAdi, born Yakutat, 1914; Paul's brother.

Katy Dixon Isaac, Kwacqwan, born Katalla; a very old lady in 1949, died about 1955. Her granddaughter, Violet Sensmeier, acted as interpreter in 1952; in 1954, her grandson, Sheldon James, Jr., since deceased.

Frank Italio, CAnkuqedi, born Dry Bay, 1870; died Yakutat, 1956; brother to Maggie Dick. Minnie Johnson or Helen Bremner as interpreter.

Jenny Jack, Teqwedi, born Yakutat, 1903; widow.

Sheldon James, Sr., Teqwedi, born Yakutat, 1896; died about 1955.

Mary James, Kwacqwan, born Katalla, 1926; daughter of Annie Johnson and wife of Sheldon James, Sr.

Tom John, Kwacqwan, born Yakutat, 1901; died 1959.

Minnie Gray Johnson, Tł’UknaAdi, born Yakutat, 1884; died 1964; widowed, but remarried in 1955 to Frank Johnson (White).

George Johnson, Tcicqedi, born Katalla or Cordova 1892; speaks Eyak and Tlingit.

Annie Johnson, Kwacqwan, born Controller Bay or Bering River, 1875; died 1964; wife of George. Her husband or Minnie Johnson as interpreter.

Esther Johnson, CAnkuqedi, born Dry Bay, 1900; married to Chester Johnson (White).

Jenny Kardeetoo, Kwacqwan, born Yakutat(?), 1872; died 1951. Minnie Johnson as interpreter in 1949.

Peter Lawrence, Kagwantan, born Sitka, 1871; came to Yakutat before 1897; died 1950.

William Milton, Teqwedi, born Yakutat(?), 1888; died 1950.

Nick Milton, Teqwedi, born Yakutat, 1896; died 1966; brother of William.

Harvey Milton, Kwacqwan, born Yakutat, 1912; son of William.

Louise Kardeetoo Peterson, Kwacqwan, born Yakutat, 1905; married to Ben Peterson (White).

Jack Reed, Tł’UknaAdi, born Sitka, 1880; died Yakutat, 1953.

Edward Renner, Tł’UknaAdi, born Yakutat, 1924; died 1962(?).

William Thomas, Teqwedi, born Controller Bay(?), 1911; has lived in Yakutat since infancy.

Mary Kardeetoo Thomas, Kwacqwan, born Yakutat, 1911; died 1967; wife of William.

Charley White, Tł’UknaAdi, born Situk River, 1879; died 1964; brother to Minnie Johnson.

Jenny White, CAnkuqedi, born Dry Bay, 1903; wife of Charley.

Sarah Williams, Kwacqwan, born Yakutat, 1910; widow.

Preface

The field data on which this report is based were gathered at Yakutat in 1949, 1952, 1953, and 1954. On my first exploratory visit, June 8 to July 13, 1949, I was assisted by Edward Malin, then a graduate student at the University of Colorado, and by William Irving, then an undergraduate at the University of Alaska. At that time several old village sites and a number of well-informed, friendly natives gave promise that combined archeological and ethnological investigations would be fruitful. Furthermore, I learned that there were two persons in the community who could speak Eyak, a language which I had feared was extinct.

In the summer of 1952 (June 6 to September 13), I returned to Yakutat with a larger party. Dr. Catharine McClellan, who had worked with me at Angoon in 1950, collaborated in the ethnological investigations at Yakutat, and Francis A. Riddell, who had also been with us at Angoon, now directed the archeological excavations at Knight Island near Yakutat under my general supervision. He was assisted by Kenneth S. Lane, Donald F. McGeein, and J. Arthur Freed, then all students at or graduates of the University of California, Berkeley. For part of the summer, Dr. Fang-Kwei Li, Department of Far Eastern Studies, University of Washington, undertook linguistic research on Eyak, both at Yakutat and at Cordova.

The following summer, Riddell returned to continue the archeological work, with another party from the University of California consisting of Lane, McGeein, Albert H. Olson, and Robert T. Anderson. During the summer some ethnological information was gathered, although this was not the primary aim of the expedition.

In the winter and spring of 1954 (February 13 to June 16), I was able to resume ethnological work at Yakutat, assisted by Mary Jane Downs (now Mrs. Benjamin Lenz, then Fellow in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College). We were accompanied by my mother, Professor Emeritus Grace A. de Laguna, although she took no active part in our investigations.

For hospitality in the field I am indebted to Paul Stout, manager of the cannery in 1949, and for other courtesies to Robert Welsh, manager in 1952 and 1954. J. B. Mallott, owner of an independent store, was also very helpful. The Alaska Native Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Public Health Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Coast Guard, all rendered invaluable assistance.

Research at Yakutat was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (1949, 1952), the Arctic Institute of North America, with funds from the Office of Naval Research (1949, 1953), the Social Science Research Council, the American Philosophical Society (1954). The Department of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, and Bryn Mawr College have all supported the fieldwork and aided in the preparation of this monograph. A Faculty Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council in 1962–63, and the hospitality of the Berkeley campus have enabled me to write much of this volume.

A grant from the National Science Foundation (G-4875) made possible assembling the illustrative and bibliographic material.

In preparation of this monograph, I have received the help and advice of many persons. For bibliographic assistance, especially in finding unpublished materials, I am indebted to Dr. J. Ronald Todd, Chief Reference Librarian, University of Washington, Seattle; to Dr. Willard E. Ireland, Provincial Librarian and Archivist, Victoria, British Columbia; to Dr. Wilson Duff, then Curator of Anthropology, and Donald N. Abbott, then Assistant Anthropologist, both at the Provincial Museum in Victoria; to Dr. John Barr Tompkins, and to Assistant Director Robert H. Becker, indeed to all the staff of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Kenneth Lane, who had copied many rare items in the Bancroft Library, generously turned over to me his complete notebook, and Dr. Robert F. Heizer, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, gave me notes and photographs made at Yakutat by C. Hart Merriam in 1899.

Through the kindness of Dr. Luis Pericot Garcia of the University of Barcelona I was able to secure copies of pictures, in the Museo Naval at Madrid, which had been made at Yakutat in 1791 by the painter, Tomás de Suría. Permission to publish the sketches in the MS. journal of this painter (cf. Wagner, 1936) were given by Dr. David Watkins, Chief Reference Librarian, and Dr. Archibald Hanna, Curator, Western Americana Collection, Yale University Library. I am also endebted to Dr. Joaquin Gonzales-Muela, Professor of Spanish, Bryn Mawr College, for assistance in translating the accounts of Suría and Malaspina. Dr. Erna Gunther, now at the Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska, not only furnished a list of all Suría's paintings in Madrid, but gave me her invaluable notes on the specimens from Yakutat acquired by the Portland Art Museum from the Reverend Axel Rasmussen in 1948. Permission to publish photographs of these is gratefully acknowledged, as is additional information obtained from Donald Jenkins, Curatorial Assistant. Dr. Luyse Kollner, Curator, Mrs. Mona Bedell, Secretary, and Virginia Hillock, Registrar, procured photographs and information on specimens in the Thomas Burke Memorial Washington State Museum, Seattle, and Dr. Walter A. Fairservis, Jr., Director, gave me permission to publish data on them. Edward L. Keithahn, Curator, sent information and his own photographs of Yakutat specimens in the Alaska Historical Library and Museum, Juneau. Other pictures of specimens there were taken for me by Malcolm Greany, photographer. Dr. Frederick J. Dockstader, Director, gave permisison to publish photographs of specimens in the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York City. I am grateful to Dr. Harry L. Shapiro, Chairman, to Miss Bella Weitzner, Associate Curator Emeritus, and to Dr. Richard A. Gould, Assistant Curator, Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, for permission to utilize notes and photographs made by G. T. Emmons at Yakutat before 1889. I am especially grateful to Dr. Gould for his tireless help and skill in photographing so many specimens in the Emmons collections. At Princeton University, Dr. Donald Baird, Department of Geology, and Will Starks, photographer, spared no pains to give me excellent photographs and fullest data on the collection made in 1886 by Libbey at Yakutat. Lastly, I should like to thank my Yakutat friends, John Ellis, Mrs. Minnie Johnson, and Mr. and Mrs. Harry K. Bremner for giving me pictures of Yakutat persons and scenes to use in this book.

Parts of the manuscript in various stages of completion have been read by a number of experts, and if, despite their vigilance, errors have crept in or gone undetected, the fault is mine. These are Dr. George Plafker, Geologist, Alaskan Geology Branch, U.S. Geological Survey; Dr. John W. Aldrich, Research Staff Specialist, and Dr. Richard H. Manville, both of the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Dr. Fenner A. Chace, Jr., Dr. J. F. Gates Clarke, Dr. Harald Rehder, Dr. W. R. Taylor, and Howard L. Chapelle, all at the U.S. National Museum; Dr. Donald Baird, Department of Geology, Princeton University; Dr. Michael E. Krauss, Department of Linguistics, University of Alaska; Dr. Dell Hymes, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania; and lastly, Dr. Catharine McClellan, Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, my collaborator in the field in 1952.

Preliminary studies of Yakutat recordings were made by Lindy Li Mark and by Agi Jambor, Professor of Music at Bryn Mawr College. The transcriptions in the Appendix, however, are those prepared by Dr. David P. McAllester, Director of the Laboratory of Ethnomusicology, Wesleyan University, under a grant from the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society (1967).

It is Edward Schumacher, staff artist of the Smithsonian Institution, who has so skillfully and beautifully prepared the maps and many of the illustrations for this book. But without the skill and patient devotion of the editor, these labors would have come to nothing.

Preparation of the index was made possible by the kindness of Maude Hallowell, and through grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and from Bryn Mawr College.

To those institutions that made this work possible, to the many individuals who gave help and information, and to my companions in the field, I wish to express my thanks.

FREDERICA DE LAGUNA

Bryn Mawr College

Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

Contents

Part 1

TO THE PEOPLE OF YAKUTAT

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

Basic assumptions and aims

Conduct of the fieldwork

Transcription of native words

THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE

Introduction to Yakutat

The Tlingit world

The Gulf Coast of Alaska

The Gulf Coast tribes

Ecology of the Yakutat Bay area

Geography and geology

Geological changes

Climate

Flora

Mammals

Amphibia

Birds

Fish

Marine invertebrates and seaweed

Insects

THE HOMELAND OF THE YAKUTAT TLINGIT

Yakutat Bay

The west side of Yakutat Bay

The east side of Yakutat Bay

Disenchantment Bay and Russell Fiord

Yakutat Bay to Dry Bay

The Ankau lagoon system

Lost River to Italio River

The Dry Bay area

The Alsek River

Cape Fairweather and Lituya Bay

The Gulf Coast west of Yakutat Bay

Icy Bay

Icy Bay to Copper River

THROUGH ALIEN EYES: A HISTORY OF YAKUTAT

Eighteenth-century exploration

The first explorers (1741–83)

Zaikov and other Russian expeditions to the mainland (1783–88)

LaPérouse (1786)

Dixon (1787)

Colnett (1788)

Ismailov and Bocharov (1788)

Douglas (1788)

Malaspina (1791)

Vancouver (1794)

The Russians

Shelikhov's “Glory of Russia,” and Baranov (1792–93)

Purtov and Kulikalov (1794)

“Novo Rossiysk” (1795–1801)

Revolt of the Tlingit: Sitka (1802–04)

Revolt of the Tlingit: Yakutat (1805–06)

Yakutat (1806–67)

Under the American flag

The first years (1867–80)

The first surveys (1880–84)

Schwatka and Seton-Karr (1886)

Topham (1888)

Miners, missionaries, and the U.S.S. Rush (1888–90)

The conquest of Mount Saint Elias and the end of an era (1890–1900)

MYTH, LEGEND AND MEMORY: THE NATIVE HISTORIES OF YAKUTAT

Setting the stage

Myth and history

Tribe and sib

Foreign peoples

Sibs among the Gulf of Alaska peoples, or important to their history

Historical narratives

Introduction

The history of Yakutat

Other versions of the K[w]acqwan migration story

Further tales about Knight Island and atgawet

The story of the CAnkuqedi

The story of the Teqwedi

The story of the ałyI-Kagwantan

Wars with the Aleuts

The first ship at Lituya Bay

The defeat of the Russians

War between the Tl’UknaAdi and the Tl’aayIk-Teqwedi

The story of Gue and the fate of the Dry Bay people

Smallpox

The war between the Kagwantan and the CAtqwan

An averted war with the Tsimshian

Geological changes in the Yakutat area

History of the Frog House: trouble between the Tł’UknaAdi and the KIksAdi at Sitka

YAKUTAT HOUSES

Aboriginal dwellings and other structures

Meaning of the house

The aboriginal winter house

Three old houses

Smokehouses

Camps

Caches

Bathhouses

House furnishings

Domestic life

Camps and houses in the 18th century

Houses in Lituya Bay, 1786

Houses in Yakutat Bay, 1787, 1788

Houses in Yakutat Bay, 1791

Houses and camps in the 19th century

Houses on Khantaak Island, 1886–90

Eyak Houses at Kayak, Controller Bay, 1886

Bark shelters, Disenchantment Bay, 1899

History of Yakutat houses

Tcicqedi and ałyI-Kagwantan houses west of Cape Yakataga

Knight Island houses

Nesudat houses

Diyaguna ’Et houses

Ahrnklin River houses

Tł‘UknaAdi houses on Johnson Slough

Dry Bay houses

Khantaak Island houses

Situk houses

Houses in the Old Village

Yakutat: the present town

The future

TRAVEL AND TRADE

Canoes

Introduction

Skin boats

Dugouts of the 18th century

Modern Yakutat dugouts

Snowshoes and sleds

Trade

Introduction

Travel and trade with the west

Travel and trade with the interior

Travel and trade with the south

Values in exchange

Coppers

Trade etiquette

Motives for travel and trade

MAKING A LIVING

Hunting and fishing

The annual cycle

Control of territories

Religious aspects

Land mammals

Weapons

Traps and snares

Sea mammals

Fishing

Food and its preparation

Introduction

Food in the 18th and 19th centuries

Meat of land animals

Birds and birds’ eggs

Seal meat

Meat of other sea mammals

Fish

“Beach food”

Plant food

Some native recipes for modern foods

Tobacco and intoxicants

Native manufactures

Raw materials

Men's tools

Domestic utensils

Wooden boxes

Pottery

Women's tools

Skin dressing and sewing

Skin containers

Matting and cordage

Baskets

Chilkat blankets

Dress and decoration

Aboriginal clothing

Dress at Yakutat

Ceremonial costumes

Personal adornment and grooming

THE SOCIAL WORLD

Sibs and crests

Sib and moiety

Sib individuality

Yakutat crests

Ownership of crests

Types of crests

Validation of crests

Alienation of crests and crest objects

Sib characteristics

Social position

Aristocrats and commoners

Slaves

Chiefs and slaves in the 18th century

Kinship

The basic terms

Grandparents and grandchildren

Parents and children, father's brother and mother's sister

Maternal uncles and their sister's children

Paternal aunts and their brother's children

Brothers and sisters

Sib-children

Husbands and wives

Mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law

Brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law

THE LIFE CYCLE

Birth

Introduction

Personal characteristics believed determined at birth

Pregnancy

Childbirth

Infancy

Care of the baby

Magic for babies

Childhood

Small children

Discipline

Education

Food taboos

Children's games and toys

Growing up

Training of boys

Adolescent girls

Premarital sex knowledge and illegitimate babies

Maturity

The missionary's views on marriage at Yakutat

Marriage

Adult life

Old age

Death

Death ceremonies

The corpse

The smoking feast

Cremation

The mourners

The end of mourning

Graves in the 18th century

Graves of the late 19th century and modern times

Modern funerals

FIGURES

1. Mount Saint Elias

2. Mount Fairweather

3. Lituya Bay

4. A native chief and woman of Port Mulgrave, 1843

5. “Princess Thom”

6. Eagle Fort

7. Spearhead and log

8. Front of Bear House

9. Aboriginal winter house, Yakutat

10. Bear Paw House, Lost River Landing

11. Beaver House, Kahliak River, detail of roof

12. Winter house

13. Diagram of Kagwantan Box House, Dry Bay, 1903–07

14. Diagram of the Teqwedi Bear House, Khantaak Island, 1886

15. Diagram of the Teqwedi Coward House, Situk, 1888

16. Diagram of the Teqwedi Coward House, Situk, 1885

17. Smokehouse, 1949

18. Smokehouse, 1949

19. Smokehouse

20. Smokehouse

21. Log cabin

22. “Primitive bark shelter, Yakutat Bay”

23. Yakutat dug-out canoe and two-hole baidarka, 1791

24. Boats at Nuchek, Prince William Sound, 1887

25. Yakutat canoe and paddles, 1788

26. Yakutat canoes

27. “Yakutat sealing canoe,” 1899

28. Modern Yakutat “canoe”

29. Traditional shape of the copper

30. Bow and arrow

31. Arrowheads

32. Figure-four trap for weasels

33. Deadfall for fox, lynx, and wolverine

34. Snare for foxes

35. Snare for foxes

36. Snare for bear

37. Snare for brown bear

38. Snare for bear

39. Harpoon for seals, sea otter, and fish

40. Flattened butt of seal harpoon shaft

41. Iron harpoon heads

42. Fish spearing device

43. Oelachon trap

44. Halibut hooks

45. Halibut hook

46. “Flensing seal hide, Yakutat Bay,” 1899

47. Method of cutting salmon for drying

48. Bundle of dried fish tied up for storage

49. Hand hammers or pestles

50. Ulos

51. Curved iron scraper

52. Halibut skin bag

53. Spruce root rainhat and gutskin rain shirt

54. Patterns for beaded moccasin tops

55. Tłuk[w]aAdi man's dance shirt

56. Button blankets

57. Headdress

58. Face stamps

59. Baby carrier

60. Baby hammock

61. Tlingit child in hammock

MAPS

1. The Yakutat Tlingit and their neighbors

2. The Gulf Coast of Alaska

3. Ice fronts and coast line, A.D. 600–1290

4. Ice fronts and coast line, A.D. 1700–1791

5. Hypothetical extension of glaciers during ice-flood stage

6. Yakutat Bay

7. Southeastern shore of Yakutat Bay

8. Yakutat Harbor

9. Yakutat Bay to the Alsek River

10. Monti Bay to Black Sand Island

11. Yakutat to the Alsek River Delta

12. The Alsek River

13. Dry Bay to Cross Sound

14. Lituya Bay

15. The Mount Saint Elias Region

16. Malespina Glacier to Cape Suckling

17. Controller Bay

18. Lituya Bay, from LaPérouse

19. Port Mulgrave as surveyed by Dixon

20. Route of Malaspina's explorations, 1791

21. Port Mulgrave as surveyed by Malaspina

22. Disenchantment Bay as surveyed by Malaspina

23. Yakutat Bay to Lituya Bay, 1849

24. Yakutat Bay to Cape Suckling, 1849

25. Yakutat Bay, 1849

26. Lituya Bay, 1849

Requirements for Smithsonian Series Publication

Introduction

BASIC ASSUMPTIONS AND AIMS

This report deals with the history and culture of the Indians of Yakutat, Alaska, based upon ethnographic fieldwork and upon historical sources. It continues and elaborates, therefore, the briefer study entitled “The Archeology of the Yakutat Bay Area, Alaska” (de Laguna et al., 1964). These volumes were planned together, and were conceived as part of a more ambitious program of coordinated researches into the archeology, history, and ethnology of the northern Tlingit. The first exploratory study of this nature was made in the Angoon area and was published in 1960 as “The story of a Tlingit community: a problem in the relationship between archeological, ethnological, and historical methods.” In that report, which owes its inception to the stimulation of the late Marian W. Smith, the basic premises and objectives of the program were stated, and the methods explained by which the fieldwork was conducted.

The ultimate aim, as originally conceived, was

“…to trace the development of Tlingit culture from the earliest period represented by discoverable remains down to the present time, not simply to present a descriptive history of Tlingit culture but to explore it as a case study in cultural dynamics. This would involve consideration of ancient cultural diffusion, continuity of traits and attitudes, internal readjustments and shifts in emphasis within the culture, the growth of those specialized patterns which give Tlingit culture its distinctive individuality, and the break-down of these under white contact with resulting consequences to Tlingit personality.” [de Laguna, 1960, p. 5.]

The archeological data from Yakutat have already been presented and interpreted in the light of Yakutat historical traditions and Yakutat ethnography, seen against the background of geological changes in the area, and analyzed to exhibit the distribution of Yakutat cultural traits along the Northwest Coast and in adjacent regions. Since nothing found could claim great antiquity, but all belonged to the period immediately preceding or following the first appearance of Europeans in 1787, our Yakutat archeology should be viewed as Yakutat ethnography of the 18th century. The study, unfortunately, could neither prove nor disprove the various theses advanced to explain the development of northern Northwest Coast culture (de Laguna, 1960, pp. 5–6), but could only suggest what may have been the prehistoric stages of cultural growth at Yakutat.

Although the earlier emphasis of fieldwork at Yakutat was primarily directed toward the history of the culture, an understanding of that culture, for itself and in its own terms, came to be the more immediate aim. As I wrote in 1949:

“It would be of interest to discover what aboriginal institutions or attitudes are still alive, what aspects of culture have broken down almost completely, and which ones have proved most responsive to change without losing their continuity with the past.

“In all the history of growth, change, and break-down it should be possible to trace certain continuities of pattern that are distinctively Tlingit. The ultimate objective of the whole study should be to discover some of the underlying causes and factors in this dynamic process.

“An assumption which was not explicitly stated in the original formulation of the problem may be presented here, since it is basic to an understanding of Tlingit culture history, and since it received validation and illustration throughout our work in the field. Stated in its simplest form it is that the Tlingit themselves are as much responsible for their own culture and its history as are any of the peoples who have influenced them. In the past, it was they who, consciously or unconsciously, chose what to accept of the cultural innovations offered them through diffusion and what use to make of the opportunities thus afforded. It has been Tlingit character, interests, and orientations that have determined how these importations were reinterpreted to fit Tlingit ethos and adjusted to Tlingit culture.” [de Laguna, 1960, pp. 7–8.]

The understanding of Tlingit culture now, or even in the past when there was presumably a more homogeneous aboriginal life, involves not simply the elucidation of a set of ethnographic patterns, or norms, or behavioral averages, or ideals, as the characteristics of a “model system” in which the standard, average “individual” plays his culturally patterned roles. Rather, these cultural patterns make up the universe for many different, actual persons, who see it, live it, use it, accept it, or modify it, each in his or her own manner and from his or her own vantage point, and who find themselves fulfilled, molded, and thwarted, in varying degrees and in different ways, by the life to which each in some individual measure gives form and meaning. Ethnographic understanding demands not only a survey of behavior, concepts, and attitudes common to, or characteristic of, a group of such individuals, but, more importantly, the envisioning of their cultural universe through the eyes of those who live in it. It is worth attempting this, even though our understanding can never be complete, since at best we will be able to see only certain aspects of the cultural universe from the perspectives of perhaps only a few persons, or even at times mistake our own reflections for the outlines of that alien reality.

We must not expect perfect harmony in the viewpoints of those we study, if only because every culture, no matter how “functionally intact” or consistent, offers unequal opportunities to individuals and demands conflicting choices. Their satisfactions or dissatisfactions, their delight in the novel or their fear of change, their ambitions, their placid acceptance, or their rebellions, create those social equilibriums and strains that are the dynamic forces responsible for cultural continuity and change (de Laguna, 1952). Our own view of culture must be flexible enough to recognize these varying reactions, and our formulations loose enough to accommodate both the typical and the atypical (which, paradoxically, is just as typical in its own way).

Yakutat culture presents its own particular problems. It is now Tlingit, but has not always been so. At least the aboriginal speech was Eyak, and the culture has always been somewhat marginal to the “classic” Tlingit. There are articulate traditions referring to the introduction of Tlingit speech and Tlingit ceremonial and ritual elaborations. In referring to “Tlingit,” however, we must not forget that local diversity distinguished the various geographical groups, as was recognized by the natives and early explorers alike who designated these tribal units by geographical names: Sitka, Hoonah, Auk, Chilkat, Stikine, etc. McClellan (1954, pp. 76, 82–83) has indicated how such local peculiarities furnished themes to be exploited in potlatch ceremonial. Despite this, we do not know the full extent of these differences. We are simply aware that Frederick Sound marks a division between the northern and southern coastal Tlingit, and that there are also variations among island, mainland, and inland groups. Here, differences in ecological setting, in contacts with different foreign groups, or relative degrees of isolation, are obviously important factors. Yet no one of these tribal groups has been the subject of a full-scale ethnographic monograph, nor is there any study in which local peculiarities, other than sib composition, have been made clear. (McClellan will, however, deal with the Inland Tlingit in a forthcoming monograph.) Indeed, there is no single, detailed, and comprehensive study of Tlingit culture in general.

Therefore, while we can interpret most of Yakutat culture in terms of what we know of Tlingit, we cannot be sure to what extent Yakutat is unique or, recognizing unique features, cannot be sure how to interpret these. There is local pride at Yakutat, and an awareness of their particular geographical position and of their special contacts with their non-Tlingit neighbors. There is also great respect for the Tlingit of Sitka and Klukwan, from whom some of the lineages are derived and with whom many individuals are united by ties of kinship.

Even a primarily historical study of Yakutat culture requires not only a recording of events and changes, but an attempt to answer that simpler but more difficult question: What is (was) Yakutat culture? Even if we find answers, how should we present them? How shall we write the ethnography of a people?

The life of a people, seen through their eyes, is the picture of a universe. It encompasses all of the world, all that matters, all that was established in the beginning of time and that will endure to the end, all that has been introduced, has changed or will change, or will someday vanish.

One could, of course, try to describe such a world as it gradually unfolds before the baby born into it, or sketch its outlines as they are first apprehended and later become more sharply defined for the ethnologist. Neither course would, of itself, lead to a full portrait of the culture, for the ethnologist would first, in either case, be obliged to present an understanding of the world in order to make clear what is happening to the child or what his own experiences mean. As we know, the native autobiography, presented without explanations either by the teller or by the ethnographer-editor, conveys little meaning to the reader who does not already know something about the culture. The attempt of the ethnographer to publish his full diary and notes in the hope of exhibiting what he had learned and how he had come to learn it, would also be confusing, for he could never make clear or explicit the prior assumptions, understandings, prejudices, and theoretical orientations which colored, transformed, and illumined his first contacts with an alien people, much less the often undramatic but more intricate processes by which he came to know them better. To write an ethnography from such a point of view would demand that the ethnographer constantly observe and study himself in the act of observing and studying others. The attempt might be an exceedingly interesting experiment in investigating the methodology of fieldwork, but would hardly be itself an adequate ethnography. Such autobiographical accounts as have been published are literally reflections, reconstructions from memory, made either after the return from the field, or during pauses in the fieldwork. One is, of necessity, always more aware in the field of what one is learning or trying to learn than of the processes of learning, and the concentrated, vicarious participation in the life of others, demanded by exploration of another culture, precludes a sophisticated study of one's own experiences while that exploration is in process.

There has been a fashion of late to condemn the so-called “classic monograph” as giving only the formal outlines of institutions and customs, not their inner meanings, or the values for those who practice them, or their “functions” (too often the meanings ascribed to them by the ethnologist himself), or their mutual interrelationships within a system. I believe that these strictures apply only to poorly written accounts; poor either because the writer had failed to penetrate deeply and so did not know the culture very well, or because he was afraid of presenting material that might be judged irrelevant or subjective. The good ethnographer, however, is not really constrained by the monographic form but uses it simply as a framework for organizing his material. For this purpose, the “classic” form is neither better nor worse than any other form of presentation, since all are of necessity linear expositions of something which is multidimensional, complex, never completely integrated nor completely understood by anyone. No presentation can claim to be definitive, although some may exhibit a wider awareness and broader range of interests than others, for never have all possible questions been asked or answered, and some of the most important questions unfortunately arise during the very process of writing. The richer the field data, the more selection is necessary for presentation in the monograph. Lastly, each account is tinged in ways of which the ethnographer himself cannot be fully aware.

The order of presentation of data can perhaps best be determined by what are felt to be the major emphases of the particular culture and the clearest ways of exhibiting them. Beyond this, more easily organizable material will be a wealth of seeming trivialities, of observations that do not seem to fit any organized table of contents or that are themselves incomplete items of information. The present temptation is to discard these, and to write only a study focused on some clearly defined aspect of the culture, preferably something that can be handled at a distance like a “theoretical model,” sacrificing the vivid, the concrete, the obstinately awkward detail, for the more abstract, neatly articulated and esthetically satisfying “elegant” presentation. It will be obvious that I have not attempted the latter course, but have, perhaps rashly, risked being both unscientific and subjective in trying to let the ethnographic data exhibit Yakutat culture as I believe it is understood by the Yakutat people.

A Tlingit philosopher might well begin by trying to explain his views of the universe in which men live, for the nature of that world determines and is determined by the ways in which men live in it. There are not only spatial dimensions to be considered, but temporal ones as well, since the world was not always as it is now. We should, therefore, have to understand not only the cosmology, geography, and notions of time and space, but also the vital forces of the world and man's relation to them. These fundamental questions have never, as far as I can tell, been systematically explored by a native philosopher, or, at least, I have never worked with such an informant. Only scattered, although often illuminating, insights into these problems have been given me. Perhaps for this reason, I was dissatisfied with my initial attempt to begin this ethnography with the native view of the universe, and have therefore postponed to a later chapter a discussion, admittedly conjectural, of man and nature. Instead, after an introduction to the land and its inhabitants, I have presented a discussion of the ecology of the Yakutat area in terms of our knowledge of its geography, geology, climate, and biota, also trying to indicate what the Gulf Coast of Alaska and its resources mean to the aboriginal inhabitants as their living space.

Across the stage of the aboriginal world have moved the ancestors of the people, already in Tlingit view divided into sibs of the Raven and Eagle-Wolf moieties. The histories of these groups are the expressions of their destinies established in the legendary past by “supernatural events” (as we would call them) which endowed each sib with its totemic crest and with other symbols that determine or confirm its identity and its relationship to the world of nature. The interrelationships between sibs form the framework for all the important social activities of individuals, while enduring social ties are symbolized most vividly and concretely in the lineage houses of which the sib is composed.

The ways in which the people make a living, securing their food and clothing, their medicines and luxuries, bring us back again to a further understanding of their environment. These are not simply technological activities, but have moral aspects—men are not something apart from nature, but share with “animate” and seemingly “inanimate” things the same being, while “natural laws” have social, moral, and “supernatural” aspects. We shall have to consider these aspects in order to understand how men should act in order to secure good fortune and success, or even to survive.

We must explore in some detail the organization of human society, the relationships between moieties, sibs, and lineages, between chiefs, commoners and slaves, between the various Tlingit geographical communities, and between the Tlingit and foreign peoples. The basic social groups are symbolized by totemic crests and heirlooms, by names, by songs and dances, and their symbols are all manipulated at the great ceremonies of the potlatch and of peacemaking, and even in trading, for these are the occasions when social relations are established, maintained, or reaffirmed. The fundamental social groupings determine the relationships of men to the territories from which they obtain their livelihood, to the animals and plants that inhabit it, and to the unseen forces allied with shaman and witch, as well as, of course, the kinship of man to man. In the minds of the natives, perhaps, the order of these relationships may be reversed, and the homeland or the bonds with animals may determine the order of human society.

Lastly, we must come to the individual himself, following the pattern of his life from birth to death, or rather through a cycle which has no beginning or end, since the human soul is immortal, and is repeatedly reincarnated in the same lineage, just as the souls of all living creatures continue to reanimate new bodies when the old are discarded.

The picture which I am attempting to present is one that will go back to a time when my oldest informants were young, some 80–90 years ago. It is based on the memories of their childhood and on the traditions taught them by their parents and grandparents. Through the last there will be glimpses into a still more remote past. It will be obvious that since these informants are of different ages, lived in different settlements, and had different personal experiences and interests, their accounts will not be uniform. There have been many changes since 1880, and these are indicated where appropriate, although it is not my intention to present a study of Yakutat acculturation. In any event, such a study would have a flavor of artificiality, because changes of certain kinds, occurring within certain temporal limits, would have been arbitrarily selected for emphasis, whereas Yakutat culture, like that of any group, is an on-going, multifaceted, never stable set of living patterns. My view admittedly will be directed more toward the past than the present, but it will become evident how much that past is still alive.

Since I want to show Tlingit culture as lived by my informants, I let them speak for themselves in their own words as far as possible, respecting when advisable the anonymity of living individuals. This may result in an idealized picture of aboriginal life, partly because some persons were consciously concerned to present their culture in as favorable a light as possible, and partly because vanished glories shine the brighter for those who have lost them, just as the wild strawberries of youth taste sweeter in retrospect than any that grow today. But there are also criticisms of the old days, and omissions of practices well documented in early historical records, that are, perhaps, as significant as corroboration. Yet the pattern of values, as attested by myth and legend, by remembered moral preachment and biographical incident, seems to be not only the core of the aboriginal culture but that part which best endures as long as the culture retains any living integrity. For this reason, the past as idealized by the Tlingit themselves has a special kind of validity and vitality, the more so since in any age the great deeds of ancestors, their moral qualities, skills, accomplishments, and spiritual powers have been held up as models for the present generation to emulate. The ideals of the past are recalled because they provide the norms by which people still try to pattern their lives.

One may well wonder why so much is remembered and respected, and why a “memory culture” refuses to die, but continues to function as a fairly lively ghost. I believe that Francis A. Riddell has offered a correct explanation. In his ethnological-archeological work in California he had been impressed by the persistence of aboriginal cultural patterns despite years of exposure to intensive acculturative forces. He found, however, that as long as the social groups could preserve their integrity, and family ties be maintained, little children continued to learn from their grandparents, who normally cared for them while the parents worked. Later, when that younger generation had perhaps tried to make a living and a satisfactory life in the White man's world, only to meet with disappointment, they would ultimately find greater worth in native life and its values. These middle-aged people would turn again to the aged for reinstruction in the old culture. This same process has clearly been operating among the Tlingit where bonds between grandparents and grandchildren are especially close, and where the wisdom of the aged is traditionally revered and the wishes of parents respected. During the span of my fieldwork at Yakutat I have heard several of the older natives regret their renunciation of the old ways and have witnessed their attempts to revive them again.

In describing Yakutat culture, there are times when it is necessary to explain, summarize, and interpret, and here it is impossible to prevent a shift in point of view from the inside one of the native to the outside one of the ethnographer. There are obvious gaps, due to ignorance on the part of informants or to my failure to ask the right questions of the right people. I find now in writing, not only glaring omissions which might have been filled in the field, but also discover much of what I had previously been unaware, and regret that it is no longer possible to check these new insights. However, such a process could have no end, for a culture is too rich to be ever exhausted. It was naive to suppose, as I did in 1954 when returning to Yakutat, that I could “fill in gaps” in my knowledge without simultaneously discovering as much or more that still needed to be learned, for each new piece of information seemed to open up new fields for questioning or observation, and further knowledge only revealed more distant and enticing vistas which there was no opportunity to explore.

Although it is my primary concern to exhibit Yakutat culture “from the inside,” it must first be approached from the outside—that is, with a description of the people and country of Yakutat from our point of view, so that we may orient ourselves in the terrain and identify the tribes and sibs with which we have to deal. More importantly, we must study the history of White exploration and settlement and the observations made by White explorers and visitors. Deficient though we may judge their accounts, or tantalizingly silent about so many matters which they could easily have reported verbally or in sketches, their views of the Yakutat people antedate by a full century the actual memories of our oldest informants, and supplement or contrast in significant ways with native traditions. These earliest accounts, combined with the reports of later visitors and residents in the area, provide a background against which native tradition can be better viewed. The very biases of these White men are of interest, as indicating the kinds of pressures to which the Yakutat people were subjected. More than this, the historical records will help us to understand how the Yakutat people reacted to their foreign influences, and how the foreigners in their turn responded. In short, we will be better able to see what the Yakutat people have made of their lives. It will also help us to avoid the fallacy of picturing the aboriginal culture in a fictional timeless “present.”

For ethnographic insight involves temporal depth of vision, and also the acknowledgment that every people lives its own mythology. ‘Ha (our) cAgún’ is conceptualized by the Yakutat Tlingit as the origin and destiny of the sib to which each individual belongs. It is manifested in the beginnings, in the history, and in the future of the line. The ethnologist, too, must see the present (and by implication, the future) as shaped both by the idealized and by the actual past, neither of which can be thoroughly understood without the other, and without which the present is a shadowy two-dimensional projection of reality.

CONDUCT OF THE FIELDWORK

On my first visit to Yakutat in 1949, contacts with the native people were sporadic and unsystematic. Not only were we living on “Cannery Row,” about half a mile from the nearest native houses, but much of our time had to be devoted to archeological exploration. It was on this trip, however, that I renewed my old friendship with Annie Nelson. She was the widow of Galushia Nelson, and these were the Eyak couple at Cordova with whom Dr. Birket-Smith and I had worked in the spring of 1933 (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938). Now in 1949 she was married to a Yakutat man, Sampson Harry, and her first child, Johnny Nelson, whom I had last seen as a little boy, was a young man. From him, I learned something of what had happened to the other Eyak we had known at Cordova in 1933, and also gained some understanding of what it meant to be a youth at Yakutat.

On this first visit also, I began a long friendship with Minnie Gray Johnson. At that time she was living in a big house in the middle of town. The following winter it was destroyed by fire, and she lost a priceless collection of native baskets, boxes, blankets, ceremonial costumes, and old photographs. Helen Bremner also opened her heart to us, and her husband, Harry K. Bremner, learning of our interest, tramped home the 9 miles along the railway track from fish camp in order to tell us the native history of Yakutat. We also visited Mrs. Maggie Harry, Mr. and Mrs. Olaf Abraham, and several others whom I came to know better in later years.

During the first summer, Edward Malin was particularly helpful, especially for his skill in sketching and his warmth in making friends. Through him, I met Peter Lawrence, aged veteran of the first successful ascent of Mount Saint Elias. William Irving was primarily occupied with archeological work that summer, although he did gather data about the then recently incorporated community of Yakutat.

On my return in 1952, with Catharine McClellan, we were fortunate in being able to live in a nice little house on the main street, right in the center of town, between the church and the ANB (Alaska Native Brotherhood) Hall on the one hand, and the post office and jail on the other. Across the street was the new house in which Minnie Johnson was living with her little granddaughter, Catharine (“Tiny”) Cranston, so we naturally saw a great deal of her and her friends. Her house was, in fact, a center for the social life of the older people in the community. Catharine McClellan and I also tried to make our house a place where all the people could feel welcome, and there we enjoyed many visits from native friends and neighbors.

Just after I had moved into this house in June, and before Catharine McClellan and the archeological crew joined me, I was invited to go on a daylong excursion to Haenke (“Egg”) Island in Disenchantment Bay with a large party of natives aboard Paul Henry‘s new gasboat, the Fairweather. This was a wonderful experience, not only because it enabled me to learn a good deal about the geography of Yakutat Bay, but because the festive atmosphere of the outing served to establish new friendships. It was on this trip that I first met Emma Ellis, still in mourning for the death that spring of her husband, Jack Ellis, whom I had known in 1949. Some of the young fellows with us shot a number of seals in Disenchantment Bay, and we all had a picnic supper of delicious boiled seal meat and broth before embarking on the long trip home. Nothing perhaps so readily admits a stranger into comradeship as the common enjoyment of favorite local foods. Later in the summer, our entire party was able to make a trip on the Fairweather clear to the very head of Yakutat Bay, Nunatak Fiord, and Russell Fiord.

Owing to the kindness of J. B. Mallott, who ran an extension line from his electric generator into the empty school building, we were able to play for a native audience some Tlingit songs that had been recorded at Angoon in 1950. These were heard with great interest which later enabled us to make tape recordings of Yakutat songs. For most of the latter, Minnie Johnson provided a translation. On my return to Bryn Mawr in the fall of 1952, Dr. Thomas Benham, Professor of Physics at Haverford College, helped me to edit and copy these songs onto a master tape. From this, phonograph records were cut and sent back to Yakutat to all those who had made the original recordings.

Another occasion which led to greater mutual understanding came late in the summer of 1952 when Catharine McClellan showed our colored slides in the church, while I explained our work. The people were particularly interested in the series that illustrated the many kinds of local foods available, and how these were preserved, especially since Yakutat Bay is traditionally noted for its abundance of fine seals, fish, berries, and “beach food.”

Catharine McClellan and I had profited from our earlier collaboration at Angoon in 1950. We followed the same general procedures of fieldwork (de Laguna, 1960, pp. 12–15), except that we improved our skills in recording statements verbatim, an accomplishment in which she surpasses me. Since we usually worked together, we would normally have two versions of each interview to be checked against each other and combined in making the final typed copies. Such verbatim (or nearly verbatim) transcriptions were invaluable, not simply because they recorded as faithfully as possible the peoples’ own observations about their own culture, but because they preserved information which might not be completely understood at the time but which later comments could often illuminate and make significant.

Unfortunately, there were often two versions of each Tlingit word or phrase, with subsequent variations as the word was mentioned on later occasions. In some cases I am fairly confident that a reasonably accurate transcription was eventually achieved, but in others I have been forced to offer several versions. Quite possibly some of the differences may reflect dialectical variations, especially since our informants or their parents had come from various settlements all along the Gulf of Alaska or even from southeastern Alaska, and local differences in pronunciation are recognized. Moreover, it seems that there are also differences in pronunciation between those who speak no English or very little, and those who speak it so regularly that they are “like third grade in their own language.”

During the summer of 1952 our house at Yakutat also served as headquarters for the four men who were excavating at the site of Old Town on Knight Island (de Laguna et al., 1964). From time to time, members of the archeological crew would come to Yakutat, bringing specimens which they had found and which we would discuss with informants. In August, Catharine McClellan and I visited the site for several days, participating in the digging.

Due to Catharine McClellan‘s initiative, a number of native plants were collected. Whenever possible these were shown to our informants in order to secure their Tlingit names and any information about their possible use. In this way, samples of several native medicines were obtained. These plants were taken by Francis Riddell to California where they were identified by Dr. F. R. Heckard, at the University of California Herbarium, and by Dr. William Steere, at the Herbarium of Stanford University, who had previously identified botanical specimens from Angoon. These specimens are now at Bryn Mawr College.

During the summer of 1953, Francis Riddell and Kenneth S. Lane, although busy with excavations at Knight Island, nevertheless managed to secure some ethnographic information which is, of course, incorporated in this account.

In February, 1954, I returned to Yakutat, accompanied by my mother and by Mary Jane Downs. The latter served as ethnographic assistant. This time we rented a house, belonging to John Ellis, which was situated on top of a steep bank well above the main road. Because of its location we were thrown into closer contact with new neighbors: Mr!. and Mrs. Olaf Abraham, Emma Ellis and her son (our landlord), Mr. and Mrs. Charley White, and Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon James, Sr. My old friends, however, also climbed the snowy trail to visit us. At first we were without electric current, but in March, Robert Welsh permitted us to tap the cannery line so that we had not only electric lights but power for the tape recorder.

The phonograph records of native songs which had been sent as Christmas presents to those who had sung for us in 1952 had, in the meantime, stimulated an intense interest in Tlingit music. A number of the earlier singers had died since 1952, and the recordings which they had made had been played at their funeral potlatches, which in itself gave a value to our efforts in preserving the songs. More extensive recordings could, therefore, be made in 1954, although it was usually not possible to arrange for as large a chorus as would have been desirable. The revived interest in native songs also led to some new compositions. On our return from the field, Dr. Benham of Haverford College was again generous with his equipment and skill, helping me to copy the songs so that records could be cut and sent to the performers. Again, as previously, copies of photographs were sent to all who had posed for us.

Because our field trip in 1954 was made in the winter and early spring, with heavy snowfalls, many more hours of the day had to be devoted to the tasks of living: pumping fuel oil for the space heater, carrying coal, chopping kindling, fetching water from a hole cut through the ice of a nearby pond, shoveling snow, hauling groceries on a sled, etc. However, these simple chores were those of our neighbors, some of whom said they knew we were “just like” them, when they saw us every morning spreading ashes on the steep path below our door.

Since a fire from a defective oil stove had destroyed one house in the village that winter, we were particularly grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Henry and to Olaf Abraham who dealt so effectively with the fire on our own roof, caused by an overheated stovepipe. On another occasion, when our oil heater threatened to burn down the house, all of the neighbors ran to our rescue and skillfully brought the heater under control in the nick of time.

Aside from these adventures, the work was conducted much as before, except that I profited from Mary Jane Downs’ skill in stenographic transcription. Without her special ability and devotion, I would never have been able to secure the complete record of an interview that lasted some 10 hours, and eventually formed some 75 typed pages, single-spaced!

Among the major events of the winter was the discovery of the body of Conrad Edwards, who had drowned in 1953. In April, the niece of one of our best friends was killed in an automobile accident, an event that shocked the community. These two tragic occurrences demonstrated how sib and moiety alinements still continue to function in comforting the bereaved, honoring the dead, and in carrying out all the onerous obligations of the wake, funeral, and burial.

Memorial Day meant an exodus of the entire community to decorate the graves in the cemetery at the mouth of the Ankau, and also provided an occasion for us to visit all the other graveyards near Yakutat. In this way we were able to learn a good deal about the older generations from the inscriptions on tombstones, especially when these were discussed with informants who could identify the dead by their native names.

On each of the fieldtrips all members of the parties kept diaries, of which I have copies. These recorded our own activities, events in the life of the community, notes on the weather, on birds and animals seen or reported, and descriptions of places visited on excursions. In addition, we prepared typed copies of all interviews. The original copy has been microfilmed for safekeeping by the American Philosophical Society; a second copy I have cut apart and filed according to the type of ethnographic information obtained. There are also special notes pertaining to the songs recorded including, when possible, both the native text and a translation. Copies of these notes and of the unedited tapes are deposited with the Folklore Division of the Library of Congress and with the American Philosophical Society. Other records consist of two Rorschach protocols, analyzed by Maude (Mrs. A. Irving) Hallowell, sketches made in 1949 by Edward Malin (also microfilmed by the American Philosophical Society), and photographs taken by various members of the different parties, of which I have copies. Dr. Catherine McClellan also has copies of the tapes and notes from 1952 and 1954 (Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison).

From the information thus obtained, we have compiled not only a Tlingit vocabulary, but lists of place names, lineage houses and crests, and native names of all persons who were mentioned in interviews or could be identified from their tombstones. These personal names are arranged according to sib affiliation. There is also a complete census and map of the town as of 1952, as well as lists of earlier houses and their principal occupants. I cannot claim that the genealogical records, although numbering over a thousand entries, are complete. To have attempted an exhaustive compilation of this kind would have meant sacrificing the opportunity to gather other, more valuable, ethnographic data.

TRANSCRIPTION OF NATIVE WORDS

The system of transcription of native words is essentially that employed by Boas (1917) for writing Chilkat Tlingit, except that diagraphs are used for affricatives, and A, E, I, and U are substituted for Greek letters. Raised w is used instead of raised “ in indicating such rounded back consonants as kw, qw, and xw. These are phonemically different from kw, qw, xw, etc., according to Velten (1944, p. 168, note 6), even though I was not always able to distinguish between the two sets of sounds. All voiceless consonants are aspirated (,, , etc.), but the aspirate sign is here omitted. All initial vowels are preceded by a slight glottal stop, that is, at the beginning of a word, and often at the beginning of a syllable. This glottal stop and also the glottalization of consonants are very lightly pronounced by most present-day speakers at Yakutat, so that mistakes may have been made in transcription. In this respect, also, the speech of these younger men and women is in striking contrast to that of the older, non-English-speaking informants, most of whom had been practiced in oratory and who more clearly aspirate or glottalize voiceless consonants.

We should also note that some apparent inconsistencies in transcription reflect the slight dialectical differences which informants recognized. The people from Dry Bay are believed to speak more like the Tlingit of Sitka or Hoonah. Thus, the southeastern Alaskan Tlingit and Dry Bay people pronounce ‘whale’ as yay, while at Yakutat it is pronounced as yay. There are also known to have been some recent changes in the Tlingit spoken at Yakutat; for example, y (velar y) has in many cases shifted to w. Thus, many persons say wae, not ae, for Yahtse, the river in Icy Bay from which Mount Saint Elias derives its native name.

Velten (1939, 1944) has discussed Tlingit phonetics, pointing out that Boas’ transcriptions of 1917 are entirely phonemic, even though Boas worked with a Chilkat informant, and Velten himself with the southernmost dialect of Klawak on Prince of Wales Island. Although pitch is of morphophonemic importance in Tlingit, I often failed to hear it, or heard it inconsistently.

Despite the errors, known or suspected, Tlingit words and phrases are included wherever relevant; the use of these expressions helped us the better to understand Tlingit thought. While I made no attempt to study Tlingit linguistics for itself, these efforts may be of some slight value to other scholars.

For this report, I was also given copies of the notes which had been made by Dr. John P. Harrington at Yakutat in 1939–40 and which are now in the Archives of the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology. When transcribing Tlingit, Harrington indicated the lengths of the consonants and vowels (by double or single letters), a feature usually ignored by other linguists. He distinguished surds from sonants by indicating the aspirations of the former (i.e., kh or kkh for , and k for g). Velar k (q) and velar g () he rendered by boldfaced letters: kh and k. Velar y ( was usually gamma (γ) or velar gamma (), as indeed, I was often inclined to hear it. In using his notes, I have sometimes substituted the more familiar q, , and y for these last three velar sounds. Harrington makes a sharp distinction between the forward and velar , but I have omitted his special symbol for the first. It should be noted that Dr. Michael Krauss, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Alaska, is incorporating all of Harrington's Eyak material from Yakutat in his own definitive study of that language. In his own work the latter uses the accepted modern symbols, but in referring to the Eyak place names he sent me I have changed these to correspond to the system used here: for example, Krauss’ c (my ts), š (my c), (tc), λ (tł), G (),? (glottal stop,’), and (nasalization, n).

Literal or accurate translations of native words and expressions I indicate by single quotes (‘—’); free translations or explanations offered by my informants, as well as other remarks in English, are indicated, by double quotation marks (“—”).

The Land and its People

MAP 1.—The Yakutat Tlingit and their neighbors.(After McClellan, 1953.)

INTRODUCTION TO YAKUTAT

Yakutat, latitude 59°31′ N., longitude 139°40′ W., is a Tlingit community. This does not mean, however, that it should be taken as a typical Tlingit town, for indeed there is none. We are accustomed to think of the Tlingit as people forming one tribe, in the ethnographical sense, yet there are known differences among the various Tlingit groups which would make it wiser to recognize a number of tribes within the Tlingit nation. There are, in general, four major groups of Tlingit: Southern (coastal), Northern (coastal), Inland, and Gulf Coast. Yakutat is the only settlement now representing this last group. The character of each of these divisions is largely determined by its particular geographical and ecological environment, and their differences are reflected in their manner of life and habits of speech. In the minds of the natives, the distinctions between the particular matrilineal sibs that make up these groups is of equal or greater importance, even though each community is of necessity composed of members of the two pan-Tlingit exogamous moieties, Raven and Wolf-Eagle.

To identify the Yakutat people we must sketch the important features of their homeland in relation to the whole Tlingit world.

The Tlingit World

Southeastern Alaska, or the “panhandle,” where may be found most of the Tlingit as well as the northern Haida (Kaigani) and the Tsimshian community of New Metlakatla, is, according to the Coast Pilot (vol. 8, 1962, p. 17) “a 30-mile-wide strip of mainland bordered by an 80-mile-wide compact chain of islands [Alexander Archipelago]. Most of the islands are mountainous, rough, and broken, and are covered with dense growths of spruce, hemlock, and cedar except on the higher summits. The mountains of the mainland are higher, less wooded, and usually snowcapped.” In midsummer the snowline stands at 2,000–3,000 feet, with glaciers snaking down to tidewater. The coast line is intricate, measuring only 250 nautical miles along the ocean front, but convoluted and broken into a tidal shoreline of some 11,000 miles. There is little level land except at the mouths of streams. Rather, the land rises abruptly from the salt water and its steep slopes plunge below sea level to form the system of deep narrow channels, known as the Inside Passage, which extends over 1,000 miles from Cape Spencer to Puget Sound. Many native canoemen, watchful of tidal currents and kelp-covered reefs, have made lengthy voyages without the necessity of venturing into the open ocean. In this way the Tlingit have come to know their southern neighbors: the Tsimshian of the northern British Columbia mainland, the Haida of Queen Charlotte Islands, the Kwakiutl farther south, and the still more distant Coast Salish.

From southeastern Alaska, access to the interior beyond the mountains is possible only along such rivers as the Stikine and Taku, or from the head of Lynn Canal in the northwest over the White, Chilkoot, and Chilkat Passes. These inland routes, or “grease trails,” were formerly controlled by local Tlingit sibs who monopolized the trade with the Athabaskan bands in the interior. Down these valleys in ancient days, according to Tlingit tradition, had come adventurous groups who lost their original identities and became Tlingit sibs. In reverse direction have also moved small groups of coastal Tlingit who went to find inland homes. In southern Yukon Territory, at the headwaters of the Yukon and Taku, live the Inland Tlingit, named for Lakes Teslin and Atlin, and the Tagish, their territories protruding like a wedge between that of the Tahltan Athabaskans to the southest and that of the Southern Tutchone Athabaskans on the northwest. These Inland Tlingit live a life which is largely indistinguishable from that of their Athabaskan neighbors, based as it must be upon the hunting of moose and (formerly) caribou, trapping fur bearers to trade, and catching fish in inland lakes or at the headwaters of the rivers. The climate is continental, with great extremes in temperature, but is much drier than on the coast. It is a harsh land, of scattered food resources and consequently of relatively small, wandering bands. Its wealth was in its furs. (See McClellan, 1953.)

In southeastern Alaska, on the other hand, the climate is “largely dominated by winds which have come off a part of the Pacific Ocean that has been warmed by the Japanese Current.” On the mainland and inner islands it is more continental in character, and while there are considerable variations in temperature and precipitation in the more mountainous areas, in general “high humidity, fogs, heavy cloud cover, small temperature range, and abundant precipitation are characteristic of the maritime zone” (Coast Pilot 8, 1962, p. 18). If the land seems to have relatively little to offer, other than materials for manufactures including clothing, the sea and its shores are rich in food. Even the salmon caught in the streams have not long left the sea, and still retain their fine flavor and firm flesh. The region could probably have supported a larger aboriginal population than it is known to have possessed.

Within the southern panhandle, we must recognize a distinction between the Northern and Southern Tlingit, the boundary being roughly marked by Frederick Sound and the southern reaches of Chatham Strait between Baranof and Kuiu Islands. South and east of this line live the Southern Tlingit: (from south to north) the Sanya (Cape Fox), Tongass, and Stikine (Wrangell) along the mainland and more sheltered waters; and the Henya (and Klawak), Kuiu, and Kake on the islands. The Northern Tlingit include the Sumdum, Taku, Auk, and Chilkat-Chilkoot along the mainland; and the Angoon, Sitka, and Hoonah of the outer islands and coasts. There are slight differences in pronunciation between the quick-speaking southerners and the more drawling, louder northerners. The former could get red cedar for canoe building and red cedar bark for mats and baskets, and they were naturally more influenced by the Tsimshian and Haida. In contrast, the northern groups were restricted to spruce wood (or yellow cedar and, sometimes, cottonwood) for canoes, and made decorated spruce root baskets. The mainland tribes in both divisions had closer contacts with the interior peoples, whom they used to visit regularly to procure furs, becoming skillful in handling canoes on swift rivers and trained to carry heavy packs over the passes. In contrast, those living on the more exposed coasts were of necessity seamen and hunters of sea mammals, even though their territories also offered many sheltered bays and lagoons.

The Gulf Coast of Alaska

When, however, one leaves the shelter of Cross Sound, running through the tidal rapids of Inian Pass and rounding Cape Spencer, one enters the open sea, stretching unbroken from Alaska to Antarctica. The Alaskan coast trends in a generally northwesterly direction to Ocean Cape at the mouth of Yakutat Bay, a distance of some 130 nautical miles from Cape Spencer, and westerly for an equal distance beyond this to Cape Saint Elias and Controller Bay. Along this great regular arc of the Gulf Coast there is no chain of sizable offshore islands, and the surf beats on exposed beaches. Beyond Controller Bay and the Copper River Delta, the coast again becomes irregular as one enters Prince William Sound, the home of the Chugach Eskimo, deadly enemies of the Yakutat people. About midway in this nearly unbroken 300-mile coastline, lies Yakutat Bay. To the southeast are only two significant indentations; Lituya Bay, 40 nautical miles northwest of Cape Spencer, and Dry Bay or the mud-filled delta of the Alsek River, some 40 nautical miles farther northwest. About 50 nautical miles west of Yakutat, a retreating arm of the Malaspina-Bering icefield has only recently exposed Icy Bay. From here to Controller Bay, about 80 or 90 nautical miles beyond, there are only a few landing places where boats may be taken through the breakers into the mouths of the larger streams. Local knowledge as well as skill is demanded in handling small craft if one is to navigate this shore, penetrate the tidal mudflats in the bays, or enter the shelter of streams and rivers.

This is the Gulf Coast of Alaska, a ribbon of low lying land between the open Pacific and the snowcapped mountains of the Fairweather, Saint Elias, and Chugach Ranges. Great icefields descend from these heights, in many areas joined and linked together to form great plateau or “through” glaciers (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 36) that are among the wonders of the world. These are “ice-flooded valleys,” described by Russell (1892, p. 47) as “vast, smooth snow surfaces without crevasses [that] stretched away to limitless distances, broken only by jagged angular mountain peaks.” Vancouver (1801, vol. 5, pp. 358–359) likened them to “a plain composed of a solid mass of ice or frozen snow,” as if an inland sea had turned to ice. In many areas these “through” glaciers offered routes for early native travel and, later, for prospectors. The most important links are between Lituya Bay and the Alsek River, between Glacier Bay on Cross Sound and the upper Alsek, and between the Alsek and the head of Yakutat Bay. Farther west, the awesome piedmont lobes of the Malaspina and Bering Glaciers spread down from the mountains between Yakutat Bay and Bering River on Controller Bay, reminding us of the continental ice sheets of the Pleistocene. This ice also served as a route between the coast and the Copper River valley. Some glaciers from the mountains or from interior fields still plunge into tidewater to discharge their bergs, despite the general retreat which they have suffered since first seen by White men almost 200 years ago. Others thrust their snouts into the turgid waters of the two great rivers, the Alsek and the Copper, that cut through the mountains to the sea. Most glaciers have shrunk back up into their valleys, leaving behind a desolate jumble of boulder-clay, and the giant Malaspina hides the greater part of its 80-mile long seaward margin under a forest-covered moraine.

Below the curiously straight seaward face of the mountain arc, the land is narrow, perhaps only 15 miles wide at its maximum, and is, geologically speaking, new, formed by detritus brought down by the glacial streams, by the moraines abandoned by ice fronts that once reached the sea, or by formerly submerged beach deposits lifted above the waves. In many places the trees have not yet established themselves on the grassy flats and swamplands, or grow only in narrow bands of dark forest along old moraines and beach ridges. Many lakes dot the flats or lie at the feet of the glaciers. Because so many streams enter the sea laden with silt and the ocean currents in general set northwestward along the shore, bars form at the stream mouths, often creating a maze of shallow tidal lagoons and estuaries behind the beach, and the streams may have to follow these for several miles westward before they can empty into the sea. The ocean far out in front of the major rivers is discolored with glacial silt. Changes in sea level that often accompany earthquakes, glacial advances and retreats even within the Christian Era, winter storms, and the never-ceasing deposition of the muddy burden of the streams continually modify the pattern of the shoreline.

MAP 2.—The Gulf Coast of Alaska. Redrawn by Richard A. Gould from U.S.G.S. Topographic series, “Alaska, Map B.”

Because the foreshore is low, vessels standing prudently offshore may not descry it at all, but can mistake gaps in the mountains behind for broad bays leading inland, hence the confusion in “discovering” “Bering's Bay” or “Admiralty Bay” in various localities southeast of what we now call Yakutat Bay. Frequently the land is obscured by clouds and fog, the open Gulf lashed by rain or snowstorms, and seasick passengers (on those days when passenger steamers still crossed the Gulf) had no conception of the glory hidden from their eyes. Or, a rare miracle might sweep clear the sky, leaving only the dazzling white of the peaks and that clear blue seen only in Alaska, and the Pacific Ocean subside into the mirrorlike calm of a pond. I have been fortunate to see it so, when the Gulf was filled with small boats, tugs, ponderous piledrivers, and other unseaworthy craft, hastening at their best snail‘s pace to cross while the fair weather endured. It was in such weather that Malaspina came to Yakutat Bay and found it a land of enchantment; for Dixon and Colnett before him it was only “Foggy Harbour.” Some of those explorers or traders who came under less pleasant circumstances have perhaps allowed foul weather to color all of their impressions of the country and its inhabitants.

In my eyes, with the possible exception of Greenland, the Gulf Coast of Alaska is the most beautiful country in the world, and its native inhabitants also see it as beautiful, mentioning this among the principal attractions leading to its settlement.

But it is not an easy country in which to live. Endurance, skill, courage, and expert knowledge are demanded for survival. The local natives and the voyagers who visited this region were perforce truly mariners, paddling almost out of sight of land to pursue the sea otter or sailing for days at a time on long trading voyages without a safe harbor. Only in Yakutat Bay can protection be sought in time of storm; other places grant shelter for boats already inside, but cannot be safely entered in rough weather. The region about Yakutat Bay and extending eastward to Dry Bay is also the only area extensive enough to support more than a sparse permanent population. On this narrow foreshore, behind the breakers and under the snowy pyramid of Mount Saint Elias, live the people who are the subject of this study.

The Gulf Coast Tribes

The story of Yakutat is in many respects that of the whole Gulf of Alaska from Cross Sound to the edge of Prince William Sound. This is not because the inhabitants of this narrow coastal strip were alike in speech and culture, or had a common origin; indeed, they spoke at least three or four different languages, and traced their origins to different homelands. But they became united through trade, war, potlatches, and intermarriage; and in the last chapters of their history, which is all that we at present can hope to reconstruct, they came to share a common destiny. The former settlements at Lituya Bay, at Dry Bay, on the rivers between Dry Bay and Yakutat, as well as those farther west at Icy Bay, at Cape Yakataga and Kaliakh River, at Controller Bay, and about the Copper River Delta, are now deserted. A few descendants of their former inhabitants may be found in Cordova, in Hoonah and Sitka, or in Juneau, but the greater number live today at Yakutat. Aside from a handful of persons at Cape Yakataga or at Katalla beyond Controller Bay, or perhaps for a few isolated trappers or prospectors at other spots, Yakutat is the only permanent community left on the whole Alaskan Gulf Coast, and it still retains cultural traces and traditions derived from the diverse tribes whose shattered remnants have mingled to form its present native population of 300 or less.

The history of Yakutat begins in pre-Russian days with the migrations of interior tribes from behind the mountains to the coast, and from the mouth of the Copper River eastward along the shore. There was also the northwestward expansion of Tlingit from what the Yakutat people call “the Southeast of Alaska,” some coming on foot along the shore or over the glacier highways, or going inland over the Chilkat Pass and down the Alsek River to Dry Bay, while others paddled their canoes up from Cross Sound or farther south. Then came White men in the late 18th century: Russian agents of the Shelikov Company commanding baidarka fleets of Aleuts, Koniags, and Chugach; and English, Spanish, and American traders and explorers. For 10 years the Russians attempted to maintain an agricultural colony and trading post at Yakutat, but this was destroyed by the natives in 1805. Then followed a period of relative isolation from Europeans, while Tlingit influences became firmly established all the way to Controller Bay. Before the middle of the century, smallpox wiped out the inhabitants of many settlements. Other disasters followed, and the population began to shrink back into the present settlements, moving back to southeastern Alaska or to Yakutat.

The Yakutat-Icy Bay area remained one of the best sea otter hunting grounds in the final decades of the 19th century, and the Gulf Coast offered some of the richest commercial salmon fishing regions for the first decades of the 20th, so from about 1880 to 1920 Yakutat enjoyed prosperity. It was early in this period that traders came regularly, the Lutheran Evangelical Mission was established, various expeditions recruited porters in attempts to climb Mount Saint Elias, and goldminers for a short time were attracted to the black sands of the beaches. By the end of World War I, however, the salmon streams had been largely fished out, the sea otter, even though protected by law, could hardly be found, and hard times came. Soon there was no one living on all the coast southeast of Yakutat, except for a few White fox farmers or prospectors, although many abandoned regions are still visited in the fishing season. But perhaps the cruelest stroke of fate was the building of a large airfield 4 miles east of Yakutat and the quartering of some thousands of soldiers in the vicinity during World War II. Although a number of Yakutat men served with distinction during the war, we need not be surprised at the demoralization which these changes brought. With the ending of wartime jobs, with the dwindling salmon runs which forced the closing of the cannery in which native women worked and for which the men fished, hard times returned again. Many young people now find that they must leave to seek a living elsewhere and old people live for their pension checks.

Similar brief periods of prosperity, while salmon fishing or fur trapping were profitable, or while there was an oil boom in Controller Bay and the Copper River Railway was being built, were also enjoyed by the dwindling inhabitants of the western part of the Gulf Coast. Here the periods of ephemeral wealth, of disease and debauch, and of subsequent demoralization and decline had run their course early in the present century.

If we could go back to the latter part of the 18th century, we should find the Gulf Coast Indians divided into several groups, of which the following were the main divisions:

The people of the Lituya Bay region, including the coast from Cape Spencer to Cape Fairweather, a distance of 54 nautical miles. This territory recently has been the hunting and fishing grounds of the Hoonah Tlingit, whose most important settlements, however, have always been in southeastern Alaska proper, on both sides of Cross Sound, including Glacier Bay and the north shore of Chichagof Island. Certainly the Lituya Bay region is now claimed by Hoonah sibs, but we cannot assume that this was so in the 18th century, since the Yakutat people also go to Lituya, and received some of the Lituya people at the time when most emigrated from this region to Hoonah and Sitka about 100 years ago.

The Dry Bay people, at the mouth of the Alsek River and the nearby streams, the most important of which was the Akwe River just to the northwest. Their territory may be defined as running from Cape Fairweather to the Akwe, a distance of about 50-odd miles along the shore, and running back above the glaciers that nearly block the Alsek River. The original inhabitants were Athabaskans, apparently related to the Southern Tutchone on the headwaters of the Alsek, but became mixed with Tlingit who had come from Chilkat via the interior and from the southeastern coast.

The Yakutat Bay people, including those on the coastal plain from the Italio River, 25 miles to the southeast. Their territory also embraced Icy Bay and its western shore, some 65 miles west of Yakutat. This area, as we shall see, once had an autochthonous population, originally Eyak or perhaps Dry Bay Athabaskan, but in prehistoric times submerged by Eyak from the coast to the westward mixed with a migration of Atna Athabaskans from the middle Copper River. Later, it became Tlingit because of the migrations from southeastern Alaska and the Dry Bay area.

The Eyak-speaking people of the coast just west of Icy Bay to Cape Martin at the eastern edge of the Copper River delta. Their main settlements seem to have been at Cape Yakataga, Kaliakh River, and Bering River in Controller Bay. In the 18th century, however, Controller Bay was claimed and was certainly frequented by a branch of the Chugach Eskimo of Prince William Sound. The Chugach were apparently intruders into Controller Bay and its islands, but when they first began to occupy it, and whether they ever established more than seasonal hunting camps, we do not know. At any event, they were driven back at the end of the 18th century by the Tlingitized Eyak from farther east.

The Eyak of the Copper River delta and of Cordova just within Prince William Sound (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938).

No pronounced differences distinguished the last from their Indian neighbors at Cape Martin, although there was a sharp linguistic and a somewhat less clearly marked cultural boundary between the Eyak and the Chugach. The Copper River Eyak (or the handful who live or lived until recently at Cordova) appeared more distinct when Dr. Birket-Smith and I studied them in 1933 than they would have even in 1900, largely because of the depopulation of the coast east of them, and also because they preserved into the present century the Eyak language once spoken along the coast as far as the Ahrnklin or Italio Rivers beyond Yakutat Bay. However, the intrusion of the Eskimo into Controller Bay as well as difficulties of communication may explain why there were two dialects of Eyak: “Ugalentz” (Copper River Eyak-proper) and Yakutat. As reported by Erman (1849, p. 126), based on Veniaminov: “Die Jakutat-Sprache spricht man am Jakutat und weiter westlich. Sie zerfällt in zwei Dialekte: den Jakutatischen und den Ugalenschen. Seelenzahl: nicht über 300.”

Dr. Michael E. Krauss in recent letters (December 20, 27, 1966, and January 9, 1967) has questioned my interpretation of this passage and a similar one in Radlov (Radloff, 1859, pp. 468–469). According to Radlov: “Weniaminov endlisch lässt in seiner Eintheilung der Sprache des russischen Amerikas [Zamechaniya…] die Sprache von Jakutat in zwei Mundarten zerfallen, in das eigentliche Jakutat und in das Ugalenzische.” Krauss translated the original Russian passage in the Zamechaniya (1846, p. 7) as: “The Yakutat language is spoken by the inhabitatants of Yakutat and further west. It is divided into two dialects: Yakutat and Ugalents; the number of speakers of both dialects [taken together ?] is not more than 300 souls.”

Dr. Krauss interprets this to mean that “the Yakutat language” was Tlingit, while “Ugalenz” or Eyak was the second language spoken at Yakutat. He further points out that Veniaminov seems to have had no firsthand knowledge of Eyak (already largely obsolete at Yakutat in his day), and probably none of the Tlingit which had replaced it at Yakutat. Although he is still working on this problem and has not yet come to a definite conclusion, his study of early Eyak wordlists has failed to reveal evidence of dialectical differences within that language, even though he believes it more likely than not that one of these vocabularies (Rezanov‘s) comes from Yakutat.

While the linguistic evidence which originally suggested to me that there might be two dialects of Eyak (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 535) was evidently quite inadequate, I find it difficult to interpret “the Yakutat language” of Veniaminov, Radlov and Erman as Tlingit, a Tlingit so different from that of Sitka that it rated as a separate dialect. However, the statement is not clear, and these writers may have been overly impressed by very slight differences in speech between the Tlingit spoken at Yakutat and at Sitka (cf. Swanton, 1909, p. 347 n.). However, if we are to understand the phrase not as “the Yakutat language,” but as “that which is spoken at Yakutat,” then we can follow Dr. Krauss’ interpretation of the passage. Only an adequate knowledge of the Eyak formerly spoken at Yakutat can resolve the problem of how much or how little it may have exhibited local peculiarities.

I would further believe that 300 was a fairly correct figure for the inhabitants of the Yakutat Bay area alone, and that the Eyak-speakers farther west once equalled or almost equalled that number. The figures given may, however, reflect the terrible smallpox epidemic of 1838–40 (p. 177), and so apply to the whole Gulf Coast from Yakutat to Copper River.

Dr. Krauss also indicates to me his belief that the proportion of Chugach, Eyak and Tlingit place names (see pp. 102–106) suggest that a center of Eyak settlement was on the mainland of Controller Bay, with fewer and smaller sites on the coast to the west. The Eyak probably remained on the mainland shores of Controller Bay while the Chugach frequented the islands. He further suggests that it was probably somewhat before the Chugach had been driven westward by the Tlingit or Tlingitized Eyak of the mainland that the Eyak were able to consolidate their hold on the Copper River delta.

In the recent past, at least in the 19th century, the Copper River Eyak formed merely a fifth unit in the chain of peoples who intermarried, visited each other for purposes of trade, or who entertained each other at potlatches, and who felt themselves to be interrelated, even though the eastern tribes had adopted Tlingit speech and more of Tlingit ways. This process of becoming Tlingit was already far advanced at Dry Bay and Yakutat by the late 18th century, according to native traditions and the reports of explorers. Even a century later, however, we should have found people at Kaliakh River and Controller Bay who still spoke Eyak, and individuals in all communities from Dry Bay to Cordova were apt to be either bilingual from childhood, or prided themselves on a knowledge of foreign languages acquired during their travels.

These five divisions of Gulf Coast tribes have been outlined mainly according to the understanding of Yakutat informants. We should not think, however, of these five areas as tribally owned territories, nor of their occupants as “tribes” in the sense of cohesive social or organized political units. Rather, the real units of Tlingit society are the matrilineal sibs (na). It is their localized, intermarrying branches which make up the geographical communities which we call “tribes” (qwan). (See McClellan, 1954, pp. 76–77; de Laguna, 1952, pp. 1–4.) The five regions enumerated above comprise, therefore, the traditional territories (or blocks of contiguous lands) that belong to certain of the matrilineal sibs that compose the five groups. While I later attempt to define these Gulf Coast sibs more precisely and to trace more accurately the boundaries of sib lands, it may be helpful now simply to list the sibs which are acknowledged to have established residence in the five major regions by building named houses in the settlements, or who are considered as autochthonous. Sibs claiming territorial rights in each area are indicated by asterisks (*).

In the Dry Bay area, the TłukwaAdi and the Kosedi(?) were the original Athabaskan occupants; the other sibs are Tlingit from southeastern Alaska. The original residents of the Yakutat area were evidently Eyak-speakers. From southeastern Alaska, via Dry Bay, came the later residents, except for the Kwacqwan who were Atna Athabaskans from the Copper River, and the ałyI-Kagwantan who were Eyak-speakers of the western Gulf Coast.

Thus, the composition of these populations has shifted so that, in the distant past before the known migrations had occurred, the major regional divisions may have been different. Since, however, these areas correspond roughly to the geographical and physiographic districts on the Gulf Coast, it will be useful to refer to them.

Our interest will obviously center at Yakutat, and our information will be largely derived from persons born there or in the vicinity. Traditions about Lituya Bay could perhaps be best studied now at Hoonah, since the present owning sib lives at Hoonah. I shall, however, make use of the excellent observations of LaPérouse at Lituya Bay in 1786, especially since the people that he met may be taken as typical of the Tlingit groups that were moving westward. Of the populations once living between Icy Bay and Cape Martin, I have less knowledge, and I have never visited their country. An informant who was born either at Katalla or Cordova in 1892 hazarded that there were still about 15 natives living at Cape Yakataga and at Katalla, but he had not visited these villages for many years. The Copper River Eyak have been described, and at this time it is possible to add only a few notes to the account published by Birket-Smith and myself in 1938.

Even in the past, when the scattered settlements along the Gulf Coast were occupied, the Yakutat and their neighbors were relatively isolated from the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska. This isolation is shown in the character of their Tlingit idiom, recognized both by the linguist (Swanton, 1909, note to Tale 105, p. 347) and by the Yakutat themselves. The Dry Bay people, they say, speak more like the panhandle Tlingit, which I can verify, obviously due to the settlement of immigrants from southeastern Alaska earlier in this area than at Yakutat. There are also peculiarities of Yakutat culture due to the particular limitations and advantages of the terrain, to the heritage of the past, and to contacts with the Athabaskans and the Chugach. The Yakutat became tireless walkers, and skillful hunters of mountain goats, as well as adroit sealers among the icefloes. In hunting the sea otter on the open sea they utilized much of the specialized equipment and techniques of the Chugach. Access to native copper made them wealthy, their women were noted as skilled basketmakers, and they felt that they lived in a beautiful and bountiful land.

ECOLOGY OF THE YAKUTAT BAY AREA

To understand the customs and history of any people we must study the environment in which they live and which has helped to shape their destinies. We must try to see it not only in the impersonal, accurately scientific terms of the geographer, geologist, zoologist, and meteorologist, but also attempt to capture, if we can, something of what the country means to its inhabitants, because its role in determining their lives has been mediated by what they understand it to be and by what they have made of it. The environment is not for the Tlingit simply the land and sea with natural resources to be exploited. It is, as we shall see, much more a community of living beings, where the lines which we would draw between man and beast or between the animate and the inanimate are blurred or do not exist. The Tlingit shares his world with his nonhuman relatives and fellow creatures just as he shares it with other tribes.

Geography and Geology

Yakutat Bay is a great arm of the sea that cuts in a northerly or northeasterly direction through the low forelands and foothills to the very foot of the Saint Elias Range. The foothills are low mountains, between 3,000 and 5,000 feet high, with a few peaks of slightly greater elevation. Immediately behind them tower the true giants. Visible from Yakutat Bay and marking the International Boundary are Mount Seattle (10,000), Mount Hubbard (15,000), Mount Vancouver (15,700), and Mount Cook (13,700), as well as many others. Dominating these from the western end of the mountain wall is the great pyramid of Mount Saint Elias, just over 18,000 feet high, “one of the most imposing mountain peaks in the world” (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 12). Mount Logan behind it in Canada actually rises to 19,850 feet, and is the second highest mountain in North America, surpassed only by Mount McKinley, but it is less impressive from Yakutat because it is farther away. To the southeast, also on the Alaska-Canada boundary, is Mount Fairweather, 15,320 feet high, visible from the open flats just east of the town of Yakutat, but not from the bay itself.

The “heart” of Yakutat Bay, as the natives call it, is blocked by extensive glaciers descending from the high mountains: Turner or “First” Glacier on the west, and the huge Hubbard or “Second” Glacier on the north and northeast. Here, about 32 nautical or 37 statute miles from its mouth, the bay turns sharply east and south, and cuts back again through the foothill mountains and into the coastal plain, reaching to within 12 or 15 miles of the sea.

Several names have been applied to the various parts of the bay. Thus, “Yakutat Bay,” used in a narrow sense, refers to the lower, wider part below Point Latouche, about 23 nautical miles above the mouth. Above this to the glacier walls lies Disenchantment Bay. From this, the great arm stretching south and roughly parallel to Yakutat Bay is Russell Fiord, about 30 nautical or 34.5 statute miles long. From about midway along it, Nunatak Fiord branches out to the east for a distance of some 8 or 9 miles, to end at the now rapidly retreating face of Nunatak or “Third” Glacier. The very head of Russell Fiord, known locally as Mud Bay, is only 13 or 14 statute miles by air from Yakutat, although it is 75 statute or over 65 nautical miles by water.

Between Ocean Cape on the southeast and Point Manby on the northwest, the mouth of Yakutat Bay is 15 nautical miles wide, and as far up as Knight Island the shores are approximately parallel. Here they begin to converge, so that at Blizhni Point, some 15 nautical miles above Point Manby, the bay has narrowed to a width of 7 miles, and at Point Latouche on the east, where it merges with Disenchantment Bay, it is less than 3 miles wide.

From Point Manby up to just below Bancas Point, the western shore of the bay is all lowland, composed of moraines and of the outwash plain of the Malaspina Glacier and its smaller relatives. A number of streams drain these icefields, the largest of which are the Manby, Oscar, Kame, and Kwik. These bring down so much sediment that the coastline is rapidly growing outward. “It is a remarkably straight coast, with long, offshore bars, bluntly cusp shaped opposite the stream mouths and inclosing lagoons with shallow openings, difficult to enter by boat because of the surf which constantly beats on this coast” (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 13). Blizhni Point is actually on the bar at the mouth of Kwik Stream. At the northern end of this sandy, gravelly lowland, the mountains come down to the sea to form the rocky sides of Bancas Point which marks the western side of the entrance to Disenchantment Bay.

FIGURE 1.—Mount Saint Elias N. by W. 43 miles. (After Dall, 1874, in Dall and Baker, 1883.)

There is more diversity of terrain along the eastern shore of the bay, which falls into two divisions of almost equal length: the foreland, and the mountainous peninsula. “The foreland section, nowhere rising more than 250 feet above sea level, is low and timber covered, the dense Alaskan forest of spruce and hemlock descending to the very sea. This part of the coastline is exceedingly irregular and is faced by a series of islands, the largest two of which are Khantaak, the southernmost, and Knight Island, the northernmost” Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 14). Between the south end of Khantaak Island and the westward-jutting Phipps Peninsula at the southeastern corner of Yakutat Bay, Monti Bay leads into the site of the present town of Yakutat, to the Ankau lagoons that drain Phipps Peninsula, and to the channels that run northeastward behind Khantaak Island (Yakutat Roads and Johnstone Passage), as well as to many smaller passes, and to the famous harbors of Port Mulgrave and Rurik Harbor on Khantaak Island and Puget Cove on the mainland. “This archipelago of islands and reefs gives rise to an intricate maze of narrow straits and broad, lake-like expansions, protected from the ocean surf that elsewhere beats incessantly on the shores of Yakutat Bay” (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 14).

These islands and the adjacent mainland as far north as Eleanor Cove near Knight Island are formed of morainic deposits, left by the great glacier which once filled Yakutat Bay to its mouth. Along part of the shore the waves have cut this into gravel bluffs, notably at the town of Yakutat and at other places on Monti Bay. On both the islands and the mainland foreshore there are many lakes and ponds in kettleholes; the water supply for Yakutat comes from such a source. Reefs and boulders along the beaches are not outcroppings of bedrock, despite the size of some of the stones, but are simply rocks left behind by the glacier.

Apparently no one has lived on the smaller islands, probably because of lack of fresh water, although the natives might camp there when getting herring, clams, or crabs. It is easy to see that all this shore was elevated a few feet by the earthquake of 1898, because all the island and mainland shores are fringed with raised beaches on which only brush and young trees are growing.

In contrast to the lowland section, the northern part of the east coast above Eleanor Cove is rocky and relatively straight, except for small flats at the mouths of the larger streams. “There are no harbors, and, above Knight Island, no landing places except at times of greatest calm” (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 14). The mountains rise steeply from the water, reaching elevations of 3,000–4,000 feet in a few miles. The most conspicuous peaks on this peninsula between Yakutat Bay and Russell Fiord are Mount Tebenkof, Mount Hoorts (i.e., ‘brown bear,’ xuts), and Mount Hendrickson (for the missionary), as well as unnamed peaks. On their slopes are a few small glaciers, since the permanent snowline is at 3,000 feet. From these icefields, streams drain into Yakutat Bay, Disenchantment Bay, and Russell Fiord. “This eastern, mountainous shore of Yakutat Bay, with truncated spurs, has distinctly the appearance of fault origin, as indicated by Russell” (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 14).

FIGURE 2.—Mount Fairweather, sketched by W. H. Dall in 1874.

Similar mountains, over 5,000 feet high, face Mount Tebenkof from the eastern side of Russell Fiord, among these being Mount Pinta (for the U.S. revenue cutter), Mount Ruhamah (for Miss Scidmore), and Mount Unana. Close to the eastern side of Disenchantment Bay lies the rounded, ice-scoured knob of Haenke Island, rising 250 feet above sea level. It marks the entrance to the true “heart” of Yakutat Bay. The much smaller Osier Island stands at the point between Disenchantment Bay and Russell Fiord.

Except for the shallow expanded head of Russell Fiord, “Mud Bay” south of Cape Stoss and Beasley Creek, all of Russell and Nunatak Fiords are deep, narrow canyons cut between rocky walls. From Seal Bay, just south of Nunatak Fiord, up into Disenchantment Bay, the eastern and northern side is formed by flanks of the Saint Elias Range.

As one might judge from some of the passages quoted above, canoe travel and landing were not easy in all parts of Yakutat Bay. Thus, it is natural that most camps and settlements should be located in the more protected southeastern portion, and that today even sturdy gasboats bound up the bay should keep to the channels behind the islands as long as possible, for ocean swells are apt to be felt between Knight Island and Point Latouche. During storms, Eleanor Cove may be lashed white, and two small boats with several men were lost recently in this area, one in attempting a landing on the coast above Knight Island, and another within yards of its southern shore. Although more quiet water is usually found within Disenchantment Bay, the south shore of Haenke Island is sometimes pounded by waves. Here, however, the principal danger to navigation comes from the masses of ice that continually fall from the glaciers with rolling thunder like an artillery barrage. Not only does ice frequently block progress by boat above Haenke Island, especially in spring and early summer, but even when winds have cleared a passage along the eastern shore, there is danger from the waves thrown up by calving bergs. “In place of ocean surf are waves formed by the discharge of icebergs from the cliffs of Hubbard and Turner glaciers, and the waves thus generated break all along the shore of Disenchantment Bay, but with special intensity near its head. From Haenke Island to Osier Island iceberg waves are almost constantly breaking upon the shore” (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 16).

The west shore of Yakutat Bay is particularly exposed for, in addition to the usual surf, the ebb tide which follows the western shore carries down a procession of bergs “forming a barrier of drifting ice…which interferes with navigation as far as Blizhni Point” (Tarr and Bulter, 1909, p. 15). In June I have also seen ice cakes floating down on the east side as far as Knight Island, and “occasional drifts find their way as far south as Ocean Cape and Point Manby” (Coast Pilot 9, 1955, p. 87). However, it is among the icefloes in Disenchantment Bay that the harbor seals bear and rear their young, an important source of food and skins for the Yakutat people.

This varied terrain along the shores of Yakutat Bay reflects, of course, the complexities of the underlying geological structure. It is important to know something about this, not simply because it determines the patterns of the landscape, but because it affects the kinds of rocks made available for tool materials. In addition to the gravels, silts, and boulder-clays of the lowlands, the hard rocks of the upper part of Yakutat Bay fall into four groups. The following brief summary of their characters is based upon Tarr and Butler (1909).

The most southern formations, composing the rocky peninsula between Yakutat Bay and Russell Fiord, have been called the “Yakutat group,” probably of Mesozoic age. These are the bedrocks of the northern part of Yakutat Bay, not only on the eastern side from Eleanor Cove to Osier Island, but also on the western shore, stretching inland northwestward from Bancas Point. They occur all along the western side of Russell Fiord and on its eastern shore below Seal Bay. These are composed of conglomerates, graywacke, sandstone, shales, and limestone, very much folded and faulted. The sandstone would, of course, be useful for whetstones and the limestone for lamps, while hard cobbles eroded from the conglomerates could be used as hammerstones. Otherwise, these rocks seem to offer little to the native craftsman. In a few places, however, one near the shore a short distance above Point Latouche and another on Russell Fiord about a mile south of Cape Enchantment (opposite Nunatak Fiord), the limestone contains blue, green, and black flint.

The formations of the Yakutat group rest unconformably upon what have been designated as “basement crystalline rocks,” mainly greenstone and marble, and probably at least of Paleozoic age. The latter are obviously of far more value, greenstone being the best material for adz blades, and marble superior to limestone. These rocks are to be found largely along the western shore of Russell Fiord between its junction with Disenchantment Bay at Osier Island to just south of Cape Enchantment.

In a few spots on the slopes of Amphitheater Knob, above Esker Creek near Bancas Point, there are younger rocks, perhaps Pliocene in age, to judge by the fossil leaves which they contain. These consist of crossbedded sandstones, shales, clays, and lignite.[1] The white clays were used for paint, the fine-grained shales for whetstones, and the coal for beads. Our informants also reported lignite on the mountainside above Eleanor Cove. These Tertiary beds are separated from the older Yakutat formation by a fault along which there was pronounced movement during the earthquake of 1899.

A much greater fault runs down the axis of the northern part of Russell Fiord, and has been traced from Hidden Glacier on Seal Bay, across the mouth of Nunatak Fiord, in a northwesterly direction towards Hubbard Glacier. An extension of this line to the southeast would run directly along the T-shaped head of Lituya Bay, where a severe earthquake occurred in the summer of 1958. North and east of this fault, the shores of Nunatak Fiord and the eastern side of Russell Fiord from Seal Bay to Hubbard Glacier are composed of ancient metamorphic and crystalline rocks. These include slate beds, with a “remarkably perfect” cleavage, so that “the rock splits like a roofing slate” (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 149), obviously an ideal material for blades. There are also hornblende gneisses and schists, quartz veins, metamorphosed conglomerates and sandstones, and granite dikes. Some of the glaciers carry these and many other metamorphosed materials, a number of which were evidently sought by the Yakutat Indians for manufactures.

It should be noted that aside from what could be found in morainic deposits, all of the better tool materials were to be obtained in situ only in the northern part of the bay, in areas repeatedly blocked off by glacial advances.

Tlingit vocabulary reflects geographical and geological features probably much more fully than my records indicate, since no very systematic attempt was made to obtain a comprehensive list. In addition, there are a number of locative nouns or expressions (Boas, 1917, pp. 103–111) that refer to such features as downstream, downhill, to the beach, towards the sea, inland, upriver, on the summit, and so forth. Many of these appear in place names.

Geological Changes

One must not suppose that the topography of the Yakutat Bay area has always been as it is now. In fact, what is striking is the magnitude and recency of the changes which have occurred in this region and which must have profoundly affected the lives of the aboriginal population. I have already summarized (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 15–20) the conclusions of a number of geologists who have studied these phenomena, but it seems advisable to discuss them more fully so that the geological evidence may be compared with native traditions and observations (see pp. 286–288).

FIGURE 3.—Lituya Bay, sketched by W. H. Dall in 1874.

In the Middle Ages a huge glacier filled Yakutat Bay, its terminal moraine forming a narrow submarine ridge which curves between Ocean Cape and Point Manby, and where today there are depths of only 8–16 fathoms. “During very heavy weather,” warns the Coast Pilot (vol. 9, 1955, p. 86), “it has been observed that breakers or pronounced increase in height of swell occur across the entire entrance to Yakutat Bay; at such times entrance is dangerous.” This mass of ice may be thought of as an enormously enlarged Hubbard Glacier, to which all the minor glaciers of Yakutat Bay added their contributions. As already mentioned, its lateral moraines may be traced along the west shore as far up as Blizhni Point, and on the east from Ocean Cape to Eleanor Cove. Many white boulders of granite and marble, of the same kinds of rocks that outcrop in Disenchantment Bay and Russell Fiord were evidently carried south by the ice, and today can be found along the beaches from above Knight Island to Yakutat (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 100). Moraines and ice-worn marks high on the mountainsides and the ice-scoured depths of the bottom off Point Latouche indicate that this glacier must have had a maximum thickness of 3,000 feet (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 102).

The great Malaspina was also expanded, reaching the sea from Icy Cape, west of Icy Bay, to Point Manby where it joined the Yakutat Bay Glacier, forming a continuous wall of ice along the sea for a distance of 75 statue miles or more. Its weight thrust the Yakutat Bay Glacier against the eastern side of the bay, piling up morainic deposits upon the lowland below Knight Island (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 108).

Farther east, another glacier filled Russell Fiord, its expanded snout protruding beyond the confines of the narrow canyon onto the lowland where it scoured out the basin now filled by Mud Bay. Between this and Yakutat Bay, other minor icefields descended a short distance onto the foreland, but the low terrain was unglaciated except for a fringe along the eastern shore of Yakutat Bay and along the southern face of the foothill range facing the sea.

Moraines extend inland about 3 or 4 miles near Eleanor Cove and about 1 mile at Yakutat. Their hummocky irregular surface supports the dense forest, but as one goes eastward the land becomes smooth and the forest is left behind. The airfield, some 4 miles southeast of Yakutat, belongs to another world that, open and almost treeless, stretches to Dry Bay and affords a splendid view of Mount Fairweather beyond.

“This plain is made of gravel and sand, becoming steadily finer toward the Situk [River, about 9 miles east of Yakutat], evidently a perfect example of an outwash plain grading into the moraine of the Yakutat Bay Glacier. It is so level that streams flow across it with sluggish current, and its surface is too damp for tree growth except in small insular patches on slightly higher ground. This outwash gravel plain…is apparently the dominant feature in the Yakutat foreland” (Tarr and Butler 1909. p. 97).

MAP 3.—Position of ice fronts and coast line at the culmination of the older advance, between A.D. 600 and 1290. a, Wood in end moraine dated A.D. 756±160. b, Wood in end moraine dated A.D. 1127±160. (Plafker and Miller, 1957.)

The two small lakes at the present head of Situk River seem to lie within the terminal moraines of the glaciers that flowed down Mount Tebenkof. A short distance below the larger, rounder lake, which Tarr calls Miller Lake (“Situk Lake” of the natives and of the most recent charts), the outwash plain begins.

Sometime before A.D. 1400, judging by the age of living trees at Yakutat, these great glaciers began to retreat, receding far behind their present fronts, which permitted the growth of forests that were later either overridden or isolated by a second glacial advance (Plafker and Miller, 1958). Some of these forested areas were in the Icy Bay region, above the present front of Guyot Glacier (the arm of the Malaspina on the west side of Icy Bay), others were 5 miles north of Point Manby, and on gravel ridges along Esker Stream and along the nunataks (isolated rocky hills within the ice) that stretch northwestward to Floral Hills and Blossom Island, 15 miles from the bay. “Huge spruce logs, far larger in size than anything now growing in that vicinity, occur plentifully in these gravels” northwest of Bancas Point (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 131). Evidently the mature spruce trees still growing on the northern slope of Blossom Island, as well as scattered stands on the Floral Hills, Terrace Point, and Amphitheater Knob close to Bancas Point, are the remnants of great forests, all but destroyed by the later glacial advance. Today, the modern forest is spreading up into Disenchantment Bay to join them.

During the recession, forests also clothed the now barren sides of Russell Fiord, for wood has been found below glacial gravels just southeast of Osier Island (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 130, fig. 10). “On the beach near the very head of Russell Fiord [Mud Bay], as pointed out by Russell [1892, p. 89], and on other beaches near by, a submerged forest proves that there was a forested land area fringing the mountain front before the deposition of these moraines and the subsidence that has since occurred in this region” (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 99). Some of the stumps were still standing in 1906.

MAP 4.—Position of ice fronts and coast line at the culmination of the younger advance, between A.D. 1700 and 1791. (Plafker and Miller, 1957.)

The glacial recession which permitted this forest growth is probably associated with similar retreats in other parts of the Saint Elias and Fairweather Ranges, witness the “resurrected forest” of sheared–off stumps uncovered by the retreat of the Muir Glacier in Glacier Bay (Fernow, 1902, pl. opp. p. 250). The retreat of the ice in Yakutat Bay seems to have occurred in stages, for Tarr (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 99) cites a morainic terrace, 150–200 feet above sea level on the mainland near Knight Island, as evidence of a pause in the recession. According to native historical tradition, the ancestors of the Kwacqwan, coming from the Copper River, crossed to the east side of Yakutat Bay on the ice which then extended from Point Manby to the vicinity of Eleanor Cove, even though the ice was then already beginning to melt back because they had killed a dog and thrown it down a crevasse. (See p. 239). Perhaps this was during the same recessional stage as that inferred by Tarr (in Tarr and Butler, 1909).

After the ice had retreated, some settlements were established which tradition reports were later overwhelmed by a second advance. One of these was in Icy Bay (Topham, 1889 a, pp. 432–433; 1899 b, p. 350, cited on pp. 286–287), and another was somewhere on the coast south of Dry Bay, where the Kagwantan had built Shadow House with wealth obtained by trading with the Dry Bay Athabaskans (Swanton, 1909, Tale 104, pp. 335–338).

MAP 5.—Hypothetical former extension of glaciers during ice-flood stage, based on observations of the height reached by the glaciers at a number of points. (Tarr and Butler, 1909, fig. 9.)

The second advance of the glaciers culminated in the 18th century. Since presumably the Icy Bay, Malaspina, Yakutat Bay, and Russell Fiord Glaciers advanced at about the same time, a date of less than 300 years may apply to their growth. This date is indicated by carbon-14 analyses of trees destroyed by the Malaspina, as well as by the age of living trees on its moraine (Plafker and Miller, 1958). Icy Bay was again covered with ice, but the Malaspina Glacier itself did not advance much beyond its present limit. The Yakutat Bay Glacier (i.e., Hubbard, Turner, and other glaciers in Disenchantment Bay) apparently advanced as far as Blizhni Point, where a submarine ridge represents the terminal moraine. Glaciers in Russell Fiord were again swollen. Nunatak Glacier, for example, not only filled its own narrow canyon but extended out into Russell Fiord, one arm moving northwestward to Disenchantment Bay, the other joined Hidden Glacier and other smaller icefields and turned southward, overriding the morainic gravels left by the previous advance to a height of 500 feet above sea level, and crushing the extensive forests that grew on the old moraine. Farther south, Fourth Glacier, now a shrunken remnant far up Beasley Creek, was also part of the ice mass in Russell Fiord and extended across to Cape Stoss on the west, damming up a fresh-water lake in Mud Bay. Beach gravels and old wave-cut terraces up to 115 or 140 feet above sea level surround the edge of this former lake, which then drained south into the Situk River. In the lake waters were carried logs from the forests destroyed by the glacier, to be eventually deposited in the beach gravels. The moraine left by the earlier advance lies outside the lake beach and now supports a mature spruce forest, while slowly advancing across it towards the present water's edge is a new growth of alders, willows, and cottonwoods (Tarr and Butler, 1909, pp. 133–134).

These glaciers were again already in retreat by the latter part of the 18th century, for Malaspina (1885, p. 163) on July 2, 1791, was, as we know, blocked by ice at Haenke Island, and Lieutenant Puget of Vancouver's expedition in July, 1794, was also stopped here. The latter noted, however, that “at the back of the ice a small inlet” extended to the northeast about a league, presumably between Haenke Island and the mainland (Vancouver, 1801, vol. 5, p. 389; Tarr and Butler, 1909, pp. 21–22), and one of Malaspina's sailors, according to Suría (Wagner, 1936, p. 251), also claims to have seen a “river” of open water in what would appear to have been Russell Fiord, some distance above the line of ice. It is uncertain whether the barrier was the actual face of the solid glacier itself, which would then have been some 4 or 5 miles in front of the present end of Hubbard Glacier (as indicated on the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey chart 8455, 1945 and 1962), or whether there was simply a mass of solidly packed icebergs behind Haenke Island, such as still forms early in the season. (See the discussion in Tarr and Butler, 1909, pp. 21–22; Russell, 1892, p. 172; Tarr and Martin, 1914, pp. 108–109; Plafker and Miller, 1958.) In any case, the glacial front could not have been far distant from the island. Even Tebenkov's map 7, apparently based upon explorations in 1807 and 1823, shows the head of Disenchantment Bay ringed by ice a short distance above Haenke Island, Russell Fiord does not exist (or was not known), and Situk River still drains the lake at Mud Bay. These ice barriers apparently disappeared shortly after the middle of the century, according to native accounts (see p. 287) supported by the age of new growth on the old lake beach at the head of Russell Fiord (Tarr and Martin, 1914, p. 230).

Farther west, the lobe of ice continued to fill Icy Bay until the present century, and the “Icy Bay” of the Russians, of Captain Belcher in 1837, and of the various expeditions attempting to climb Mount Saint Elias between 1886 and 1891, was actually the former mouth of the Yahtse River, east of the true Icy Bay of today (Plafker and Miller, 1958). However, according to Filippi (1900, p. 72), by 1897 the delta of the Yahtse River had completely filled the estuary at its mouth “that existed in Malaspina's and Vancouver's time, and of which the record is preserved in a legend of the Yakutat Indians.”

Retreat at Icy Bay is believed to have begun about 1904, and has since proceeded very rapidly, so that a large proportion of Icy Bay is now open. My informants (see pp. 285–286) have their own explanation as to why this happened. The bergs from Guyot Glacier at the head of Icy Bay make this, like Disenchantment Bay, an attractive breeding ground for harbor seals.

Malaspina Glacier, on the other hand, has become fairly stagnant, receding only about 3 miles at one point (Plafker and Miller, 1958).

A brief revitalization of some glaciers, noticeable in 1906, was apparently caused by the earthquake of September, 1899, which dumped avalanches of snow down the mountains onto the névés from which the glaciers take their origin. Since then almost all the icefields in the Yakutat Bay region have been in retreat, except for a recent advance of the Hubbard Glacier.

The earthquake of 1899 (see summary in de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 18–19) produced giant waves that destroyed forests up to 40 feet above sea level on the mainland north of Knight Island, washed away the graveyard on the southern tip of Khantaak Island, and resulted in changes of sea level, ranging from a subsidence of 7 feet at the western end of Phipps Peninsula to a maximum elevation of 47 feet on the west side of Disenchantment Bay. The axis of tilt ran squarely through the middle of the site of Old Town, on the south shore of Knight Island. The earthquake of July, 1958, resulted in the submergence of the southeastern point of Khantaak Island, with the loss of several lives, and produced other topographic changes all along the coast between Yakutat and Lituya Bay. (See Tocher, 1960.)

Less dramatic, but clearly important in the long run, is the building out of the land along the surf-fringed western shore of Yakutat Bay and the ocean front of the lowlands from Controller Bay to Icy Point below Lituya Bay. This is not done through continuous deposition of sediments, but proceeds in spurts, “by successive steps, or leaps, as offshore bars develop” (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 144). Thus, the ocean currents build up alluvial deposits into beaches and bars which are thrown up 5 or 6 feet above normal high water by storms. Outside these again, new bars form during calm weather, while grass, flowers, and strawberries claim the older, protected, inner ridges. Swampy depressions between are filled with silt; later with vegetation (Russell, 1893, p. 13). Usually there is an outer barrier beach sheltering a line of shallow lagoons through which canoes can be taken at high water. Low tide exposes sticky mud or patches of quicksand. Behind this, again, are older beaches and shallow ponds or swamplands, the oldest ridges perhaps 2 or 3 miles from the shore and already clothed with forest (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 124). “Altogether there are three beaches in different stages of dissection and vegetation growth. In time the inner beach will become dry land; the barrier beach will become what the inner now is; the bar will become a barrier beach; and a new bar will develop out in the ocean” (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 144).

It is this process that has created the lagoon system used by the natives in traveling between Yakutat and Dry Bay, and that has raised a number of sandhills on which native settlements and the Russian post at Yakutat were built. The rivers and streams discharging into salt water frequently cut new channels through the bars, abandoning the old, the shift being usually to the west. These changes are, of course, noted by the Indians who today fish near the stream mouths and who have expressed concern that these shifts would confuse the salmon seeking their own birth-waters in which to spawn.

Climate

The U.S. Coast Pilot (vol. 9, pp. 77–80, 575, 578, 599) contains an excellent summary of climatic conditions along the Gulf Coast of Alaska, from which the following information has been drawn.

The high mountains, up to 18,000 feet in height, which back the Gulf Coast of Alaska all the way from Cape Spencer to Prince William Sound have important effects upon the local weather. Here southeasterly or easterly winds are most prevalent, especially in winter, with westerly winds common in summer, but the particular winds that predominate in any given locality seem to be conditioned by the lay of the land. The local nature of these winds is recognized by the Tlingit in the place names which they give to them. Winds in the Controller Bay area, for example, are especially variable, as they are at Cordova just within the eastern edge of Prince William Sound. Sudden squalls or williwaws that blow in quick succession from different points of the compass occur near the mountainous parts of the coast and are particularly dangerous. In general, gales are most common in fall and winter, while July is the calmest month. “At Yakutat, east winds prevail in all seasons, occurring 40 percent of the time in autumn and winter, but only 22 percent in summer; northeast winds are also frequent in autumn and winter, and southeast and west winds in summer” (p. 77). While east winds of 16 knots or less are most common at all seasons, gales of 40 knots are all from the southeast and may also occur at any time of year, but have reached a record of 50 knots in winter. From October through March, gales average 3–5 days a month.

By contrast, Cape Spencer is more stormy, experiencing autumn gales up to 74 knots from the northeast, but Cordova had a maximum wind of only 43 knots from the southeast.

Precipitation is very heavy, occurring on about 220 days a year, with average annual totals of 109 inches at Cape Spencer, 132 inches at Yakutat, 110 inches at Cape Saint Elias, and 94 inches at Cordova. Fall and winter, the most stormy months, are also the wettest, but much of the precipitation is in the form of snow. Thus, there is an average annual total snowfall of 34 inches at Cape Spencer, 179 inches at Yakutat, 71 inches at Cape Saint Elias, and 117 inches at Cordova. While spindrift or falling snow borne by winter gales may cause low visibility, fogs are frequent in summer. This is a country of relatively little sunshine, for the number of cloudy days in a year is generally greater than the sum of clear and partly cloudy days.

Records for 30 years show that the wettest month at Yakutat is usually October, or at least the fall and winter months through January. The driest month is June, whether one measures the mean precipitation per month (4.8 inches in June to 19.3 inches in October), the mean number of rainy days (13 in June to 23 in November and January), or the maximum precipitation recorded within any 24-hour period (13.11 inches in June to 36.4 in August). However, precipitation varies a great deal, and in some years October may have only 6.8 inches of rain, and January, April, and June less than 1 inch. Mean snowfall records for the last 8 years range from a minimum of 2 inches in October, 9.8 in April, and a trace in May, up to 41.6 inches in January, with falls almost as heavy in December and March. Only June through September have been snow free, although this, of course, does not hold for the mountains. In March, 1954, it snowed almost continuously for about 10 days, usually 12 inches a day, according to my observations, and although the light snow packed down, I was told that it reached a depth of 4 feet at the airfield, setting a record. Drifts 6 feet or more in height pile up in the forests and do not melt until well into June.

The climate also varies considerably within Yakutat Bay itself. “It was frequently cloudy and rainy on the foreland when it was clear in Disenchantment Bay; and fog was often present on Malaspina Glacier when the weather was clear in Yakutat Bay. It was, of course, also true that the mountains were frequently clouded when the sky was clear along the shores of the fiord” (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 30). A man who lives near the head of Dry Bay reports that there is much more sunshine at his home than at Yakutat.

In the Gulf Coast area temperatures at sea level are relatively mild for the latitude and are not extreme. Thus, mean annual temperatures range from 40° F at Cape Spencer, 42° F at Yakutat, to 38° F at Cordova, with greater fluctuations as one goes westward, from a range of 4° F to 75° F at Cape Spencer, to a low of—33° F and a high of 84° F recorded at Cordova.

At Yakutat the months with means of freezing or below are December through March, with record lows of—23° F in January, and subzero temperatures are also recorded for November through March. Only July and August have been without frost. Conversely, the warmest records are 81° F. for August, and 71° F. to 79° F. for May to September. But even in the coldest winter months there may be some days with highs of 50° F.

Thunderstorms are rare, but may come with snow and cold, as well as with summer rains. The aurora borealis is also present when nights are clear, except in midsummer, but Yakutat lacks the brilliant and extensive displays characteristic of the interior.

One important climatic feature that has not been brought out in these statistics is that the air frequently has a low humidity, so that between showers wet things begin immediately to dry. It is only when there is a fog, or when the snow melts during sunny days in spring that the air itself feels damp.

This relatively cool wet climate, with heavy snows and periods of bitter cold and storm in winter, and brilliant sunshine for short stretches in summer, has demanded particular adaptations of the human inhabitants. These consisted aboriginally of rigorous hardening exercises begun in childhood to develop endurance of winter cold and summer damp, warm and waterproof clothing and snowshoes for winter, waterproof clothing or scanty garments for the rainy summer, face paint as a protection against sunburn and voracious mosquitoes, sweatbaths to relieve rheumatic stiffness, snug houses with strong roofs to withstand the heavy loads of snow and with entrances above snow level, elaborate and efficient techniques of storing food against the weeks in winter when hunting and fishing might be impossible, and lastly, a diet rich in the necessary fats, proteins, and antiscorbutics.

The vocabulary naturally reflects the meteorological phenomena. These were often personified or believed to be controlled by beings and were thought to be affected by the actions of men, especially by breaches of taboo. Not only were there almost professional weather forecasters whose expert advice was consulted before voyages were undertaken, but most persons were observant of weather signs to be read in the look of the mountains, and both shamans and laymen knew magic to control the weather.

I was told that there was no word for blue sky, but many words for bad weather were recorded.

The names for particular winds are discussed on pages 804–805.

At latitude 59°53′ N. the seasonal variations in the amount of daylight are marked. Thus, on midsummer's day, the sun rises at 2:35 a.m. and sets only at 9:28 p.m., making almost 19 hours of daylight. At the winter solstice, however, the sun will not rise until 9:02 a.m., and will set at 2:55 p.m., bringing just less than 6 hours of daylight. It is obvious that summer and winter occupations must differ greatly, if only due to this factor. Of great importance in the winter are fires and lamps for light indoors, and moonlight on the snow helps to extend the hours when men can work or travel out of doors.

Tides were a matter of concern, since these regulated canoe travel in shallow sloughs, streams, and salt water lagoons, and also made possible or prevented the gathering of shellfish and seaweed. In Yakutat Bay, mean higher high water is 10 feet, although the maximum at spring tides may reach almost 13 feet. The lowest tide to be expected is—4 feet, all measurements being referred to mean lower low water. Almost the same range of tides is found along the Gulf Coast, with a diurnal range of 9 feet at Lituya Bay, and 10.8 feet at the entrances to the Copper River and the Eyak River.

Flora[2]

The Yakutat Bay area for the most part falls within Nelson's “Sitkan,” or Merriam's “Canadian” biological zone (Gabrielson and Lincoln, 1959, pp. 41–49). This is an area that stretches from the forested part of Kodiak Island in southwestern Alaska, around the Gulf of Alaska, through the southeastern panhandle to merge gradually in British Columbia or northern Washington with a largely similar zone of closely related but more southern species and races. The Sitkan biotic community is characterized by the dense Pacific rain forests and their denizens, including the birds that regularly return to nest or to visit during their nonbreeding seasons, and also including the fish that come to spawn in these waters. Because the interior world, Merriam‘s “Hudsonian” zone, is just across the mountains, most of its birds and mammals and many of its plants are also to be found on the coast, especially in areas of open grassland and muskeg, on higher and drier foothills, or where the great valleys have been cut through the barrier range. Furthermore, wherever the mountains rise above timberline (about 2,500 feet), or where recent glaciation has denuded their lower slopes, we can find permanent or temporary island areas characterized by the flora and some of the fauna of the Arctic-Alpine zone, or of the treeless Aleutian zone.

Offshore are to be found the creatures of the open sea, the pelagic fishes, birds, and whales, or those sea mammals and northern-breeding birds that cross the Gulf of Alaska without need to rest on land. These can hardly be said to be within the Yakutat world, though they belong to its fringes, to the world beyond the supposed barrier of the horizon, where the sky touches the sea. Voyagers bound for Sitka or Nuchek, or venturesome sea otter hunters, have often seen the great sea birds and whales, and not infrequently some of these, as well as occasional deep sea fishes, are thrown upon the shore by storms or may seek shelter within Yakutat Bay.

More conspicuous than such chance visitors are the myriads of migrating birds that regularly pass through Yakutat on their way to more northern nesting places or on their return to warmer winter quarters. Among these are species of great importance to the natives.

Within the Yakutat area, therefore, all three Alaskan biotic zones may be found within relatively short distances. The North Pacific lies just beyond the breakers, and for brief seasons in spring and fall the migrants of the Pacific flyway provide still greater diversity. Yet because glacial barriers have so recently isolated the Yakutat region from the rest of Alaska, or even cut off one part of the Gulf Coast from another, there are curious breaks in the distribution of mammals, resulting in absences of kinds found elsewhere in the Sitkan and interior zones, or in the development of a few special subspecies.

According to Frederick Funston, who made a botanical study in Yakutat Bay in 1892 (Coville, 1895, p. 328): “The plant life of the region about Yakutat Bay is characterized by the dense and vigorous growth of a comparatively small number of species, giving the forests an appearance of great sameness.” However, he was referring chiefly to the area near Yakutak, for there are clearly differentiated zones: The dense mature forests of lower Yakutat Bay that are confined to the slopes below 2,200 feet and to the older moraines and raised beaches south of Bancas Point and Point Latouche; the Arctic flora of the higher slopes and also of the fiords so recently denuded of vegetation; the grasses and flowers of the swampy outwash plains; and lastly the plants of the new sandy beaches.

The forests are dark, dense and almost impenetrable. This is because the trees are thinly rooted in the shallow topsoil and in consequence there are many windfalls; tangled underbrush fills every available opening. “Even the Indians, who have lived here many years, have never penetrated the forests of the mainland for a mile from their own village” (Coville, 1895, p. 328). It is perhaps not irrelevant to note that the openness of the interior valleys is admired, or that the natives picture the afterworld of those who have died gloriously by violence as a grassy heaven.

The Yakutat forest is composed chiefly of Sitka spruce, Picea sitchensis, Western coast hemlock, Tsuga heterophylla, and mountain hemlock, T. mertensiana, the proportions apparently varying according to the age of the stands and the amount of moisture in the soil. There are a few Alaskan yellow cedar, Chamaecy-paris nootkatensis, the western limit of which is reached in Prince William Sound. For the native, the spruce (sit) is “the” tree (‘as) in Tlingit, furnishing wood for houses, canoes, boxes and other manufactures, and roots for baskets. Its inner bark, as well as that of the hemlock (yAn), is eaten, while the outer bark of the hemlock is used for such purposes as roofing. The yellow cedar (Boas, 1917, p. 155, áy; Harrington, xaa) is considered the best for carving, and its bark is preferred for the inside of blanket warps (Emmons, 1907, p. 237).

The branches of these trees are hung with festoons of moss, of which the natives distinguish several varieties. Moss in general is iqa (Boas, 1917, p. 161, Iga; Harrington, íkaa); the useless long hanging white moss is A that used for diapers is ’às djiwAn iqai, ‘moss under the limb of the tree,’ or ’àsyik Eoni. Lichens and fungus also grow on the trunks and stumps. The natives recognize the tiny cup-shaped fungus as ‘tree crackers’ (’às daqàtłi), and tiny toadstools in the moss as ‘moss rain hats’ (iqa siu duwet axw). The ground underfoot is spongy with mosses, including club moss or ground pine, Lycopodium annotinum, interspersed with flowers.[3].

Among the more important shrubs in the forest or along its edge is the skunkbush or false azalea, Menziesia ferruginea, tall as a man with handsome bluishgreen leaves and bell-shaped coral-pink blossoms in June. Also within the forest, growing up to 10 feet in height, is the terrible devilclub, Oplopanax horridus (tAt; Boas, 1917, p. 125, A; Harrington, á), with its branching stems and wide leaves all armed with sharp spikes that break off in the flesh like the quills of the porcupine. Its sweet white flowers bloom in May and June, and although the red berries that ripen in late August are inedible, its stems and bark are supposed to be valuable for counteracting disease.

A tall plant growing at the edge of the woods, with flowers in July and red berries later in the summer was said to be good “T.B. medicine” and was called kAtłtcAnEt. Boas (1891, p. 181) gives what is evidently this name to a species of Sorbus, perhaps S. sitchensis or mountain ash.

Smaller forest plants include several kinds of wood ferns Dryopteris, rock ferns Polypodium, fragile ferns Cysopteris, sword ferns Polystichum, and lady fern Athyrium, some of which furnish edible roots (wAł Boas, 1917, p. 157, wAł; Harrington, wáłx). For example, the lady fern, Athyrium filix-femina,* was identified as “native sweetpotato” (atc). The dwarf dogwood or bunchberry, Cornus canadensis, with its four white floral bracts and orange-red berries carpets the ground. The similar deerberry, Maianthemum dilitatum,* (ekAItłk) is reputed to have many medicinal virtues, especially as a poultice (qet kaaní).[4] There are also the small white starflower, Trientalis europea arctica,* the root of which was used as a love medicine (wutc sIAni nakw); Alaskan goldenthread, Coptis trifoliata, with three white petals and bitter tonic root; the foamflower, Tiarella trifoliata,* with dainty white blossoms lifted high; the single delight or wax flower, Moneses uniflora,* with a single drooping white flower; the coral-root, Corallorrhiza mertensiana*; the cut-leaf anemone, Anemone multifida*; and the one-sided wintergreen, Pyrola secunda,* with its line of drooping bells. Among these plants, as well as among those of the damp glades (see below), are a number that were used as medicines or amulets. The tall clasping twisted-stalk, Streptopus amplexifolius,* a lily with creamy bells, is known as ‘dead person's berries’ (ee qáwu tł‘eu) because of its rich, inedible fruit.

At the edge of the forest, or in glades within, grow the important berry bushes; the red-berried elder, Sambucus racemosa, (yeł’) with white flowers in May and tart red berries in September; the salmonberry, Rubus spectabilis,* (wAan tł’eu) with red to yellow fruit ripening in August; the delicious early blueberry, Vaccinium ovalifolium (kanaá), to be gathered in late August or September; the ‘up-river blueberry’ (nana kanaái), possibly the red huckleberry, V. parvifolium, but identified by Emmons (1903, p. 438) as the thinleafed blueberry, V. membranaceum, and by Harrington as the Alaska blueberry, V. alaskensis; the trailing red raspberry or five-leafed bramble, Rubus pedatus*, and the cloudberry, R. chamaemorus both called ‘dog's earrings’ (ketł gukw kAdjàci); the trailing black currant, Ribes laxiflorum,* and fetid currant, R. glandulosum,* both known as “lowbush currant” (kAnEłtUk; Harrington, khaneełtukw); and the highbush cranberry, Viburnum edule,* (kAxwé) with its tasty red berries available from late August through the fall. On more open moist soil is the low lagoon berry, Rubus stellatus (Harrington, neekúun, from ‘lagoon’). The “wild currant” (ca, cax; Harrington, caax) is probably the blue currant or skunk bush, Ribes bracteosum, (according to Swanton, 1909, p. 19, cx); the “lowbush cranberry” may be Vaccinium vitis-idea. The thimbleberry, Rubus parviflorus (Harrington, tiix),* was believed to have medicinal virtue.[5]

Growing on the edge of the forest and on the slopes above it are the matted clumps of the red alder, Alnus oregona (kesís; Boas 127, kécÍc; Harrington, khiicíc), found up to an altitude of 3,000 feet, where it forms “such dense jungles as to be almost impenetrable, constituting one of the most serious obstacles to mountain climbing in this region” (Coville, 1895, p. 328). Its wood and springy branches were, however, used for a number of manufactures and its bark for red dye. The willow Salix ssp. (tał‘, tcał‘) grows on the lowland, and its thickets are important as “the favorite resort of the ptarmigan” (Coville, 1895, p. 329), especially in Disenchantment Bay. These two shrubs and the cottonwood, Populus tricocarpa and P. tacamahacca(?), (duq; Boas 156, duq) form the advance guard of the forest that is slowly reoccupying Disenchantment Bay and Russell Fiord. Swanton reports (1909, p. 60) that the “smelly things” growing on top of the cottonwood trees are called dxkw′nk!

On stream banks or in swampy glades grow several species of saxifrage, Saxifraga punctata, S. mertensiana, and S. stellaris(?); the tall yellow wild snapdraggon or monkeyflower, Mimulus guttatus formerly langsdorfii; delicate-blossomed alum-root, Heuchera glabra; and the Siberian springbeauty. Claytonia sibirica.* “The lastnamed plant is eaten both raw and cooked by the Indians” (Coville, 1895, p. 330). My informants identified this, however, as “money dope” (duwuwEt kai kaani) or ‘medicine for being called by the village’ (‘ante’UU nakw). An important source of food is the root of the Kamchatka lily or “wild rice” (ku), Fritillaria camtchatcensis,* with its purplybrown flowers and an odor offensive to our noses. Here too is found the “wild rhubarb” (tł’áwÀtc), a dock or sorrel Rumex, possibly fenestratus,* the reddish leaves and stems of which are eaten in the spring and early summer.[6] Most welcome in the early spring are the fresh raw stalks of the “wild celery” or cowparsnip, Heracleum lanatum, (yànà’Ét; Boas 155, yÀnÀÈt’) which later in the summer toughen and carry their umbrellas of white flowerlets to a height of 4 or 5 feet. The dried stalks have given their name (ku) to the basketry rings on chiefs’ woven hats. The wild celery often grows in the open with the similar, but later blooming, Angelica. The horsetail, Equisitum variegatum and E. arvense, is also found along the banks of streams and in muskegs. My informants called it ‘sea lion's whiskers’ (tan adadzài), and said it was “good for nothing,” although Emmons (1903, p. 238) reported that the marsh horsetail, E. palustre, called “at the edge of the water, heeney money” (i.e., hin wAni) was used for basket decoration, especially at Yakutat. E. arvense (thàan k’utáa tzaalíi) was used as sandpaper for smoothing woodwork, according to Harrington.

Two important medicinal plants from the woodland swamps are the skunk cabbage, Lysichitum americanum, (atł‘) especially good as medicine for cuts (eł nakw), and the American white hellebore or “skookum root,” Veratrum eschscholtzii,* (Ikc) useful for wounds, as hair medicine (cAawu nakw) and, according to Swanton (1909, p. 143, s!Ìke), for protection against land otters. The tall white-spired goatsbeard, Aruncus vulgaris,* also furnished an effective medicine (qa kakduse nakw). We should not forget the deadly waterhemlock, Cicuta douglasii or virosa(?), although this was not used by the Yakutat, as far as I know.

The open tundralike flats, as for example, between the Situk and Lost Rivers, are described by Shortt (1939, p. 2) as “for the most part covered with sedges, deer cabbage, heather and Carex. Some of these clearings between Yakutat and the Situk are very swampy and are covered with a film of oil. There is also a heavy bacterial deposit of iron-oxide in these swamps which gives the vegetation and the many stagnant pools a rust-red colour.” These flats are dotted with the white tufts of the Alaska cotton-grass Eriophorum, especially E. scheuchzeri. Here also grows the Arctic iris, Iris setosa, of which the “Indians are said to use the rootstock as a medicinal charm” (Coville, 1895, p. 346). The white bog-orchid or wild hyacinth, Limnorchis dilitata leucostachys,* a variety of Habenaria or Platanthera, is the “need medicine,” or “looking at the sun medicine” (Agan ‘AłItÍn nakw), effective in bringing extra gifts at a potlatch.

The useful Hudson's Bay tea, Ledum groenlandica, (sIkcAłtín or Ikcałtín) grows on some of the flats by the airfield and near the Situk River. In shallow pools are two plants, reported to possess great medicinal virtues. These are the yellow pond lily, Nymphaea polysepala, or ‘the thing that grows on the bottom of the lake’ (‘atugwei; Harrington, ’aá thukéeii), and its ‘child’ (‘atugwei yAti), the buckbean, Menyanthes trifoliata,* with lavender flowers. Pondweeds, Potamogeton perfoliatus and P. pusillus, grow in the creeks.

Other flowers of the damp open glades are: the yellow marsh-marigold, Caltha palustris; Alaska violet, Viola langsdorfii; red baneberry, Actaea arguta; large-leafed avens, Geum macrophyllum (Harrington, ‘aan khanáakuu); the daisylike fleabane, Erigeron sp.; lamb lily or asphodel, Tofieldia glutinosa(?); yellow willow-herb, Epilobium luteum; a slender jointweed or bistort, Polygonum viviparum; sea lovage with broad leaves and aromatic roots, Ligusticum hultenii, formerly scoticum; wild pea, Lathyrus palustris; a broad-leafed yellow composite, Arnica latifolia; the tall blue Greek-valerian, Polemonium acutiflorum (or caeruleum)*; the creeping spearwort, a buttercup or crowfoot, Ranunculus flammula; marsh cinquefoil, Potentilla palustris;* an aster with narrow purple petals, Aster subspicatus; Alpine aster, A. alpinus;* mud sedge, Carex limosa stygia; spikerush, Eleocharis watsoni(?); and sickle-leaved rush, Juncus falcatus. The grasses in the drier open lands are tufted hair-grass, Deschampsia caespitosa, and sweet-grass Hierochloe, formerly Savastana odorata.

At old sites the nettles, Urtica lyallii (Harrington, úuw), grow thick and are used for reddish basket dyes according to Emmons (1903, p. 238).

The grassy dunes and open gravel flats are often carpeted with masses of those wild strawberries, Fragaria chiloensis, (cukw or cAkw; Harrington, cukw), for which Yakutat is famous. They ripen in different places from early July to mid-August. Of value to the natives in decorating baskets and also as “mattresses” under fur robes are the stalks of the beach rye-grass, Elymus mollis, formerly arenarius (Harrington, łakh), which grows on the dunes. My informants gave me only one word for ‘grass’ (atł’ or xał’),[7] which apparently grows in streams, although they doubtless distinguished between varieties useful to them. Small burrs found on some of the grass stems are known as ‘slave's louse nests, or snarls’ (guw CAisi).

Emmons (1903, p. 236) reported the following grasses as used for ornamentation of baskets, and presumably many of these were available at Yakutat where the best baskets were once made: fowl manna-grass, Panicularia nervata, now Glyceria striata; blue-joint, Calamagrostis canadensis langsdorfii; tufted hair-grass, Deschampsia caespitosa; slender reed-grass, Cinna latifolia (Harrington, cáak); Alaska brome-grass, Bromus sitchensis; and beach rye-grass, Elymus mollis.

Perhaps the most showy plant of the gravels is the blue and white lupin, Lupinus nootkatensis (kántÀkw, gEntAkw, or kantÁqw; Harrington, kanthakw or gantáw), the roots of which were eaten. I am not sure whether the natives distinguished between two varieties or colors of lupin, or also ate a similar plant (gIus or gEus). The latter may have been the beach pea, Lathyrus maritimus, with rose and purple flowers, since the roots of a plant with pink flowers were called “sweetpotatoes” (tc or tatc). (Possibly this was the related Hedysarum alpinum, called “bear root,” or “Indian potatoes” on the Copper River.) Coville (1895, p. 332) notes that the hairy rock-cress, Arabis hirsuta, which thrives in the gravelly soil of the dunes, is “sometimes eaten raw by the Indians.”

Identification of the root plants eaten at Yakutat is very difficult, since our informants could not describe them, and the roots would normally be gathered when the plants were not in bloom. Swanton (1909, pp. 18, 159, 180, 182) mentions three different edible roots eaten by the Tlingit: ts!ët, sîn, and fern root (k!wAłx). I was given the names atc, Atc, tats, tsats for “sweetpotatoes,” and also et. One informant called fern leaves ate and fern roots wAł. The yellow vetch, “mule's ear,” was not eaten but was called ‘Raven‘s garden’ (yeł tai).

On the dunes and gravel flats there are both the Arctic fireweed, Epilobium latifolium, and the ordinary taller variety, E. angustifolium; one or both were used for medicine (łúł). Yarrow, Achillea millefolium, called ‘mouse tail’ (káák tł’idi; Harrington, khakaak tł‘iitii), was also of medicinal value. In this area there also grows the northern willow-herb, Epilobium andenocaulon*; the scarlet Indian paint-brush, Castilleja miniata and C. chrymactis*; the yellow to magenta lousewort, Pedicularis palustris(?); yellow rattlebox, Rhinanthus minor, formerly crista-galli; the blunt-leaved and sea-beach sandworts, Arenaria lateriflora and A. peploides; blue gentians, Gentiana amarella(?); many-flowered woodrush, Luzula multiflora, formerly Juncoides campestris suedicum; succulent sea milkwort Glaux maritima; the alakali-grass of the sea shore, Puccinellia maritima(?); and spear-grass, Poa eminens, formerly glumaris.

Above the upper limit of the forests, the mountainsides have a heavy growth of grass, Deschampsia caespitosa longiflora, and of blue monkshood or aconite, Aconitum delphinifolium. Above 2,500 feet, however, there are chiefly spotted saxifrage, Saxifraga bronchialis; a ground willow, Salix arctica; the showy blue northern geranium or crane‘s bill, Geraniumer ianthum; and two creeping mountain shrubs: the Alaska heather, Cassiope stelleriana, and Luetkea pectinata.

Still higher grow mostly small arctic plants, the most important of which may be the Kamchatka rock-cress, Arabis lyrata kamchatica, since it is “eaten raw by the natives” (Coville, 1895, p. 332). There are doubtless other plants, the roots of which are valued for magical or medicinal purposes, since we were told that many of these had to be sought on the mountainside. Since the plants were carefully guarded professional secrets, unknown to our informants, we were unable to identify them. Emmons (1903, p. 238; 1907, p. 336, saOłi) reports that the lichen, Everina vulpina, was used for yellow dye for basket straws and goat wool. This, I believe, grows on the mountains.

Among the plants growing at high elevations, Boas (1891) identifies as medicines or amulets the composite Arnica cordifolia or ‘town-on medicine’ (an ka na’ gu, i.e., ’ànkA nagu), and wild heliotrope, Valeriana sp., (tłtcanis la’kw, i.e., łtcanis nakw or, rather, łtcAni nakw). In the same area, or in Disenchantment Bay, grow two medicines which we were unable to identify. These are “no-strength-inside” (łqatu łAtsin), useful for hunters of dangerous animals, and “glare” (kAłik or kAłIk) to blind the eyes of rivals. Emmons (1903, p. 238) reports that the stems of the maidenhair fern, Adiantum pedatum(?), “on the side of the mountain or shar-ah-thlee-tee” (possible cà ’Atł’idi or ’mountain its-tail’?), were used for basketry decoration. This name, however, suggests that of a vine called “mountain eel” (cayałi‘t!, Swanton, 1909, p. 98).

Funston (Coville, 1895) collected the following plants high above the tree line above Disenchantment Bay: chickweed, Cerastium alpinum(?); the rosetinted lesser wintergreen of the snowline, Pyrola minor; the white-blossomed wild heliotrope, Valeriana sitchensis; hairy cinquefoil and a related species, Potentilla villosa and P. procumbens(?); fringed grass-of-Parnassus, Parnassia fimbriata; a woodworm or sagebrush, Artemesia norvegia(?); winter cress or yellow rocket, Barbarea barbarea(?); buttercup or crowfoot, Ranunculus cooleyae; harebell or Alaskan bluebell, Campanula rotundifolia alaskana; coltsfoot, Tussüago frigida(?); wooly hawkweed, Hieracium triste; the long-bracted orchid, Habenaria bracteata or Coeloglossum viride; Anemone narcissiflora; wooly everlasting, or cat‘s ears, Antennaria alpina(?); rattlesnake root, Prenanthes alata; western columbine, Aquilegia formosa; a yellow daisy-like composite, Arnica latifolia; Sitka mistmaid, Romanzoffia sitchensis; drug eyebright, Euphrasia officinalis(?); a yellow-blossomed avens, Geum calthifolium; parsley-fern or rockbrake, Crypto-gramma acrostichoides; the common fragile-fern, Crysto-pteris fragilis; spike redtop grass, Agrostis exarata; mountain timothy, Phleum alpinum; and alpine blue-grass, Poa alpina. The alpine clubmoss, Lycopodium alpinum, with long trailing roots, may be what the Tlingit call “mountain eel” (Swanton, 1909, p. 98, cayałi′t!).

As indicated already, the true forest does not extend farther up Yakutat Bay than just below Point Latouche on the east and Bancas Point on the west. Beyond, in Disenchantment Bay and Russell Fiord, grows the advance guard of alders and willows, with a few cottonwoods following. Spruce is not found again until the end of Russell Fiord, south of Shelter Cove opposite Mount Tebenkof. Nor can the forest grow on the swampy forelands east of Yakutat. The sides of Nunatak Fiord appear almost bare, although some arctic and mountain plants are beginning to find a foothold, but near the head the glacier is still today in rapid retreat and the rocks are lifeless. In contrast, however, are the alders, cottonwoods, and spruces that grow luxuriantly on the debris-laden ends of the Malaspina Glacier on the west side of Yakutat Bay.

In addition to the plants listed above, the Yakutat natives were also familiar with the western red cedar, Thuja plicata, (ła) of southernmost Tlingit country and British Columbia, since it was used for canoes imported from the Haida. They also knew the paper birch of the interior, Betula papyrifera, because they sometimes received containers oI its bark (Boas, 1917, p. 154, ’Àt dàyí, ’its bark’); they had names for the “black pine” or black spruce of the interior, Picea mariana, (Swanton 1909, p. 92, łAł), and also for the fir, Abies sp. (Harrington, łeeis; Boas, 1917, p. 157, łèyÍs). The Douglas maple, Acer glabrum douglasii, (Boas, 1917, p. 160, ałé) and the Oregon crabapple, Malus diversi-folia, (Boas, 1917, p. 156, a), like the Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia, a hardwood used by the Tlingit in making bows, hence called ‘bow’ (Boas, 1917, p. 160, sÀqs), were to be seen in southeastern Alaska. My informants also mentioned a variety of currant with prickles (áhéywÙ), probably Ribes lacustre, which they said grew only in southeastern Alaska. Doubtless they also knew the rosebush (Boas, 1917, p. 163, onyèł). Those who went up the Alsek River could gather bearberries or kinnikinnick, Arctostaphylos uvaursi, (tínx) and soapberries, Shepherdia canadensis (hoktł’i; Harrington, úkwtł’ii; cf. Swanton, 1909, p. 252, qok!′t!). The latter was esteemed a delicacy, and one informant reported in 1952 that some had been found on a mountain “on this side” of Hubbard Glacier.

A more complete list of plants was collected in 1945 in the virgin forest near Yakutat, on the muskeg, on creek banks, on cleared ground, and along the ocean beach, and has been published by Stair and Pennell (1946). These add about 50 new species to the list published by Coville (1895) upon which the preceding account is based. These additional plants were largely from the flat coastal lowland east of Yakutat or from the denser parts of the forest which had been made accessible by roads bulldozed around the airfield. About 11 plants were undoubtedly introduced through the activities of the Army Air Corps. Of the flowering plants known from Yakutat, about half are circumboreal; the others belong to the western part of the continent, in some cases only to the Pacific coast. It is interesting that the ranges of a few plants, characteristic of northern Asia, and of others more at home in southeastern Alaska, should overlap at Yakutat (Stair and Pennell, 1946, pp. 13–14).

The cultivated red currant, which seems to be spreading from the mission garden, is called wek.

The only plant cultivated in aboriginal times at Yakutat was tobacco (Antc), also known as “native tobacco” (łmgít Antci). Beresford (1789, p. 175) with Dixon in 1787 observed the Yakutat natives chewing “a plant, which appears to be a species of tobacco,” and Malaspina (1885, p. 164) in 1791 mentions “cultivated ground” on the islands and mainland in the southeastern part of the bay. According to Heizer (1940) the tobacco was a species of Nicotiana, similar to N. multivalvis.

Mammals[8]

As might be expected, the diversity of ecological zones and the barriers created by glacial advances have had a pronounced effect upon the fauna of the Gulf Coast of Alaska, especially in the Yakutat area. Thus, Tarr (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 141) found in 1905 and 1906 that the northern shore between Nunatak and Hubbard Glaciers was still practically inaccessible to the larger predators. No tracks of wolves, foxes, or bears were seen, while ptarmigan were particularly numerous and gulls could breed in safety on the moraine, whereas in other parts of the bay they had to nest on cliffs. The same conditions prevail today. Although the foreland is good country for deer, they had apparently been cut off by water and by glacial barriers and were not found north of Cross Sound until introduced into the Yakutat area and Prince William Sound by the U.S. Government. The glacial barriers on the Alsek have also until recently been effective in excluding many animals of the interior. Thus, for example, moose, coyote, and rabbit are relatively recent newcomers to the Yakutat and Dry Bay region; there are still no porcupines, and as far as we know, there were never any caribou.

In the case of other animals with wide distribution, Yakutat Bay and the Malaspina Glacier seem to mark a boundary between different subspecies or races, so that the forms found on the southeastern shore are not necessarily the same as those to the north and west. For a number of species, unfortunately, detailed information is lacking and we know only the contrast between forms in southeastern Alaska and those of Prince William Sound or the Alaska Peninsula. We may not know whether the animal is present in the intervening area, or, if reported, we do not know wThat sub-species is represented. Other faunal barriers on the mainland seem to be Cape Spencer, the western edge of Prince William Sound, and perhaps Lituya Bay or possibly the Grand Plateau Glacier which now reaches the beach. The islands in southeastern Alaska, like those of the Aleutian chain, may lack certain common animals of the adjacent mainland, or possess their own bewildering array of local races. Detailed investigations, such as those devoted to the fauna of the Alexander and Aleutian Archipelagos, have not been made at strategic localities along the coast between Cape Spencer and the Copper River, where we might expect to find local variations between animal populations that had been separated by glacial barriers. Such problems are obviously the concern of the biologist, yet their solutions might help the anthropologist to understand more fully the history of the area and the varying ecological possibilities to which the aboriginal human inhabitants have adjusted.

Unfortunately, none of the early explorers of the Yakutat area made as accurate observations as did LaPérouse at Lituya Bay, so we can get little information from them about the fauna of the 18th century and often find it difficult to identify the animals they saw. Thus, Beresford with Dixon in 1786 (Dixon 1789, p. 169) noted that the expedition purchased cloaks of sea otter, beaver, earless marmot, and “racoon.” SurÍa with Malaspina in 1791 (Wagner, 1936, p. 247) noted the natives wearing robes, the skins of which “seem to be of bears [black bear], tigers [lynx?], lions [Alaska brown bear, according to Wagner], and some of deerskins [from southeastern Alaska? caribou from the interior?], and of marmots, with the hair outside.” He also noted marten skins for the women, and black bear robes for the men (p. 255). “Deer grease” (p. 247) smeared on the hair is probably mountain goat tallow. Malaspina's own account (1885, pp. 157, 159, 345, 347) mentions that the Yakutat natives had clothing of bear, wolf, “sea-wolf” obtained only in deep water, “nutria,” “otter,” and “little fox” (zorilla). The “sea-wolf” is the sea otter, while “nutria” and “otter” are probably the same, to judge by the native name recorded, or may be land otter. If the last, this would suggest that at that period the natives resembled the Chugach and the Atna Athabaskans in having no horror of the land otter, unlike the modern Eyak, Yakutat, and Tlingit. “Little fox” or zorilla (also applied to the skunk) and “racoon” remain unidentified unless they refer to the odorous mink and to the pretty marten.

LaPérouse‘s observations are much more full and accurate, yet we cannot be sure from what animal were obtained the “tanned elkskins” seen at Lituya Bay (1799, vol. 1, p. 395).

LAND MAMMALS

The Yakutat people face a variety of large brown bears and grizzlies. These have never been classified to the satisfaction of biologists, but for the native all these large species are “the Bear” (xuts; Boas, 1917, p. 158, xúts), the prize of the intrepid hunter and an important sib crest. The very large, dark grizzled Dall brown bear, Ursus dalli, lives northwest of Yakutat Bay, especially along the Malaspina Glacier. The forester, Jay Williams (1952, p. 138), reports this huge bear at Lituya Bay; it may be another variety, or there may be a break in its distribution between Yakutat and Lituya Bays. Apparently confined to the southeastern side of Yakutat Bay is the Yakutat grizzly, U. nortoni, a large true grizzly, with yellowish or golden brown head and dark brown rump and legs, the whole looking whitish from a distance. It seems to range as far south as Lituya Bay (Williams, 1952, p. 138). Also known at Yakutat is the giant brown bear of Kodiak, the Alaska Peninsula, and Prince William Sound, U. middendorffi. The Alsek grizzly, U. orgüoides, a creamcolored medium sized bear with long narrow[7] skull, ranges the foreland east of Yakutat, especially along the Ahrnklin, Italio, and Alsek Rivers. It is not known whether this bear, or the closely related Glacier Bay grizzly, U. orgilos, is the form found at Lituya Bay. Between Cross Sound and the Alsek delta is the large Townsend grizzly, U. townsendi, the exact range of which is undefined.

The black bear (ik), found along the coastal glaciers from Lituya Bay (or Cross Sound) northward to the eastern edge of Prince William Sound or Cape Saint Elias, is very much smaller than the ordinary American black bear. Furthermore, in addition to the usual black and brownish colors, many from the same litter are blue-gray or maltese. These are called glacier bears, U. americanus emmonsii, formerly Euarctos emmonsii or Ursus glacialis. The Indians make no distinctions, as far as I know, between the color varients, unless what Boas (1891, p. 174) recorded as a “polar bear” (cq, i.e., ca) is really the blueish glacier bear. A few bones of the black bear were found in the site on Knight Island.

Although the Tlingit recognize the distinction between the large brown bears and the smaller black bears there is one term which can be used to cover both (tsÍnÈt, inEt).

There are wolves (ùtc) at Yakutat, often driven by hunger in winter to the very edge of the town. Some of these may be the large interior Alaska wolf, Canis lupus pambasileus, gray to coal-black in color, the southwestern limit of whose range is reported at Yakutat. A very large black wolf, repeatedly seen near the road just east of the town during March and early April, 1954, was probably this form. The smaller Alexander Archipelago gray wolf, C. l. ligoni, that ranges south of Yakutat along the mainland and on the islands south of Frederick Sound, has actually been taken at Eleanor Cove on the southeastern side of Yakutat Bay. As far as I know, the Tlingit make no formal distinction between these two races. The Wolf is, of course, an important moiety and sib crest.

Although Hall and Kelson (1959, map 447, p. 856) would indicate that the red fox, Vulpes fulva, is absent on the coast from Oregon north to Kenai Peninsula, although common in the interior as V. f. alascensis or V. alascensis alascensis, nevertheless the Yakutat natives reported them at Yakutat and at Dry Bay. Mertie (1931, p. 121) saw both the red and the cross varient at Lituya Bay, and LaPérouse there purchased red fox furs from the natives (1799, vol. 1, p. 395). Foxes have been taken to some of the islands in Yakutat Bay both by natives and Whites for fur-farming ventures (Goldschmidt and Haas, 1946, p. 76), yet the fox must be much older here than these imported animals. Our informants spoke of trapping and snaring them at Dry Bay and at Yakutat, and described the aboriginal devices used to take them, mentioning clothing made of the pelts and robes of fox paws. There was even a taboo against giving the tails to dogs, suggesting an ancient acquaintance with the fox. Israel Russell (1893, p. 26) noticed the tracks of foxes, as well as of bears, wolves, and mountain goats, on the Malaspina Glacier. Natives told Goldschmidt and Haas (1946, pp. 74, 83, 85) about trapping foxes near Dry Bay, Italio River, Point Manby, and Katalla. George Johnson, who was familiar with the coast west of Yakutat, said that two White men had taken 122 “mixed” [i.e., cross] foxes at Yakataga with poison, so that there were no more in that area. The Tlingit name for fox (naaÉ) is an unusual word, and is reported by Boas (1891, p. 177) as “borrowed.” We should note that the “highest name” for the fox on the Copper River, where special respect words are used by hunters, is very similar (na’qÉZI’ or náAdZI‘), which suggests an interior origin for both the animal and its name. Quite possibly it has not been very long on the coast, for it is not a sib crest.

Although lynx furs were used as robes at Yakutat, and although LaPérouse purchased some skins at Lituya Bay (1899, vol. 1, p. 395), I am not sure whether the Canadian lynx, Lynx canadensis, (aq; Boas, 1917, p. 160, à) is actually found at Yakutat, although it was trapped in the Dry Bay area. None of my informants nor those who discussed territorial rights and resources with Goldschmidt and Haas (1946, pp. 84, 85) specifically mentioned trapping lynx nearer than Dry Bay. The name has a good Tlingit sound and has also been recorded by Swanton (1909, p. 125, k) at Wrangell.

The coyote, Canis latrans incolatus, like the moose and rabbit, is reported to have arrived “just lately,” “about 1925,” or “just a few years ago,” according to Yakutat informants. One old man thought that the building of the Alaska Highway might have driven them down to the coast. The coyote is absent from southeastern Alaska, but was previously known from the upper Alsek River and from the Copper River flats. We know that coyotes have increased their range during the present century, for according to the “Report of the Governor of Alaska on the Alaska Game Law, 1919” (Riggs, 1920, pp. 11–12), “Coyotes are increasing along the White River and at the head of the Chitina” behind the Saint Elias Range, having “…gradually worked their way up from British Columbia…. ” The coyote is so new to the Yakutat Tlingit that they have no proper name for it other than ‘upstream wolf’ (nautc) or “way-back dog” (hada ketłi).

The northern wolverine Gullo luscus luscus (nuskw; Boas, 1917, p. 166, núsku‘), is found on the coast as well as in the interior, is recorded for Yakutat, and is specifically mentioned by the natives as being encountered in the Dry Bay area. The skin, like that of the wolf, was valued for making the hammock for a baby boy.

The most valued fur-bearer on land was the small arboreal marten, Martes americana kenaiensis or M. a. actuosa, (ux; Boas, 1917, p. 160, úxu). It was trapped at Dry Day and at Yakutat. The weasel or ermine (da; Boas, 1917, p. 166, dá) was probably Mustela erminea arctica, the variety found along the coast north of Glacier Bay, and also in the interior, but not in southeastern Alaska, although the proliferation of local forms and the difficulties of classifying these makes an exact determination impossible. Similar uncertainties apply to the Yakutat mink (łUkciyan; Boas, 1917, p. 160, łÚkcIyán) since these may be the larger interior mink, M. vison ingens, the Kenai Peninsula form, M. v. melampeplus, which is found also in Prince William Sound, or the type found farther south and in the interior, M. v. energumenos. The mink was never highly regarded in aboriginal times, being associated with the evil land otter, or appearing as Raven‘s servant in one story (Swanton, 1909, Tale 1, pp. 9–10), and in general considered smelly. The ermine, however, was used for trimming ceremonial dress. Our informants spoke of catching weasels and minks at Yakutat and Dry Bay for sale (cf., also Goldschmidt and Haas, 1946, p. 80).

The Pacific land otter, Lutra canadensis pacifica, (kúcdà) ranges along the coast from the northern part of southeastern Alaska to Controller Bay(?), is larger than the interior Canadian form, L. c. canadensis. The land otter was not hunted or used for fur in aboriginal times because the Tlingit and Eyak believed that lost or drowned persons were turned into Land Otter Men (kúcdàqá). Many persons today are still afraid of it. Two land otter bones were, however, found in the midden at the site on Knight Island in Yakutat Bay, and Malaspina‘s observations may indicate that the Yakutat in former times had a different attitude towards the animal.

The beaver, Castor canadensis belugae, (egedí; Harrington, Ikkeedíi; Boas, 1917, p. 154, Àgèdí) has a wide distribution all over coastal and interior Alaska, except for the Alaska Peninsula and Arctic Coast, or in the southeast where it is replaced by the Pacific beaver, C. c. pacificus. However, the beaver is now extinct at Yakutat, although its bones and teeth were found on Knight Island. We were told that there were still some animals on the Ahrnklin River, where trapping rights have been carefully guarded by the owning sib. There were once beaver at Dry Bay, but they are all gone now. LaPérouse (1799, vol. 1, p. 395) bought beaver skins at Lituya Bay, but, of course, we do not know where they had been trapped. The ałyIx-Kagwantan lands west of Icy Bay were traditionally rich in beaver, and Yakutat Indians visiting their relatives at Kaliakh River or Controller Bay might trap them. The Yakutat also used to buy beaver pelts at settlements near the mouth of the Copper River or at Nuchek in Prince William Sound to sell to their southern relatives or to the fur traders. It is probably significant that it was the ałyIx-Kagwantan who had the Beaver as a crest.

The Yakutat people were also familiar with the muskrat (tsín), some bones of which were found at the site on Knight Island. Again, Yakutat Bay seems to be the boundary between two varieties, Ondantra zibethicus zalophus to the west and O. z. spatulatus to the southeast. The latter was actually taken on the Ahrnklin River, but the distribution of the western form is not very clear. LaPérouse noted “water rat” (muskrat?) at Lituya Bay (1799, vol 1, p. 395). It is interesting that only one informant mentioned the muskrat: “They say there used to be lots around here, but when they started to trade, they trade for rifle. They pile them [the skins] up even with the rifle”, that is, even with the top of the muzzle as the rifle (musket?) was stood vertically on its butt. This was the price exacted by the Chilkat in trading with the interior Athabaskans and it is possible that the Tlingit had the same custom in their early dealings with the Dry Bay Athabaskans and the Yakutat Eyak. At that time, however, only sea otter furs were sought, and muskrat pelts had no value, so the remarks of our informant should not be accepted without some reservation. It may be significant that no other person mentioned trapping muskrats to Goldschmidt and Haas (1946). Now they are evidently of no importance.

The rabbit, probably the snowshoe rabbit, Lepus americanus macfarlani, found all over Alaska except for the Alexander Archipelago, is a newcomer to the Yakutat area. The Dry Bay people were certainly familiar with the rabbit (ga) on their journeys up the Alsek, and among them “Big Rabbit” (Ga-tłen) was the name of a famous TłukwaAdi shaman, and also of his nephew, the father of one of our informants. Rabbits are apparently not trapped, although tanned rabbitskins are purchased for use in trimming moccasins made for sale.

There are still no porcupines, Erethizon epixanthum epixanthum, in the Yakutat or Dry Bay areas, although the Tlingit name refers to its ‘sharp-pointed’ quills (atłaAt; Boas, 1917, p. 144, ÀłÀÁs; Swanton, 1909, p. 220, łAk!A′tc). The Dry Bay people obtained quills or quilled garments on their trips up the Alsek.

Other animals whose skins were prized but had to be obtained from the interior were the striped Arctic groundsquirrel, Spermophilius undulatus plesius (tsAłk) and the woodchuck or “gopher,” Marmota monax ochracea (Boas, 1917, p. 158, tsÁłk). LaPérouse (1799, vol. 1, p. 395) purchased some skins of the “Canadian marmot (monax)” at Lituya Bay, but his identification may be incorrect. Apparently the “groundhog” or hoary marmot, M. caligata caligata (a; Boas, 1917, p. 125, à), has been collected at Yakutat as well as in the interior, and its bones were represented in the site on Knight Island. One of my informants denied that there were any “groundhogs” on the coast; there were only a big one and a little one in the interior. However, an older woman spoke of seeing them at Dry Bay, and Minnie Johnson remembered how she had been frightened as a child by their “fuzzy hair.” Yet they cannot be very common, for when one recently entered a fish camp on the Ahrnklin River, (a portentous omen in itself, when a wild animal approaches human beings), people were puzzled as to how such an upland animal had come to the shore country. Israel Russell (1891 b, p. 877) noted many marmots breeding among the nunataks near Marvine Glacier on the west side of Yakutat Bay.

Other rodents in the Yakutat area are the Alaskan red squirrel, Tamiasciurus hudsonicus petulans, distributed from Lynn Canal to the northern limit of the spruce forest. Although Hall and Kelson (1959, map 257, p. 400) indicate an area on the Gulf Coast from Yakutat through Prince William Sound without squirrels, the animal is now certainly common in and about the town. Informants mentioned them at the head of the Abrnklin River and around Summit Lake, east of Yakutat. Like small birds and other little animals of no economic value, they seem to be protected by taboo from molestation. The northern flying squirrel, Glaucomys sabrinus, seems to be absent from the Gulf Coast of Alaska, though found elsewhere in the spruce forests. Since it is nocturnal it may have escaped notice. Boas (1891, p. 181) recorded two words for squirrel: kantlts′k (i.e., kAnałtltsak), and for the “small species” tlk.qw′tsa (i.e., tłqowetsA).

Possibly the deer mouse or white-footed mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus, may occur at Yakutat, since varieties are found in the adjacent interior and in parts of southeastern Alaska. The Alaskan meadow jumping mouse, Zapus hudsonius alascensis, has actually been recorded from Yakutat and from Lynn Canal, but not from the Alexander Archipelago. The northern red-backed mouse, Clethrionomys rutilus, is of wide distribution in Alaska and seems to be the common mouse at Yakutat where it is represented by C. r. dawsoni. Different races are found in southeastern Alaska, and C. r. watsoni is known only from Yakataga. A specially dark variety of the meadow mouse or vole, a species of wide distribution and many forms, is the tundra vole or Yakutat meadow mouse, Microtus oeconomus yakuta-tensis, found from Cross Sound to Cook Inlet, and recorded from the north shore of Yakutat Bay. The Olympic meadow mouse, M. mordax macrurus, a much larger variety, reaches the northern limit of its distribution at Yakutat (Dufresne, 1946, p. 147). The long-tailed vole, M. longicaudus littoralis, has a similar distribution from Yakutat down the mainland of southeastern Alaska.

True lemmings are absent, but the bog lemming or lemming mouse, Synaptomys borealis, seems to be found at Yakutat, although we cannot be sure whether it is the northern S. b. dalli or the southeastern Alaskan form, S. b. wrangeli, that is represented. Streator‘s masked shrew, Sorex cinereus streatori, has been taken at Yakutat, as has the Alaskan dusky shrew or vagrant shrew, S. vagrans alascensis. The widely distributed water shrew, S. palustris, and the singing vole, Microtus miurus, are among the forms absent from the Gulf Coast area.

I do not know to what extent the Yakutat natives distinguish between these various species of small rodents. I was given two words for “mice”: kutin, the little animal whose winter store of roots is taken whenever these are found, and kagak. Swanton (1909, 134, 163, 277) gives the name kuts!′n or k!uts!′n to the “mouse” and to a “rat” that seems to live in a hole under the water. Boas (1917, p. 162) renders “rat” as ÙtsÌn. Swanton (1909, p. 19) also gives the form kuł′łtA!n for “mouse,” but I suspect that this is an adopted Athabaskan word meaning ‘mouse-people,’ the part meaning “mouse” being kułéł. Swanton (1909, pp. 96, 282) translates kA′q and k!AgAk as “mouse” and “mole”; Boas (1917, p. 161) renders “mouse” as aá. In 1891 (p. 179) Boas included “mouse” and “shrew” under the same two terms which we recorded.

A summer migrant to the Yakutat area is the little brown bat, Myotis lucifugus alascensis, that lives in the dark forests. The Tlingit call it ‘beaver-sea lion’ (egedÍtan; Boas, 1917, p. 154, AgèdÌán). One woman said that they fly around “when it's kind of dark…when it's going to be bad weather,” but there seems to be no fear of them, except among those who have adopted this attitude from the Whites.

One of the most important land animals for the natives along the Gulf Coast is the Alaska mountain goat, Oreamnos americanus, (djInuwu; Boas, 1917, p. 161, djánwù). This is not a true goat, but a relative of the Asiatic goat-antelope and the European chamois and, like the latter, makes its home on the high crags and mountain slopes. It is a daring climber, can sit back on its haunches like a bear, and is rarely encountered on the lowlands except in search of salt. Its flesh and fat are esteemed for food, its fat also serving as a cosmetic. Its wool is woven into blankets, and its horns shaped into spoons. A Mountain Goat Head was the crest of a Wolf sib of Wrangell (Swanton, 1908, pp. 415–416), but otherwise it does not appear in Tlingit heraldry. While the mountain goat is hunted all along the coastal slopes of the Fairweather, Saint Elias, and Chugach Ranges, I am not sure of the exact boundary between the more northern race O. a. kennedeyi and that of the southern O.a. columbiae. Bones from the site on Knight Island were not identified as to race. The mountain sheep, Ovis dalli (Boas, 1917, p. 161, ÀwÉ), is not found on the coast, although Dall‘s sheep, O.d. dalli, together with its more southern, darker variety, O. d. stonei, live along the interior slopes of the mountains from Cook Inlet to British Columbia, and some of the Yakutat and Dry Bay people who have gone into the interior are familiar with it.

The moose, Alces alces gigas (tsIsw; Harrington, tzíkw; Boas, 1917, p. 161, tsísw) sometimes called ‘large animal’ (łAwan), has appeared only within the past few years on the coast. Moose were formerly hunted up the Alsek River by the Dry Bay people, but most natives at Yakutat are more afraid of the moose, even when not rutting, than they are of the huge bears. There seem to be quite a few of them around Situk and Lost Rivers.

Although the caribou, Rangifer osborni, has never been found on the coast, it is known to the Tlingit and the skins are valued trade goods. It is called watsix (Boas, 1917, p. 155, wÀtsíx).

The black-tailed or mule deer, Dama hemionus sitkensis, was introduced into Yakutat from southeastern Alaska by the U.S. Government. However, the deer (kuwakan, usually pronounced gowakan; Boas, 1917, p. 156, q’ùwáán) has been for the Tlingit the symbol of peaceful, unaggressive behavior, so that the hostage-ambassadors exchanged in peace ceremonies are called ‘deer’ by all the Tlingit. The Yakutat natives were therefore familiar with this word long before many of them had ever seen the animal.

The domestic cow is now called as, and Swanton (1908, pp. 400, 407, s, s!) translates this as ‘moose’ or ‘cow,’ “probably moose originally.” One cannot but wonder whether the Tlingit ever had heard of the woodland buffalo, since representations of the animal in Chilkat-blanket weaving (Emmons, 1908) resemble a bovine, not the moose, the horns being unmistakable.

The only domesticated animal known to the Tlingit and Eyak in former days was the dog (ketł). Although fine, well-trained hunting dogs were prized, they were not pets, despite the affection which children might lavish upon puppies. An Athabaskan type dog (dzī, Swanton, 1909, p. 22) is mentioned in one story recorded by Swanton at Sitka; perhaps this is the small, agile “bear dog,” but it may be a large pack-carrying animal. Long-eared dogs like spaniels are known as sAwak, but I believe that these were not known in early days. Dog bones of unidentified breed were found in the midden at Knight Island. Vancouver (1801, vol. 5, p. 396) mentions a deserted village near the mouth of the Ankau, where “about fifty dogs [that had been left behind] were making a most dreadful howling.”

While children often had young animals as pets or playthings, perhaps the first true pets were cats (duc). These were probably introduced by the first American traders in the 1880‘s. At any rate, one girl is remembered to have obtained a cat in this way. Boas (1891, p. 175) reports that düc is a Chinook jargon word.

Other domesticated animals, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, if not briefly imported by the Russians, were introduced by the Mission. None of these now survive, perhaps because the cows and pigs were feared by the natives.

SEA MAMMALS

The northern sea otter, Enhydra lutris lutris, (yuxt; Boas, 1917, p. 123, yÁxut) was the most important fur-bearing mammal in Alaskan waters. Long after it had become extinct in southeastern Alaska, and was hardly to be found along the Aleutian Islands, it was still hunted at Lituya Bay, Icy Bay, and off Cape Yakataga, until protected in 1911 by Federal legislation and international treaty. Its bones were represented in the site on Knight Island, and until harrassed by hunters it used to frequent Yakutat Bay. In historic times the natives sold the pelts and sometimes ate the flesh. One was seen in Monti Bay in February, 1954.

The fur seal, Callorhinus ursinus alsacensis, (un; Boas, 1917, p. 163, ún), which is also protected by law, is occasionally seen at Yakutat. The herds generally winter in more southern waters, coming north from mid-February to March, yet several lone individuals are said to have lived in Yakutat Bay throughout the winter of 1953–54, sleeping under the cannery dock. The natives believed that this was because of the quantities of smelt or smelt-like fish which first appeared in Monti Bay in 1952, and again returned the following winter.

Related to the fur seal is the large northern sea lion, Eumentopias jubata, (tan) with thick hide useful for lines, and stiff whiskers. Some males are over 10 feet long and may weigh a ton, although the females are half the size. Although some natives are afraid of the huge beasts, especially since they are supposed to throw stones at people, the Yakutat natives formerly hunted them. Occasionally one will haul out of the water on a rock near the town, as we saw a young animal do in mid-September, 1952. Sea lions figure in the Tlingit story of Black Skin (Swanton, 1909, Tale 31, pp. 145–150; Tale 93) not so much as characters, but as animals to be killed, and in connection with this myth appear in crest carvings of some Raven sibs (Swanton, 1908, p. 418).

The most common and most important sea mammal in Yakutat waters is the Pacific harbor seal, Phoca vitulina richardii, (tsa). This animal was the best represented of any species in the middens at the site on Knight Island. Seals breed particularly on the floating ice in Disenchantment and Icy Bays. It is uncertain whether the seal was the crest of any sib (Swanton, 1908, p. 416); it was certainly not so featured at Yakutat.

The Pacific harbor porpoise or “puffing pig,” Phocoena vomerina, (tcitc) also prefers the quiet waters near glaciers. Its bones appeared in the Knight Island site, and it was hunted by the Yakutat particularly for its sinew, for its strong-tasting flesh was regarded as poor-man's fare. It is the crest of a sib at Sitka. The larger, playful Dall's porpoise, Phocoenoides dalli, is the familiar porpoise often encountered in large schools leaping in front of a ship. This is probably the kind described to Swanton (1908, p. 458) as the largest kind, with a white dorsal fin and a white belly. It is called łgîłwu’ (Swanton, 1908, p. 458). There is also supposed to be a dark red porpoise (q!n; i.e., an), but this has not been identified, if indeed, it is not mythological.

Other members of the porpoise and dolphin family with which the Gulf Coast natives were probably familiar are Gray's porpoise, Stenella styx; the northern right-whale dolphin, Lissodelphis borealis; and the Pacific white-sided dolphin, Lagenorhynchus obliquidens, all of which may reach lengths of 7 or 8 feet.

The much larger Pacific blackfish, Globicephala seammonii usually travels in groups and may attain lengths of 16 feet. This was described as a whale like the killerwhale, but called i (Swanton, 1908, p. 416, s!t!) and claimed as a crest by a southern Tlingit sib.

The most important of all the porpoise family is the Pacific killerwhale or orca, Grampus rectipinna, the most savage and the largest. These ferocious predators, reaching lengths of up to 30 feet, and hunting in packs, are rightly feared and avoided by the Tlingit, at the same time forming an important crest. The natives distinguish between the ordinary killerwhale (kit) and three special varieties: the largest “heraldic” form which supposedly has a hole through the high dorsal fin (Swanton, 1908, p. 458, kit yagu’), a white killerwhale (kt wu), and a red killerwhale that always leads the pack and is called the killerwhale's spear (kit wusani; Swanton, 1908, p. 458, kt wusa’nî, kit cq!). At Yakutat the killerwhale as a crest was represented with the hole through the fin, and the small leader was mentioned. There are also many stories in which the animal appears.

The Yakutat people know about the walrus, Odobenus divigens, (’adataq) and describe it as having two spears on the mouth. Olson (1936, p. 214) reported that the Yakutat used to obtain walrus hides which were traded to the Chilkoot Tlingit who used them for boats like umiaks which they kept on Lake Bennet for use when going to trade with the Tagish. One wonders, however, whether the hides were not those of sea lions. As far as I know the walrus is almost never seen south of the Alaska Peninsula.

In the Gulf of Alaska are a number of whales, the fat and flesh of which were utilized when a carcass drifted ashore. They were not hunted. I do not know whether the natives distinguished between different species or called all by the single name (yay at Yakutat, yay at Dry Bay and farther south). References to Raven flying down the blowhole of the whale, and of a whale being killed when a stone lamp was thrown into the blowhole suggest that the Tlingit referred especially to the toothed, single-blowhole whale. This seems to be the kind painted as a crest on a house at Ketchikan (Garfield and Forrest, 1948, fig. 29). The Whale is a crest of a sib represented at Yakutat and at Sitka. Among the toothed whales there is the sperm whale, Physeter catodon, essentially tropical, although the males may wander as far north as the Aleutians in summer, and sometimes attain a length of 60 feet. From 20 to 28 feet long are the related beaked whales, Mesoplodon stejnegeri, Ziphius cavirostris, and Berardius bairdii. These are apparently more rare than the sperm whale, and are seldom stranded on the shore. Baleen whales, characterized by double blowholes and the greater size of the female, are represented by the Pacific right whale, Eubalaena sieboldii, about 60–70 feet in maximum length, and once very numerous on the Fairweather Grounds; the enormous blue or sulphur-bottomed whale, Sibbaldus musculus, of which the giant female might attain a length of 100 feet; and the playful humpbacked whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, only half that size. There are also the fin-backed whale, Balaenoptera physalus, often encountered in groups; the migratory sei whale or lesser rorqual, B. borealis; and the solitary little piked whale or least rorqual, B. acutorostrata, with females ranging up to 80, 60, and 33 feet respectively. The gray whale, Eschrichtius gibbosus, which migrates from California to the Bering Sea and is now all but extinct, once was probably well known at Yakutat because of its habit of following the shoreline and congregating in shallow bays.

Amphibia

Alaska has few amphibia and no reptiles (except for a few garter snakes which I believe have been recently imported). At Yakutat are found the wood frog, Rana sylvatica, and the larger boreal toad, Bufo boreas boreas. I do not know whether the natives distinguish between them, but the latter is probably “the Frog” (xIxt; Boas, 1917, p. 149, xIxt), an important sib crest at Yakutat and at Sitka. It should be noted that many Tlingit, men as well as women, have a horror of being touched by or even of seeing a frog. “The slime exuding from a frog's skin was thought to be very poisonous and fatal to smaller creatures” (Swanton, 1908, p. 457). Emmons (1903, p. 271) records “tadpole” as “kluck-kísh” (tł’Ukc??).

Birds[9]

Yakutat is a land of many birds. These include the year-round residents, those that come only in summer to nest, that fly through to and from more northern or interior breeding grounds, that seek shelter in winter, and finally those birds that simply visit Yakutat as non-breeders. Gabrielson and Lincoln (1959), our authorities on Alaskan birds, estimate that some 321 species (or 414 races) have been found in the forty-ninth State, of which 162 species (233 races) are land birds, and 159 (181 races) are water birds, a very high proportion of the latter. Because Yakutat is on the Pacific Flyway we shall expect to find the majority of these waterfowl represented. Moreover, the varied terrain and the geographical position of the Yakutat Bay area means that among both migrants and summer nesters there will be not only land birds characteristic of the Sitka spruce forest zone, but also some more familiar in the interior, as well as others that are particularly characteristic of open tundra or brushy swamplands.

Obviously not all of the many birds seen by the Yakutat people are of interest to them, yet a number are sought for their flesh and for their feathers; others are believed to foretell the future or report bad news. Birds are among the most important sib crests, and may even be more important than mammals or fish in Tlingit mythology. As one of my informants put it: “The Creator was a bird” and “People came from birds” (pp. 857, 858). In general, the small songsters and young fledglings are protected by taboos. Unfortunately, it was not possible to secure information or native names for many of the common forms, since most of our informants found it very difficult to identify the pictures in Roger Tory Peterson's “Field Guide” (1941), which was the only handbook we had in the field, or could not give adequate descriptions of the birds which they named. Since no one has made any winter observations in the area, I shall include my own notes, beginning in mid-February 1954, well aware that this information is incomplete and may be inaccurate.

The common loon, Gavia immer, seems not only to breed but also to winter in the Yakutat area, while other members of the species fly through in May enroute to interior lakes. They like the clear sheltered waters of Monti Bay, Russell Fiord, and Situk Lake, but not silt-laden waters where they cannot see to fish. The red-throated loon, G. stellata, has much the same range and habits, although perhaps it does not winter north of Glacier Bay. The Pacific Arctic loon, G. arctica pacifica, also seems to breed in the area, but is more commonly seen when migrating north in April to early June or south again in September and October, to winter south of Cape Spencer. The yellow-billed loon, G. adamsi, nests in the Arctic, winters in southeastern Alaska, and has been seen in Lituya and Yakutat Bays when migrating. The skin of the loon with its black feathers, if worn as a cap by an adolescent girl, would keep her hair from turning gray in old age. I was told that loons were called kił, tłA, and qaqit (kAit?), but I do not know which species were so designated, nor whether any of the names applied to grebes.[10] Perhaps it was loons that were described as “ducks called Always-crying-around-[the-bay] (kAa′xe)” (Swanton, 1909, pp. 39–40).

Three grebes may be seen migrating through Yakutat. Holboell‘s red-necked grebe, Podiceps grisegena holboelli, flies north along the coast to breed from Kodiak to the Arctic Ocean. Since a few winter on Kodiak and the Aleutians, instead of southeastern Alaska, one might expect to see a few at Yakutat. The eared grebe, Colymbus nigricollis, is also a common migrant in May. The American horned grebe, Podiceps auritus cornutus, nests on interior lakes and winters in southeastern Alaska and farther south, so should also be seen passing in late April and May, and again from September to early November. Grebes, like loons, go to fresh water for nesting, but rest and fish on the sheltered waters of Monti Bay.

Two species of cormorant (yùqw; Swanton, 1909, p. 129, yüq) breed at Cape Enchantment in Russell Fiord and at a place called “Cormorants’ Cliff” in Nunatak Fiord. They roost at Point Latouche, and at Logan Bluff south of it, and dry their wings on the reef off Knight and Fitzgerald Islands in Yakutat Bay. On May 10, 1954, hundreds were resting o n the reef at the southern end of Khantaak Island. The Northern pelagic cormorant, Phalacrocorax pelagicus pelagicus, is a year-round resident, breeding from the Aleutians to British Columbia. The northwestern double-crested cormorant, P. auritus cincinatus, also breeds as far north as the Aleutians and is a common winter visitor in southeastern Alaska. The Cormorant figures in the story of how Raven killed the Bears, which was localized by Swanton‘s Sitkan informant as near Mount Saint Elias (Swanton 1909, Tale 1, pp. 6–8).

Swans (oqtł or Uqł Swanton, 1909, p. 112, oqł) were once common at Yakutat, and were shot for their meat and for their soft skins. I doubt that the bird was the whistling swan, Olor columbianus, which breeds in the north but winters in southeastern Alaska and on the Aleutians, for it generally takes an inland route and is not common on the coast. It was probably the larger trumpeter swan, O. buccinator, which breeds behind the Saint Elias Range or on the lower Copper River and winters in southeastern Alaska. One of the Coast Guardsmen at the Loran Station near Yakutat reported in mid-February, 1954, that there were many trumpeter swans on the Ankau lagoons. Swanton (1908, pl. LIII d, e, f, p. 417) reports the Swan as a crest of two sibs represented at Dry Bay and Yakutat. Swans (Swanton, 1909, p. 112) are also mentioned casually in a myth.

The Canada goose, Branta canadensis, (awAq; Swanton, 1909, p. 112, t!wA′q) has been reported nesting at Situk Lake. In addition, large flocks of this species, especially B. c. occidentalis, that breed on the Copper River flats and in Prince William Sound, are seen in Yakutat Bay on their spring migration, as are probably the lesser snow goose, Chen hyperborea hyperborea, and the Pacific white-fronted goose, Anser albifrons frontalis, both of which nest far north. Indeed, a snow goose was reported on the Ankau lagoons from early December to late February, 1953–54. The Canada Goose is the crest of a Sitka sib (Swanton, 1908, p. 417), and Swanton (1909, p. 405) reports that a “wild goose” was called yaduste (yadustq!). Emmons (1903, p. 275) gives the name “khin” (i.e., qin) to “the gray goose, Anser albifrons gambeli,” evidently the white-fronted goose, A. a. frontalis. However, Swanton (1909, p. 112, qên), assigns what is evidently the same word to the black brant; Branta nigricans. Although the latter normally crosses the open Gulf and so is probably not often seen at Yakutat, it is known in southeastern Alaska. On the other hand, Boas (1917, p. 128) gives the name q′m to the shoveler.[11] At Yakutat, both fresh and saltwater ducks were eaten.

The dabbling ducks are represented by the mallard, Anas platyrhynchos platyrhynchos, the green-winged common teal, A. crecca carolinensis, and pintail, A. acuta, all of which seem to be fairly common at Yakutat, probably breeding and wintering here. All three were at the Ankau lagoons in March, 1954, and were said to be around “most of the time.” The mallard is the most numerous, and is known as ‘upward arrow’ (kInde tcunEt) from its manner of taking off. The American widgeon or baldpate, Mareca americana, also nests at Yakutat but winters farther south. When at Yakutat in 1837, Belcher (1843, vol. 1, p. 85) purchased a goose and a “small blue-winged duck,” possibly a blue-winged teal, Anas discors, or a shoveler, Spatula clypeata, both of which occur in southeastern Alaska. The latter certainly breeds on the Copper River flats and probably also at Yakutat, although it has not actually been reported there.

Among the diving ducks is Barrow's golden eye, Bucephala islandica, that breeds on Situk River, Situk Lake, Disenchantment Bay, as well as on the pond behind Yakutat, where I saw two females with their drakes and later with their young, as well as a female mallard and her brood in the spring of 1954. The golden eye is called ‘fresh-water black duck’ (hinyi gAu). There are also the bufflehead, Bucephala albeola, breeding and probably to some extent residing in Yakutat; the harlequin duck, Histrionicus histrionicus, (Boas, 1891, p. 174, tutsk) a year-round resident; old squaw, Clangula hyemalis, common during migration and represented by a few non-breeders during the summer; and the canvasback, Aythya valisineria, which migrates to the Copper River. The greater scaup, A. marila nearctica, might also be seen during migration, and as a summer nonbreeder and winter resident. The surf scoter, Melanitta perspicillata, seems to be the most abundant scoter in early May, later reported breeding in Disenchantment Bay and Russell Fiord, although most go far inland to nest. The western white-winged scoter, M. deglandi dixoni, apparently breeds in the bay in summer and is perhaps resident in winter. The American scoter, Oidemia nigra americana, is the least common of the three, but some nonbreeders summer at Yakutat. Scoters, in particular the surf scoter (cf. Boas, 1891, p. 180; 1917, p. 157, gA’xu), is the ‘black duck’ of our informants (gAw, or utc gAw; Swanton, 1909, p. 208, gw). The white-winged scoter must be what Boas’ informants called ‘white on wing’ (1891, p. 180, kitc ka ru; i.e., kite kA u).

The American merganser, Mergus merganser americanus, seems to be a very common year-round resident from Prince William Sound southward, particularly frequenting streams. The red-breasted merganser, M. serrator serrator, has been observed in Yakutat only in May, but winters in southeastern Alaska. Boas (1891, p. 179) calls it ‘water rim’ (hin yikag·u’; i.e., hin yikagu. The merganser, Lophodytes cucullatus, although much rarer in Alaska, is perhaps the bird described as having a white breast, a “white jigger on each side of the head” (i.e., crest), and that “always goes upstream.” [12] This may serve to remind us of Shortt‘s hilarious descent of the Situk, preceded by all the squawking mergansers on the river (Shortt, 1939, pp. 9–10). One of my informants identified the merganser as a “saw bill,” and gave it the name, qa (Naish and Story, 1963, p. 21, kax (qà)).

The American osprey or fish hawk, Pandion haliaetus carolinensis, (Swanton, 1909, p. 116, knackAn‘t) is a rather uncommon nester along the Situk River, but also breeds in southeastern Alaska.

Among the various wading birds, the northwestern great blue heron, Ardea herodias fannini, (łÁ, Boas, 1917, p. 159) is the largest. Although not very common, it is a year-round resident from Cook Inlet to Washington, and has been reported nesting at Humpback Creek on Yakutat Bay.

Another large wader, but found on the marshes and tundra, is the lesser sandhill crane, or “little brown crane”, Grus canadensis canadensis, (duł; Boas 1917, p. 156, dúł). It breeds on the northern mainland and, while rare in Tlingit country, figures both as a crest at Yakutat and in mythology (Swanton, 1909, Tale 54, Tale 100).

The black oystercatcher, Haematopus bachmani, a striking black shore bird with red bill specialized for eating mollusks is known to my informants as ‘nose-fire’ (łùgÁn). The men who showed them to me on the northern shore of Haenke Island in early June, 1952, said that they were found only on this island, although Shortt had found them nesting on nearby Osier Island. LaPérouse (1799, vol. 1, p. 395) saw them nesting in Lituya Bay. They are year-round residents of southwestern and southeastern Alaska. Swanton‘s Wrangell informant (1909, p. 85, ługA′n) described the oyster-catcher, or perhaps the horned puffin, as a bird that lives far out at sea on lonely rocks.

The small waders of the shore and marshlands include a number of snipes, sandpipers, and related species. The largest of these are the greater and lesser yellowlegs, Totanus melanoleucus and T.flavipes, which both breed in the Yakutat area, especially along the flats near the mouth of the Situk and Lost Rivers, although they winter far to the south. The wandering tatler, Hetero-scelus incanus, migrates through Yakutat, going north in May and returning in late July, as does the long-billed dowitcher, Limnodromus scolopaceus. The somewhat smaller Alaskan short-billed dowitcher, L. griseus caurinus, nests on the Situk muskegs as does Wilson‘s common snipe, Capella gallinago delicata. For the last two, Yakutat seems to represent the southern boundary of their summer home on the coast, although they occur farther south in other regions. The European knot, Calidris canutus canutus, breeds farther north and presumably flies over Yakutat, although we do not know whether it has one of its definite stopping places in the Yakutat Bay area.

Such small birds with long bills are called ‘nose-spear’ (łu-’adà), a term applied to “snipes”; to pictures of the curlew and the avocet. The last was also called ‘cloud-nose-poked’ (gu-łu-guq), referring to the story of how Raven escaped the Flood by donning the skin of a bird with a long bill, by means of which he hung from the sky (cf. Swanton, 1909, Tale 31, p. 120). Here this is an unidentified “white bird with coppercolored bill.” In a popular Tlingit song, “snipes” are the ‘[birds] that fly around the island’ (a dai djai). According to Boas (1891, p. 177) the ‘heaven bird’ (gtsre ttli, i.e. gue totłi; Swanton, 1909, pp. 86, 207, gus !yadłi; p. 214, gus!iadłi, ’crane of the cloud's surface’?) is Wilson‘s common snipe, seen only when warm weather is coming, a robin-sized bird that visits a rock far out at sea.

Most of the small sandpipers are seen at Yakutat only as spring and late summer or fall migrants, often appearing in mixed flocks together with turns tones and surf birds, that gather, for example, along the shores of Khantaak Island in Monti Bay. These migrants include the red-backed dunlin, Erolia alpina pacifica; rock or western purple sandpiper, E. ptilocnemis; pectoral sandpiper, E. melanotus; western solitary sandpiper, Tringa solitaria cinnamonae; and the western sandpiper, Ereunetes mauri. Of the last species, a few nonbreeders may remain in the Situk area all summer. The little spotted sandpiper, Actitis macularia, and the tiny least sandpiper, Erolia minutilla, are fairly common breeders on the coastal plain southeast of Yakutat, and many also fly through to nesting areas farther north. The solitary sandpiper (Boas, 1891, p. 182, ayah'a; Swanton, 1909, pp. 180, 140, ayah′ya, ahiyiya’) is “a great dancer,” “a solitary bird that continually flies about the beach”, “a lonely beach snipe…‘looking for his wife.’ ”.

I suspect that among the sandpipers are included some of the “birds that fly around the island.” This name was also given to a semipalmated plover, Charadrius semipalmatus, that we saw on the road in Yakutat in May, 1954. This bird apparently nests on the sand dunes along the ocean beach southeast of Yakutat, as well as on the edge of the Malaspina and nearby glaciers, wintering in California. The black-bellied plover, Squatarola squatarola, has been seen migrating to and from its tundra nests. The killdeer, Charadrius vociferus, is a nonbreeding straggler to the Situk flats. Naish and Story (1963, p. 22) recorded the following words for “sandpiper (shore bird)” at Angoon, but seem to have had difficulties in establishing exact designation of the species: Curlew, uyuheeyáh (‘AyAhiyá); plover, x’ut’dah yéejeiyee (Ada ydjeyi) or x’ut’dah yeejuyee (yidjAyi); snipe, éek lokukées’ee (‘q łukAqi); but all are “sandpipers.”

The surf bird, Aphriza virgata, the European turnstone, Arenaria interpes interpes, and the black turnstone, A. melanocephala, (u) are migrants through Yakutat, often in company with sandpipers. The black turnstone possibly nests in the area, since it breeds from Seward Peninsula to Sitka and winters in southeastern Alaska. It has given its name to Khantaak Island (ukA, ‘on the turnstone‘), where it is common in May. We saw them on Knight Island in mid-August, 1952.

The northern phalarope, Lobipes lobatus, a small shore bird like a sandpiper, also breeds on the Situk marshes, but may feed in rough water among the offshore kelp. Vast flocks can be seen flying north to the Arctic in early May and returning again in July.

Among the most conspicuous water birds in the Yakutat area are the gulls (ketłAdi; Boas 158, éadI, i.e., édladÌ). One of my informants thought that the name was derived from ‘puppy’ (ketł yAdi) because of their cries.

The most common species and a year-round resident is the glaucous-winged gull, Laurus glaucescens. They hang about the cannery dock and breed in Disenchantment Bay, especially on Haenke Island and the moraine-covered edge of Hubbard Glacier where the eggs are gathered by the natives in May or early June. The American herring gull, L. argentatus smithsonianus, also breeds here, but winters farther south. It is, I believe, the gull named for its colored wing-tip (kitc-A-ne). The short-billed gull, L. canus brachyrhynchus, is a common nester in the marshes near Yakutat, but winters south of Cape Spencer. The little Bonaparte's gull, L. philadelphia, with red feet and black head comes early in May to nest in low conifers and to feed on shrimps near the glaciers in Disenchantment Bay. This is probably the small gull called kew, described as having a black head and white body (Swanton 1909, p. 116, kk!u). The large glaucous gull, L. hyperboreus, and the very small sabine's gull, Xema sabini, both breed in the north but fly across the Gulf, and a few nonbreeding glaucous gulls may summer at Yakutat.

The kittiwake, Rissa tridactyla pollicaris, (ł’éqw). seems to breed occasionally near Yakutat and may also winter there, although really an oceanic bird.

The Arctic tern with red bill, Sterna paradisaea, is very common at Yakutat, nesting on the sand dunes near the mouth of the Situk or on the gravelly moraines of the Malaspina. They are especially numerous in late April or early May and again in late July when the northern breeders are moving across the Gulf to and from their winter homes in the Antarctic. Occasionally the black-billed Aleutian tern, S. aleutica, may shift from its Asiatic home to establish temporary colonies on the Situk flats or at Dry Bay. Terns are locally known as “sea pigeons,” and are given a Tlingit name which refers to their forked tail (kutł’tÀ Swanton, 1908, p. 116, kuL!ê’ta, i.e., kutł’Éta. We have seen them nesting on the beaches of Khantaak and Knight Islands, where the natives gather the eggs, despite the savage dive-bombing attacks of the parent birds.

Auks, murres, and puffins, are represented by the common pigeon guillemot, Cepphus columba columba, that commonly breeds on the islands in Yakutat Bay. They are conspicuous in summer with their black bills, red feet, and black plumage except for the white area at the base of the wings. They hide their eggs in caves and crannies on sea cliffs and dive for marine worms and mollusks. LaPérouse (1799, vol. 1, p. 395) noted the red-footed guillemot in Lituya Bay. Possibly these are the birds called “black ducks” (see scoters).

The American marbled murrelet, Brachyramphus marmoratum, and Kittlitz's murrelet, B. brevirostris, are also common, often seen together in the sheltered waters of Disenchantment Bay. The first is a year-round resident, but no one knows where the second spends the winter, probably far out at sea. The ancient murrelet, Synthliaboramphus antiquum, breeds from the Aleutians to the Queen Charlotte Islands, but apparently moves during the night far out to sea as soon as the young are hatched, and is rarely seen in the winter. The winter plumage of all three species and the summer dress as well of the ancient murrelet were identified by our informants as that of the sea bird (tÍt), a crest of many Wolf sibs. In one of their songs at Yakutat, the Raven is supposed to be afraid that it will come ashore. Emmons (Swanton, 1909, p. 415) identified this also as the murrelet, a small bird that makes a whistling sound; Boas (1891, p. 172, tt) specifies that it is the marbled murrelet. The dull speckled summer dress of the latter and of Kittlitz‘s murrelet, however, seems to fit the bird described as a “saltwater duck, like a grebe, like a loon,” with a small neck, spotted gray and white. It was specifically said to lay eggs on Hazel and Coronation Islands in southeastern Alaska. It can dive like a merganser or “saw bill.” Raven put his mother in its skin during the Flood, and our informants called it tcà or tsa. This is evidently the sea bird and great diver, cx, (Swanton, 1909, p. 119), which the Tlingit are said not to eat, because “it was Raven‘s mother.” The name, “they just ruffle up the water” when they fly (hin okatiti), was also applied to the murrelets, but may (also ?) apply to the guillemot.

The rhinoceros auklet, Cerorhinca monocerata, (xík, i.e., Ík, Naish and Story, 1963, p. 22) has been seen at Yakutat Bay. Cassin's auklet Ptychoramphus aleutica, possibly comes here also, but since auklets are nocturnal these are not important. Puffins (xik; Swanton, 1909, p. 50, xk) seem to be a crest of two of the Raven sibs (Swanton, 1908, p. 401, pl. LIII g). While the tufted puffin, Lunda cirrhata, has been recorded from Yakutat only in May and from the Gulf of Alaska during summer, those which I saw on Haenke Island, June 10, 1952, were the horned puffin or “sea parrot,” Fratercula corniculata, which includes southwestern and southeastern Alaska within its breeding and wintering range. The name ‘nose-fire’ was also applied to this bird because of its large red bill (see oyster-catcher), and at Angoon to the tufted puffin (Naish and Story, 1963, p. 22).

The parasitic jaeger, Stercorarius parasiticus, breeds in Yakutat Bay, especially along the Malaspina Glacier. The long-tailed and pomerine jaegers, S. longicaudus and S. pomarinus, nest farther north but are occasionally seen as migrants or as nonbreeding summer visitors.

A bird that lives on the outer islands of southeastern Alaska and is the puffin's slave is łAgwâ′tc!; as is also the sea gull, but these were not identified by my informants (Swanton, 1909, pp. 57, 58). Nor do I know what bird that lives far out at sea was called tsAg‘w‘n (Swanton, 1909, p. 109), for this name was given by one of my informants to the wren.

Among the pelagic birds, the black-footed albatross or “goony,” Diomedea nigripes, that nests on Midway Island and on other islands of the central North Pacific, may be seen on the Gulf of Alaska during the summer, usually following vessels. Sometimes they come close to shore and may even enter Icy Straits. The Yakutat people undoubtedly knew them, and also the now all but extinct Steller's short-tailed albatross, D. albatrus, that visits the Gulf between March and October but nests in the western North Pacific. The sooty sheer-water or “whale bird,” Puffinus griseus, also visits Alaskan waters in the summer, usually coming closer inshore than the albatross. It has been recorded at Yakutat as well as farther south. The Pacific fulmar, Fulmarus glacialis rodgersi, that breeds on the Aleutians as well as on the Asiatic shores, has been regularly seen off the coast of Yakutat. Some of these may perhaps be the “sea birds whose voices can be heard at a distance,” or ‘crying in the deep’ (kA’xe, Swanton, 1909, p. 135).

The stormy petrels are represented by the fork-tail petrel, Oceanodroma furcata, and the smaller Leach's petrel, O. leucorhoa, both of which have northern races breeding in the Aleutians and which presumably cross the Gulf of Alaska, and southern forms that nest in southeastern Alaska, especially on the outer islands. These are evidently the Petrel (ànùk), who figures in the creation myths as older than Raven, as guardian of fresh water, and as owner of the hat that makes fog (cf. Swanton, 1909, pp. 10, 83). He belongs to the opposite moiety from Raven. The Yakutat people know this story, and have often seen petrels on the Gulf of Alaska or found birds that have been blown ashore by storms.

The most striking and conspicuous birds at Yakutat are the resident crows and jays. First place should be given to the northern Steller's jay, Cyanocitta stelleri stelleri, if only because this bird revealed to Bering's naturalist that he had indeed reached the New World at Kayak Island in 1741. This “Bluejay” (Ec; Boas, 1917, p. 129, Écxu) is recognized as a “good talker,” with “fine clothes,” and furthermore gives his name to the color purple or dark blue (Swanton, 1909, p. 86). In native eyes, however, his big relative, the northern raven, Corvus corax principalis, (yeł) is certainly the most important, since Raven is the Creator or Trickster-transformer of mythology, and the major crest of one moiety. Shortt (1939, p. 23) found the raven abundant at Yakutat, probably because the cannery was then in full operation and there was plenty of offal to eat. Ravens were less numerous during my visits, although they were about during the winter and spring of 1954, and a flock of at least seven visited a garbage dump beside our house on August 27, 1952, parading down the main street. They nest either in the woods or on the bare rocks of Disenchantment Bay. In June, 1954, one Indian family brought home a young raven as a pet, and during the winter of 1954 a tame adult lived in the attic of a house, coming and going as he pleased through the open window. His smaller relative, the northwestern crow, Corvus caurinus, or possibly the American crow, C. brachyrhyncho, is also a resident. It is recognized as a noisy talker (Swanton 1909, p. 86), and the Crow (tAxwéł) is a crest of a Yakutat Raven sib. Crow eggs, found by children on Khantaak Island, May 19, are said to have hatched in their pockets!

The American black-billed magpie, Pica pica hudsonia, (teené; Swanton, 1909, pp. 6, 125, ts!n’, ts!n’n, or djeenī’k) was common about Yakutat during the winter, coming with blue jays, crows, varied thrushes, and fox sparrows to the feeder which we established on our porch in early March, 1954. We saw magpies flocking in the deep woods on March 14, and shortly afterwards they disappeared, probably moving up the bay or farther north to nest. The natives say that they leave because they don’t like salmon milt, and therefore remain away while the salmon are spawning. They are sometimes called “Raven‘s Arrow,” and are recognized as a handsome bird.

The northern bald eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalus alascanus, is conspicuous and common, nesting in high trees, but probably retires to southeastern Alaska during the winter. The Eagle (ta) is a crest of the Wolf moiety among the northern Tlingit. Rare, but important as a sib crest, is the American golden eagle, Aquila chrysaetos canadensis, (gIdjuk; Boas, 1917, p. 157, gÌdjùk’ “fish hawk”). It nests almost exclusively in the interior, leaving for the south in September and returning in March or April. Shortt (1939, p. 11) saw a single pair nesting on the cliffs of Mount Tebenkof and hunting marmots above 1,000 feet. The Golden Eagle which became a totemic crest was originally met on a mountainside above the Ahrnklin River, and had come from the other side of the Saint Elias Range to hunt for “groundhogs” (a). The name (gIdjuk) does not apply to a hawk.

Hawks of the Yakutat area are the northwestern sharp-shinned hawk, Accipiter striatus perobscurus, which comes to the wooded areas near Situk Lake and Malaspina Glacier to breed, and the eastern goshawk, A. gentilis atricapillus, which also nests in the thick woods of the Situk area, although it breeds primarily in the interior. Both of these attack and eat other birds. Less common but present are the Alaskan red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis alaskensis, and the American rough-legged hawk, B. lagopus s. johannis, which eat small rodents.

The peregrine falcon or duck hawk, Falco peregrinus, and the pigeon hawk, F. columbarius, have both been noted at Yakutat.

An informant told us that all hawks, gray and black, as well as other kinds, were called AkW This name probably refers especially to the goshawk or “chicken hawk” (Swanton, 1909, p. 11, k!Aku) that is said to have procured fire. In another episode recorded by Swanton (1909, p. 17, cAk!A’ku), Raven‘s companion who throws him down the mountain in a box seems to be a mountain hawk, although our Yakutat version does not ascribe this role to such a bird. Boas (1891, p. 175, qq, i.e., xex) records a Tlingit name for the rare but widely distributed American marsh hawk, Circus cyeneus hudsonius, but I do not know whether it ever comes to Yakutat.

The butcher bird or northwestern shrike, Lanius excubitor invictus, an energetic predator that hangs its victims on thorns or twigs, should be found in the Yakutat area for this would seem to lie within its breeding and wintering range. Is it the maneating bird (kÁit) that cries “hò·ó, hò·ó” in the Chilkat myth explaining the origin of mosquitoes (Boas, 1917, p. 173), or is the latter a loon?

Several owls may be encountered in the Yakutat area. There are the northwestern great horned owl, Bubo virgininius lagophonus, that is resident all year round, and the great grey owl, Strix nebulosa nebulosa, probably also resident. It is the first of these that Boas (1891, p. 175, tsiskw) identified as “the” owl (tIsw; Boas, 1917, p. 126, tsUsu; Swanton 1909, p. 300, ts'sk!”), although perhaps this name can be given to any species. Although the snowy owl, Nyctea scandia (Boas, 1891, p. 180, kwakw), breeds on the northern tundra, it may visit any part of Alaska during the fall and winter. It was one of these, sometimes called ‘interior owl’ (dAqkA tIsw) that was around Yakutat in February and March, 1954, “telling bad news,” which all owls do. The screech owl, Otus asio kennicottii, although ranging sometimes as far north as Yakutat and resident south of Sitka, is rare in Alaska. Yet this bird is believed to have been once a woman who was mean to her mother-in-law (Swanton, 1909, Tale 37, pp. 176–177). I was told that there was probably a screech owl near the Ankau lagoons in March, 1954. One or two of the larger owls were, I believe, the two sisters transformed because they were greedy, according to a Yakutat story. The Owl is a sib crest. The northern short-eared owl, Asio flammeus flammeus, is a common summer nester on the Situk flats, coming north in April and lingering until the end of September. It is a daytime hunter of mice, itself attacked by other birds. Probably the hawk owl, Surnia ulula, another day-flying owl, may be found here, since Yakutat is within its range. The coast pygmy owl, Glaucidium gnoma grinnelli, that lives in holes in trees and hunts small birds and insects in the daytime, has been heard in the woods near Situk Lake.[13]

The Pacific varied thrush, Ixoreus naevius naevius‘ with especially brilliant markings, is a characteristic Yakutat bird. The first we saw was on March 3, 1954, when they began to be regular visitors to our feeder. Later in the spring, their whistled double note resounded through the woods. Apparently they leave in September or October, but may occasionally stay in southeastern Alaska. I do not know if they winter in Yakutat. An informant identified this bird from a colored plate in Peterson (1941) as the ‘bird on the mountain’ (cakA tItkw), said to stay in the mountains but to come around the beaches when there is a strong north wind. This identification seems hardly correct, but reminds me of the bird that is never seen unless the north wind is going to blow (unkAh’, i.e., ‘moving on the north wind,’ Swanton, 1909, p. 86). Possibly this name applies to some other thrush, or to the waxwing (see p. 49).

The little Alaska hermit thrush, Hylocichla guttata guttata, also breeds abundantly at Yakutat, arriving about the middle of May and remaining until September. The northern gray-cheeked thrush, H. minima minima, comes still later in the season and leaves earlier, nesting along the willows and alders fringing streams from the Malaspina and other glaciers. Swainson's thrush, H. ustulata, may perhaps come to Yakutat, since some races nest at Glacier Bay, in the interior, and farther north.

The eastern robin, Turdus migratorius migratorius, flies all the way from Florida and the Gulf States to nest at Yakutat. The first were seen on April 4, 1954, and they apparently remain until September or October. From Glacier Bay south, the western robin, T. m. caurinus, is found in summer and occasionally in winter. According to one story (Swanton, 1909, p. 85), it is the robin (cuw) who scorched his breast, and who makes people happy with his whistling.

Another bird that gladdens men (Swanton, 1909, p. 86) is the rufous hummingbird, Selaphorus rufus, that comes from its Mexican home in April or early May to remain until late in August. I saw the first on April 13, and there were many in May, 1954. One informant called them tcAkItkiya (Boas, 1917, p. 154, dAwÁtgrya), and correctly noted the time of their arrival. Another called them tsAgAtgya and said that to find their nest means riches.

The western belted kingfisher, Megaceryle alcyon caurina, (tłÁAnÉ, Boas 155, łàÀnè) is a common nester about Yakutat and may possibly winter there. On April 18, 1954, we saw a pair near the Old Village of Yakutat, on the same tree where I had seen them in the summers of 1949 and 1952. The behavior of the kingfisher is said to foretell the acquisition of wealth.

More common along the mountain than the lowland streams is the northern dipper or water ouzel, Cinclus mexicanus unicolor. It seems to be resident in the Yakutat area, perhaps up the bay. This may be the bird called hinyIk tł’ek. In one Yakutat myth (p. 878), it guides the hero downstream from heaven. This bird (hinyik tł‘ek; Swanton, 1909, p. 117, hk ł‘) also appears in another story as “an industrious bird…a fishing bird living along the river,” whom Raven calls “brother-in-law.”

The woodpecker, ‘he strikes wood’ (kínda da guq; Boas 1891, p. 183, ‘picks around the bark,’ gan da da guq‘) may bring bad luck. The northern hairy woodpecker, Dendrocopos villosus septentrionalis, the small Valdez downy woodpecker, D. pubescens glacialis, and the northern three-toed woodpecker, Picoides tridactylus fasciatus, are all apparently year-round residents of the Yakutat area, although only the first is common. This was probably the woodpecker reported in the woods near the Ankau lagoons in March, and seen in the village on April 4, 1954. The woodpeckers I noted among the alders and willows on Haenke Island, June 18, 1952, may possibly have been the three-toed species, since it is more often seen in the interior, where such brush is common, than on the coast.

The related boreal yellow-shafted flicker, Colaptes auratus borealis, is common in the interior, but is also known from Yakutat. The northwestern red-shafted flicker, C. cafer cafer, is the species of southeastern Alaska. The Flicker (kun) is valued for its beautiful feathers, is associated in mythology with the wife of the Controller of the Flood (cf. Swanton, 1909, p. 119), is a house name for two Wolf sibs (Swanton, 1908, pp. 400, 401), and is supposed to be the head of the next to smallest birds, yet is very seldom seen (Swanton, 1909, p. 85).

The Rocky Mountain brown creeper, Certhia familiaris montana, is an apparently rather common resident at Yakutat. It is a quiet bird that climbs trees looking for insect food (see Bohemian waxwing, p. 49).

The western winter wren, Troglodytes troglodytes pacificus, is a common but elusive resident of southeastern Alaska and the Gulf Coast area. They probably winter at Yakutat, although the first that I saw were a pair on May 3, 1954. One of my informants called the wren tAgwán, although this was the name given by a Wrangell man (Swanton, 1909, pp. 108–109) for a bird that lives far out at sea. At Sitka the wren is called the “bird that can go through a hole” (wu′łnAXd-w′ckAq, Swanton, 1909, p. 17).

The elusive western flycatcher, Empidomax difficilis, has been reported from Yakutat but is normally found nesting in the interior or on the coast south of Cape Spencer.

The eastern nighthawk, Chordeiles minor minor, also breeds in the interior and perhaps in southeastern Alaska, wintering in South America. Although only one has been actually recorded from the Yakutat area, it is worth mentioning since I believe this was the ‘sleep’ Bird (ta) killed by a Hoonah Indian because it kept him awake by flying around his head while he was trying to rest in his canoe one night. The behavior is characteristic. This story (cf. Swanton, 1909, Tales 32 and 104) is especially linked with the discovery of the Dry Bay Athabaskans by the Tlingit, and explains how a Raven sib obtained the Sleep Bird as a crest.

Among other insect-eaters we should mention the Sitka ruby-crowned kinglet, Regulus calendula grinnelli, as common in summer in the Yakutat forests, and the northwestern golden-crowned kinglet, R. satrapa olivaceus, which is a year-round resident here, as well as in southeastern Alaska. These are both tiny birds, about 4 inches long, and may therefore be the “very respectable bird,” “about the size of a butterfly,” whose voice is heard, but which is seen only when people are to have good luck (ko!ai′ Swanton, 1909, p. 86). This identification is not completely satisfying, for the little kinglets are by no means inconspicuous in the fall and winter, but then, of course, this is the season for potlatches!

The northern chestnut-backed chickadee, Parus rufescens rufescens, is a common resident of the east side of Yakutat Bay, while the Yukon black-capped chickadee, P. atricapillus turneri, lives on the west side along the timbered moraine of the Malaspina. Otherwise, it is essentially a bird of the interior. The chickadee represents and is called ‘someone's thoughts’ (qatuwu).

The Bohemian waxwing, Bombycilla garrula pallidiceps, breeds in the interior but may appear in southeastern Alaska in the late summer, fall, or winter, sometimes in great numbers, so we should expect them at Yakutat. One wonders if these are the small gregarious birds with greenish-yellow feathers that find their food on the tops of trees and that are carved by the Tlingit as one of the two main pieces in a set of gambling sticks. Their name seems to mean ‘flying-among-the-treetops’ (probably ’as-anca-djI or ’às-o-ca-tcI: Swanton, 1909, pp. 86, 136, 137, sq!ac′tc, nc′dj, sq!anc′dj).[14]

The western water pipit, Anthus spinoletta pacificus, essentially a breeder on the Arctic tundras or the open mountain tops, is found commonly on Osier Island in Disenchantment Bay. It winters in Oregon and farther south.

The rock ptarmigan, Lagopus mutus, lives high up on the sides of Russell Fiord and Disenchantment Bay. More common in this area, especially on Osier Island and on the northern shore, is Alexander's willow ptarmigan, Lagopus lagopus alexandrae. The (willow?) ptarmigan is felt by the Tlingit to be particularly a bird of the interior, from whom, in fact, the Athabaskans learned how to make snowshoes (Swanton, 1909, p. 85). Ptarmigan are called eAwá(Swanton, 1909, p. 102, q!s!awa’; Naish and Story, 1963, p. 22, x’eis’oowáh or euwá, and x′eis’uwáh or e-′Awá). Ptarmigan were commonly snared at Dry Bay.

The southeastern Alaskan Tlingit also distinguished between the dusky or blue grouse, that lives up high where it is windy (Swanton, 1909, p. 85, nukt; Krause, 1956, p. 257, Dendragapus obscurus sitkensis, nk’t; Naish and Story, 1963, p. 21, nókt), and the Canada spruce grouse, Canachites canadensis, (Krause, 1956, p. 257, kchk’, kk‘; Naish and Story, 1963, p. 21, káx‘). It is interesting that these two words are also used to distinguish between the male and the female grouse. While neither species seems to be found at Yakutat, the natives are familiar with the name for the second, or “female,” kA, since a famous site in Icy Strait is called Grouse Fort (de Laguna, 1960, pp. 142–143).

The rusty blackbird, Euphagus carolinus, breeds farther north, migrating in spring by an interior route but returning in fall along the coast. It has been seen on the Ahrnklin River in mid-October. Krause (1956, p. 257) recorded a Chilkat expression for this bird meaning ‘Athabaskans’ raven.’ I did not learn what the Yakutat people call it.

Swallows come in summer to nest at Yakutat. The American barn swallow, Hirundo rustica erythrogaster, builds its mud nests around the cannery buildings. The tree swallow, Iridoprocne bicolor, is probably more common, arriving, according to my notes, about May 9, and by early June nesting in boxes and bird houses which the Yakutat people put up for them. They are accompanied by the northern violet-green swallow, Tachycineta thalassina lepida, which will nest in boxes or in holes in trees. All swallows fly south in August to their winter homes. According to Krause (1956, p. 259), the Chilkat Tlingit call the swallow káschlattl; Naish and Story (1963, p. 23) give the word séew kooshdunèit (sÍw kucdAnèt), suggesting that this is the bird that calls for rain (siu) in the summer (see below).

Little birds, which would certainly include warblers, finches, linnets, sparrows, and probably many others which we have already mentioned, are known at Yakutat simply at trtkw (Boas, 1917, p. 154, tUtsku’). Unfortunately I do not know which one calls for ‘rain, rain,’ (siu, siu) and so brings bad weather in summer, nor have I been able to identify the “wild canary,” reported as a fine singer and said to be found in Tlingit country all year round, although it keeps away from people, and is the head of all the little birds (Swanton, 1909, 85, 124–125, 185, s!s!; Naish and Story, 1963, p. 21, “goldfinch” or a). Emmons (1903, p. 238) reports a “wild canary, Astragalinus tristis,” called ‘yellow’ or “kut-thlark.” He undoubtedly refers to the goldfinch, Spinus tristis, but this is not an Alaskan bird and the Tlingit name is given, at Yakutat at any rate, to the yellow warbler. I do not know what is the very small bird of the interior called “old person” (Swanton, 1909, p. 212, LAgu-q′k!u, or Laguq′wu, i.e., tłagu qawu).

Among the warblers that visit Yakutat in the summer are the lutescent oranged-crowned warbler, Vermivora celata lutescens, the black-capped or northern pileolated warbler, Wilsonia pusilla pileolata, and the Alaska yellow warbler, Dendroica petechia rubiginosa. The first was the bird I saw on May 24, and again on May 31. The yellow warbler appeared May 30, and was called simply ‘yellow’ (tł’atł’). The black-capped warbler was recognized by one informant who did not know the name. Doubtless others, such as the Alaska myrtle warbler or Townsend's warbler, Dendroica coronata hooveri and D. townsendi, for example, are seen at Yakutat, but of these we have no record. Possibly it is a warbler, not the Bohemian waxwing, that is the ‘bird flying around the treetops,’ or a warbler, not a kinglet, may be the tiny “respectable bird,” whose voice is heard but who is seen only by those destined for luck.

Of the sparrows, the most common at Yakutat in the summer are the Yakutat song sparrow, Melospiza melodia caurina, replaced in winter by the Kenai race, M. m. kenaiensis, the northwestern Lincoln's sparrow, M. lincolnii gracilis, the Yakutat fox sparrow, Passerella iliaca annectens, the Alaskan savannah sparrow, Passerculus sandwichensis or P. s. anthinus, and the beautiful golden-crowned sparrow, Zonotrichia atricapilla. The western tree sparrow, Spizella arboreaochracea, and Gambel's white-crowned sparrow, Zonotrichia leucophrys, presumably migrate through Yakutat. What I thought were fox sparrows, seen at Yakutat from late February until early April, may have been song sparrows. The Yakutat races of both species, as well as of the savannah sparrow, are very dark. The fox sparrow seems to be the ‘dark bird’ (trtkw t’ut), or ‘frog's spear’ (XIXt wusani), while a sparrow that is smaller and lighter on the belly and sides, but spotted like a frog (Lincoln's sparrow ?) is ‘frog's desire’ (xIxt ’Uqax). The golden-crowned sparrow, called appropriately ‘copper on top of the head’ (cAkide tmna) sings in the woods around the village from early in May until almost the end of the month, when it apparently goes to nest in the willows of Disenchantment Bay and the Malaspina Glacier.[15]

These songsters are apparently very vocal while the people are at sealing camp in Disenchantment Bay in June and are believed to imitate Tlingit songs, especially the happy cries of children, and to tell when their fathers are coming home from hunting.

The northern pine siskin, Spinus pinus pinus, a forest finch, apparently breeds near Yakutat and may winter in southeastern Alaska. The same is true of the pine grosbeak, Pinicola enucleator flammula. The American white-winged crossbill, Lozia leucoptera leucoptera, is a sporadic but probably permanent resident. The common or mealy redpoll linnet, Acanthis flammea flammea, lives primarily farther north but has been seen in late May and July among the willows of Osier Island and Russell Fiord. Hepburn‘s gray-crowned rosy finch, Leucosticte tephrocotis littoralis, although essentially an Arctic bird, does breed above timberline and winter along the coast.

The Alaska longspur, Calcarius lapponicus alascensis, while nesting in northern Alaska and the Aleutians, apparently visits southern Alaska as a migrant, chiefly in the fall, and should be seen at Yakutat.

Yakutat Bay seems to be the dividing line for two species of junco. The northwestern Oregon junco, Junco oreganus oreganus, nests from Yakutat Bay south, and the northern slate-colored junco, J. hyemalis hyemalis, breeds in the forests to the north. Apparently neither winters in the area. However, the “snow bird” at Yakutat and in southeastern Alaska seems to be the snow bunting, Plectrophenax nivalis, which nests as far south as Glacier Bay. My informants described it as a small black and white bird, seen only in winter and called ‘bird on the snow’ (tłedkA trtkw). One wonders whether this is the bird seen only when the north wind is going to blow (unkA ha).

On the whole, the birds of Yakutat form a conspicuous and significant part of the world in which the native lives. Although far less important for food or manufactures than land and sea mammals, and certainly less important than fish, birds seem to have as great a role in Tlingit thought. Perhaps the very abundance and diversity of species has stimulated the imagination.

Fish[16]

Fish are the staff of life for the Tlingit, and of all kinds the salmon (at; Boas 129, á) is what is meant when the Tlingit speaks of fish. The largest and earliest to spawn is the king, spring, or chinook salmon, Onchorhynchus tshawytscha, (t’a). Then come the red or sockeye, O. nerka, (gàt); humpback or pink, O. gorbuscha (ta; Boas, 1917, p. 163, tca); coho or silver, O. kisutch, (tł’uk; Boas 130, ł’úku’; Swanton, 1909, p. 247, L!’k); and the chum or dog salmon, O. keta (titł’; Boas 156, t‘i-ł’). The last is relatively unimportant to the Gulf Coast Indians, although the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska regard it as the best to smoke for the winter, and recognize the Dog Salmon as the crest of a Raven sib. I was told that there were few dog salmon in the Yakutat area, but that they could be caught east of Dry Bay, where the Dohn River or a tributary is called ‘Dog Salmon Stream.’ All of these salmon ascend the rivers during the summer to spawn and die; the young usually go down to salt water the following spring or a year later to spend their adult lives in the sea. Different races of the same species are apparently distinguished by the varying number of years they take to reach maturity, the oldest being the largest, and some varieties live always in fresh water. The males of most species undergo surprising transformations in color and shape when they become ready to spawn.

King salmon average 15–23 pounds, although many reach 50 or 60 pounds, and a few giants of 100 pounds have been noted. They live from 3–9 years, depending on the race, although precocious males or “jacks” mature in 2 or 3 years. King salmon usually breed only in the larger rivers, such as the Alsek or Copper River, although they have been seen in the Ankau, Situk, Ahrnklin, Italio, and Ustay Rivers. Spawning runs begin about the last of April and may continue until the fall (when the king salmon are particularly fat), which was when the natives formerly caught them. While still in salt water the king salmon usually stays close to shore and may be taken by trolling, but this method was not employed until modern times. Sometimes king salmon appear in Yakutat Bay as early as February, according to one informant. In 1954, the first was taken on March 27, and by March 30 all the men were out trolling. On April 16, the fish had retired to the bottom because of the bitter cold, and by May 22 Eleanor Cove was said to be so full of herring and smelt that trolling was unsuccessful. By that time, however, the commercial fishing season was beginning in Dry Bay.

The sockeye averages about 6 pounds but may range up to 15. It spawns only in lakes or in streams flowing from or into lakes, and the young fish may spend from 1–3 years in fresh water. Some may remain all their lives, 2–5 years, in the lake and are known as “residuals” to the Whites, or as “old salmon” to the natives (akw; Swanton, 1908, p. 401, q!k!u). Sockeye that breed in a lake from which there is no escape become dwarfed and are known as “Kennerly's salmon,” “dwarf redfish,” or “silver trout.” Aside from precocious 3-year-old “jacks,” the salmon ascending the rivers to spawn in May to August, and especially in late June and July, are usually 4 or 5 years old, rarely 6 or 7.

Almost all of the streams southeast of Yakutat have sockeyes, from the Ankau-Lost River system to the Alsek, except for Dangerous River (Moser, 1901, pp. 383–388). However, one of my informants who had lived all his youth in the Situk area reported that sockeye first appeared on Lost, Italio, and Akwe Rivers, only after the Government fish weir was put across the Situk and so drove away some of the fish. Yet this weir as a counting station was not established until many years after Moser‘s survey.

The humpback salmon, so called because of the hump developed by breeding males, invariably matures in 2 years, and most streams have two distinct populations, so that the run one year may be heavy and the next light, or there may be a run only every other year, as in the streams entering Russell Fiord. The mature fish average 3–5 pounds, with a few up to 10. Spawning runs last from late June to September, with the most in July and early August. Of all the streams in the Yakutat area, Humpback Creek (kwac hini) is the most important for this fish, and also for the Raven sib that owns this stream and claims the Humpback Salmon as a crest. This fish is known at Yakutat by its Eyak name (kwac) as much as by the Tlingit word (ta).

The coho is the favorite salmon for drying at Yakutat, and is also the name crest of another Raven sib. The runs come late in the year, from July or August through October, and the natives prefer to cure the fish in the cool fall weather. Most young fish remain in fresh water for a year before going out to sea, and return at the end of their third summer, although there are also 2-year-old “jacks” that look like spotted trout, and a few 4-year-old fish. Practically all the streams in the Yakutat area have cohos, although the Situk is especially rich (Rich and Bell, 1935, p. 441). Coho may weigh from 6–12 pounds, and occasionally up to 30. Swanton (1908, p. 406) gives the name, cadas‘ktc, for the landlocked “king salmon,” but I believe he refers to a coho, or possibly to a sockeye.

Related to the Pacific salmon are several varieties of salmon trout and char, also found in Yakutat waters, although they are of much less value to the natives. These are like the Atlantic salmon in that they do not die when they spawn, but may return to salt water and again ascend the streams to spawn. One of these is the steelhead trout, Salmo gairdnerii, which usually remains 1 or 2 years in fresh water, and returns in the third to fifth year for the first spawning. It has no regular season for running. Small individuals that remain all their lives in fresh water are known as “rainbow trout.” Full-sized fish average 8–10 pounds, with records of over 30. The coastal cutthroat trout, Salmo clarkii clarkii, spawns early in the spring, February to May, or even in mid-winter. Most individuals go to sea in the spring of their second or third year, and ascend the rivers in the autumn, when they are most easily taken. They may weigh up to 17 pounds. These fish prefer warmer waters, so are not as numerous along the Gulf of Alaska as farther south. In contrast, the Dolly Varden, Salvelinus malma, a char, is more common in colder waters, spawning in autumn, although, like the cutthroat, it frequents the mouths of streams. Some may weigh up to 30 pounds.

The Yakutat Tlingit not only distinguish between all five species of Pacific salmon, clearly recognizing the dwarfed landlocked sockeye as a salmon, although they call them ‘baby cohoes’ (tł’uk yAti), but they have a separate name for the steelhead (‘acAt), and for other trout (ot‘, ut‘, Dolly Varden ?). They are well aware that the steelheads are anadromous, saying that the old ones go to the ocean, become rejuvenated, and return as young again to the stream. They are caught ascending the Situk or Humpback Creek in May. But no one now living at Yakutat will ever have any conception of the multitudes of salmon that crowded the streams and lakes before the White man came to destroy the “inexhaustible supply” (Grinnell, 1902; Rich and Bell, 1935, pp. 440–449).

According to the natives, there are three or four small fish that spawn in Yakutat salt or fresh waters. One of these is the eulachon, Thaleichthys pacificus, (sak) from 8–12 inches long and famous for its rich oil. These were running in the Situk early in March, 1954, and were said to run at Dry Bay in February. Two runs were reported there, “in the spring and in the winter time.” While the name “candlefish” is usually a synonym for eulachon, my informants distinguished between these two fish, specifying that the “candlefish” (cat) were smaller and came later. Possibly this was the capelin, Mallotus villosus, which spawns on the beaches in September or October. The surf smelt or silver smelt, Hypomesus pretiosus, spawns on the beaches from June to September and is probably the “smelt” (tAkwł) of my informants, although the surf smelt is not believed to occur in the Gulf of Alaska. The Pacific herring, Clupea pallasii, (yaw, yaw; Boas 1917, p. 159, yaw) was once much more common than it is at present, although it was spawning in Yakutat Bay in May, 1954. SurÍa (Wagner, 1936, p. 257) noted “smelt” being eaten in late June and early July. Herring eggs are, of course, a delicacy sought by the Yakutat people.

In mid-February, 1954, many small fish, like smelt but smaller, were being caught with unbaited hooks off the end of the cannery dock. I was told that they had first appeared 2 years before and that no one knew their correct name. It was surmised that they came from California; “got lost from the California current.” There had been some at Hoonah, but when the cold weather came they all died. These may have been the young of some fish such as the pilchard, Sardinops sagax. Conceivably it was the Pacific saury or “skipper,” Cololabis saira, a slender, small leaping fish that is common in schools from southern California to the Gulf of Alaska. They belong in the open sea but may possibly come closer to shore.

A fish that looks like a sardine or herring, with spots on its back, is supposed to lay large eggs on or under the rocks along the shore near Knight Island. This is called the ‘Thunderbird's fish’ (xetł adi). Possibly this is the capelin (see above), although the latter has many black dots on the opercles, not on the back. It may even be a sculpin (see below). The shad, Alosa sapidissima, was introduced from the Atlantic to the Columbia and Sacramento Rivers in 1871, and by 1896 had reached southeastern Alaska, and is now found as far north as Cook Inlet. Although it spawns in fresh water, it has pronounced black spots on the sides. The pilchard (see above) is similarly marked, but lays its eggs in the ocean.

Other anadromous fish, also with fresh water forms, are the white and green sturgeon, Acipenser transmontanus and A. medirostris. The ranges of both include the Gulf of Alaska, and since they are enormous, attaining lengths of 20 and 7 feet respectively, they would surely have been noted and mentioned, if common in the Yakutat area.

At Yakutat, SurÍa (Wagner, 1936, p. 257) saw a fish like a “conger eel.” This may have been the Pacific lamprey, Entosphenus tridentatus, which is related to the delicious European lamprey and is abundant from California to the Gulf of Alaska. It spawns in fresh water, and in adult form preys especially upon salmon and steelhead trout in the sea, marking their silver sides. The Tlingit interpret these wounds as the result of being cut by the gates at the horizon's edge, through which the fish pass. Possibly this is the “eel” (łú) of the Tlingit, not the blenny (see below).

Of flatfishes, the Pacific halibut, Hippoglossus stenolepis, ranks first. It is caught in the winter, spring, and early summer with ingeniously devised hooks and long lines. Halibut range in size from “chicken halibut,” about 4 feet long (tcatł, tcał) to a giant 9 feet long (nał, ‘riches‘). Commercial fishermen seek them at depths of 10–150 fathoms. Males mature earlier than females, may weigh up to 40 pounds, and live 25 years. Females mature at 12 years, may live for 35, and have been known to weigh 470 pounds.

Flounders (tAnti; Boas, 1917, p. 126, tsAnt) are also caught at Yakutat. These probably include such species as the arrowtooth flounder or turbot (Atheresthes stomias), starry flounder (Platichthys stellatus), brill (Eopsetta jordani), and sand sole (Psettichthys melanostictus), all 2–3 feet long; and the smaller lemon sole (Parophrys vetulus), rock sole (Lepidopsetta bilineata), and yellowfin or northern sole (Limanda aspera), reaching lengths from 15–22 inches. I do not know whether the natives consider the flathead sole, Hippoglossus elassodon, a halibut or a flounder. It is not over 18 inches long. The slimy dover sole, Microstomus pacificus, through a little over 2 feet long, lives below 30 fathoms, so is probably seldom caught.

Still smaller is the mottled or Pacific sanddab, Citharichthys sordidus, which rarely exceeds 12 inches, found from Bering Sea to California, and the speckled sanddab, C. stigmaeus, not over 6 inches long, found north of southeastern Alaska. Possibly one of the small flatfish is known as the “child of the wind” (iłtca yAdi), described as like a flounder the size of one's hand, which is sometimes washed ashore in storms. It is taboo to handle them.

True cods include the Pacific or gray cod, Gadus macrocephalus, which annually migrates into shallow water in spring after its winter spawning in the ocean. These fish may attain lengths of 3 feet. There is also the whiting, known as the Alaska or walleyed pollack, Theragra chalcogrammus, found at moderate depths along the coast. The smaller tomcod, Microgadus proximus, lives in deeper waters.

Closely related to the true cods, and very similar in appearance, are the hakes. The Pacific hake, Merluccius productus, common along the whole coast from southern California to the Gulf of Alaska, may have been known at Yakutat.

I am not sure whether any of the above are what the Yakutat people call “cod,” for the same native name (a) given for “cod,” was also used for the “lingcod” which is really a variety of greenling.

The lingcod, Ophiodon elongatus, is found on the bottom from shallow water to depths of over 60 fathoms. It is a very fat fish and may grow to lengths of 5 feet and the female may weigh 80–100 pounds. Eggs in large masses are laid in late winter to early spring just below low tide line, where they are guarded by the male until they hatch. The range is from southern California to the Bering Sea. Also found in the Yakutat area are the smaller but related rock greenling, Hexagrammos superciliosus, up to 2 feet long, and the white-spotted greenling, H. stelleri, not over 16 inches long. The last is also known as “tommy cod” or “rock trout.”

“Rock cod” or rockfish, of which there are many species, some living along the rocky shores, others at depths from tide water to over 800 fathoms, is a viviparous fish that is not a cod at all. The black rockfish, “Black Bass” or “Sea Bass,” Sebastodes melanops, is probably what the Tlingit call łitistukw (“black sea bass,” łitisdu′k, Swanton, 1908, pl. LV, a). Identification is uncertain, however, because the same name was given to a swordfish pin that I wore, and because on another occasion the fish of this name was described as having a prominent fin on the back and greenish hard meat. The dorsal fin of the rockfish is conspicuous, but the meat is described as “firm white flesh which is very palatable and of excellent food value” (Clemens and Wilby, 1961, p. 251). The black rockfish is common in shallow waters and is often confused with the blue rockfish, S. mystinus. Both reach lengths of about 20 inches and are found in the Gulf of Alaska, as is the related red snapper or “red cod,” S. ruberrimus, although the latter lives at depths of over 30 fathoms and may be 3 feet long. The last, according to Swanton (1909, p. 297, ł′q!), is called ‘red,’ i.e., łew.

The so-called “black cod” or sablefish, Anoploma fimbria, (‘Icqìn) was caught at Yakutat. It grows up to 3 feet in length and is very oily. Swanton‘s informants (1909, p. 45, cq′n) identified the fish of this name as a valuable deep water fish that lives in nests (suggesting the lingcod), or (p. 84) as a kind of salmon caught with a hook. My informant also believed that the “black cod” was caught on a halibut hook. The sablefish spawns in the open sea. The Angoon Tlingit regarded the “black cod” as the best kind of “cod” (de Laguna, 1960, p. 92).

Swanton‘s Wrangell informant (1909, p. 136) gave the name, tuq, to a small bright fish found in sand along the shore. Possibly this is one of the sandfish, Trichodon sp. or Arctoscopus sp.

Skates (titqa; Boas, 1917, p. 126, tìtÁ) were taken at Yakutat and the “fins” eaten. These were probably the big skate, Raja binoculata, which is abundant on the muddy bottoms of cool waters and may grow to a length of 8 feet. Its “wings” are marketed commercially father south. Also present are the smaller species, seldom exceeding 2–2; feet: the black skate, R. kincaidii, and starry skate R. stellulata, although the last is found only in very deep water. The skate is the canoe of the dreaded Land Otter Men, and in one story is the slave of the wealth-bringing water monster (Swanton, 1909, p. 51).

I was given three names for sharks and dogfish. The most common word is tu, applied to “sharks” and sometimes particularly to “mud sharks.” The “mud shark” was also called ‘porpoise children’ (tcitc yAti), while the dogfish, appropriately enough, was known as ‘shark's children’ (tu yAti). These three words were given on the same occasion by the same informants, so presumably apply to three separate species, although it is impossible to identify them accurately.

The Shark as a crest (Swanton, 1908, p. 416, fig. 103, ts!) is represented with prominent dorsal and pectoral fins and a wide heterocercal caudal fin. This suggests either the salmon shark, Lamna ditropis, or, more likely, the basking shark, Cetorhinus maximus. Both are pelagic but often come close to shore. The former, up to 10 feet long, may be taken on light tackle; the latter, up to 45 feet in length, is sluggish, frequently resting with its large dorsal fin above water, is often gregarious, and eats small crustacea or other organisms, straining them with its gill rakes. Its five gill slits are very long and conspicuous, a feature emphasized in native representations of the shark. It is a crest of a Yakutat sib. Basking sharks often become entangled in salmon nets, and in former days the Haida sometimes killed them (Clemens and Wilby, 1961, pp. 75–77). What is evidently a large shark of a different species is known to the southern Tlingit, where a Wolf sib at Wrangell has both a Shark House and a Shark's Intestines House (Atgu or Atgu; Swanton, 1908, p. 402, q!A′tgu hît and q!A′tgu n′s ht).

There are also two other sharks with small dorsal fins which may have been known to the Yakutat Tlingit. These are the active, fish-eating, pelagic blue shark, Prionace glauca, and the sluggish, bottomdwelling Pacific sleeper shark, Somniosus pacificus. Both may attain lengths up to 25 feet.

The sixgill shark, Hexanchus corinum, often called “mud shark” by White fishermen, is about the same length as the last. It has been commercially used for oil and fertilizer, and is caught by Whites with nets, traps, and hooks. It is distinguished by a very slender, high, asymmetric caudal fin. Although ranging as far north as the Gulf of Alaska, it belongs to the family of cow sharks, most of which live in warmer seas. There are many fossil representatives in British Columbia, which perhaps furnish the fossil teeth prized by the Tlingit as ornaments (cAxdÁq ‘uu). Emmons (1903, p. 265, “shuh-tuck ou-hu’”) also speaks of the “tooth of the large tropical shark,” found in the warmer waters south of Alaska, the large teeth of which were traded to the Tlingit for earrings. The name of this shark figures in one Raven story as a tongue twister (Swanton, 1909, Tale 1, p. 20; cf. Swanton, 1908, pl. LV, j, for the earrings).

The Pacific dogfish, Squalus suckleyi, attains lengths of about 5 feet, and produces a good deal of oil. It is identified as a crest in southeastern Alaska by Garfield and Forrest (1948, figs. 22, 23).

Pelagic fish which sometimes come close to shore and may have been known to the Yakutat include the pomphret or bream, Brama raii, and bluefin tuna, Thunnus saliens.

There are numerous deep sea fish with rows of glowing photophores along their sides: anglemouths, dragon-fish, lanternfish, and others; but these would hardly be known to the natives unless washed ashore.

Perhaps the Yakutat people were interested in the lumpsuckers, Cyclopteridae, with short squat bodies covered with spines. They are slow moving, attaching themselves to rocks where their eggs are deposited in masses and guarded by the male until hatched. Though numerous, these fish are too small to be of economic importance. There are also many genera of snailfish, Liparidae, with thin loose skin but no scales. Those that live along the shore are small, for only the larger ones inhabit deep water.

The blenny or prickleback is a long, slender, eel-shaped fish, related to the kelpfish and eelpout, all Blennioidea. They live on the bottom from tidewater to oceanic depths, and are identified by Boas (1917, p. 129) as “eels” (łú).

The stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, is a small fish covered with bright greenish to blue-black boney plates, and protected by prominent dorsal spines. It lives in eelgrass, and around wharves, as well as in deeper water. The male makes the nest in which several females may deposit their eggs, which he then guards. Evidently this little fish, never over 4 inches long, has been of sufficient interest to the natives that a slough near Dry Bay is named ‘Stickleback Creek’ (ágÀn hini).

Another relatively small fish, which is apparently not eaten but which has attracted the attention of the Tlingit, is the sculpin, Cottidae, represented by many species, some of which live in tidal pools, others in shallow or deep waters. One cannot help recording the Tlingit name (we; Boas, 1891, wk, i.e., weq; Swanton, 1909, pp. 18, 107, wq!). The freshwater species are called “bullheads,” as is the red Irish lord, Hemilepidotus hemilepidotus, a salt water sculpin. The latter grows up to 20 inches in length, and is found from northern California to Bering Sea. I am not sure which of these brightly colored, spiny fish were called we by the Tlingit, nor whether they used the same name for all of the group. These fish were sometimes caught by children, but it was taboo to kill them with a club. Clemens and Wilby (1961, p. 309) report that the buffalo sculpin, Enophrys bison, with a range which includes the Gulf of Alaska is “very common along the whole coast…will take a bait readily and provides sport for the young, who frequently suffer hand wounds from the jagged spines.” A Raven sib among the southernmost Tlingit had a Sculpin House; this fish appears in mythology as Raven's younger brother or father‘s brother‘s son; and the Pleiades are supposed to be a sculpin which Raven put in the sky (Swanton, 1908, p. 400; 1909, pp. 18, 107), all of which indicates how prominent in native thought such an economically unimportant fish can become.

Possibly the red Irish lord, with its brightly colored, black-spotted back and its habit of spawning in March when it deposits large masses of tough pink eggs in very shallow water, sometimes even above high tide level, is the ‘Thunderbird's fish,’ mentioned by a Yakutat informant.

The fish, supposedly shaped like a halibut but with many “legs” quick and large, with sharp sides that can cut killerwhales in two, and a friend of the sculpin, is probably a mythological giant representative of the family. It (hīn-ta′c) appears in two Tlingit myths recorded by Swanton (1909, Tales 60 and 91).

I have been unable to identify the “fish that looks like a swan” (’adA oqtłi or ádA uqłi, i.e., ‘spear-swan‘).

Marine Invertebrates and Seaweed[17]

The waters of the Gulf of Alaska are so rich in marine invertebrates that to attempt to list them in any comprehensive way is quite beyond the scope of this study. The same is true of the thousands of insects and other noninvertebrates of the land and air. We need only mention, therefore, those that have come to the particular attention of the natives.

The most important shellfish are those which are eaten. These include the basket cockle, Clinocardium nuttalli, which is called by its old Eyak name, ‘squirts’ (caxw or caw, not yAłùłét‘ as in Boas, 1917, p. 155). In addition Boas (1891, p. 175, g˙’atłka'sk, i.e., atł’ÁtU) recorded the name ‘little clam’ for this cockle.

There is also the common smooth Washington or butter clam, Saxidomus giganteus, (tsiw), the large Pacific gaper or horse clam, Schizothaerus nuttalli, (gatł’ or gał; Boas, 1917, p. 155, gáł’, aL’), and the Pacific little-neck clam or “rock cockle,” Protothaca staminea. All of these the people now gather, and they were also well represented in the midden on Knight Island.

The “giant clam” that killed a woman (xt, Swanton, 1909, Tale 21, p. 41; Garfield and Forrest, 1948, figs. 46, 47) may be a rock oyster, possibly Pododesmus (Monia) macroschisma, since my informants called the rock oyster et. A similar story is told about a giant “rock oyster” or “rock scallop,” perhaps Hinnites giganteus (Garfield and Forrest, 1948, p. 41). A large scallop, Pecten caurinus (weyna), is occasionally caught on halibut hooks, but those that I saw at Yakutat had simply been brought home as curiosities.

The Yakutat also eat the common blue mussel, Mytilus edulis, (ak, yak; Boas, 1917, p. 101, yà), and the sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, (n; Swanton, 1909, p. 9, ns!). Again, both were found in the Knight Island middens. The site also contained such whelks as the large Oregon triton, Argobuccium oregonense, (Boas, 1891, p. 175, tl’itlk‘, i.e., tł‘itłkw), the small dogwinkle, Nucella (or Thais) sp., and the little puppet margarite, Margarites pupillus, as well as a few shield limpets, Acmaea pelta, but I do not know whether any of these were eaten. A “snail,” defined for me as the “worm” removed from its shell, is called ta (Boas, 1891, p. 181, t dot;, i.e., tq), a word which I believe refers to the encircling spiral shape. I do not know, however, whether this term is applied to small sea snails.

The Yakutat also eat the common chiton or “gumboot,” Katharina tunicata, (caw; Boas, 1917, p. 155, càw) which was represented in the Knight Island site, and sometimes eat the large crypto-chiton, Cryptochiton stelleri, (ku, kuw; Boas, 1917, p. 155, ùw). The latter was evidently something of a novelty because the tides are seldom low enough to expose them.

Although my informants denied that shellfish in Yakutat Bay became poisonous in summer, it would appear that the large California mussel, Mytilus californiensis, (i, yi; Boas 124, yi), which is especially likely to harbor the deadly dynoflagellate, was not eaten, but was sought for its hard sharp shell, used as a knife or scraper.

Dungeness crabs, Cancer magister(?)), (táw, áw) were eaten, as were “spider” or “king crabs,” possibly one or more of the Majidae and Lithodidae. The last were sometimes caught on halibut hooks and so were called ‘crab of the [halibut] deep’ (’ítkA táwù). The largest “king crabs” or “spider crabs” were called by a special name, i or é. According to Swanton's informants (1909, pp. 142, 412) “spider crabs” are used by land otters for poisonous arrowheads with which they shoot people, making boils all over their bodies or even causing death. These arrows may cause people to fall down suddenly, or to be crushed under falling tree limbs. The drum of the land otter is a “lobster shell” (q!exetAn‘q!u, i.e., eetA-núu). I suspect that this animal is a “spider crab” or “king crab.”

There are many varieties of starfish, Asteroidea, (tA) but none is eaten. It is used as a crest by the DAdentan sib (Swanton, 1908, p. 400).

Squid or “devilfish,” Loligo opalescens or Rossia pacifica(?)) (naqw) are sought for halibut bait; and indeed their name means ‘bait.’ There are stories of monster devilfish (Swanton, 1909, Tale 31, p. 132, dAas′). This may be Octopus apollyon, up to 28 feet in spread.

The Yakutat people recognize barnacles, Balanus sp., (tuk), and the goose barnacle, perhaps Lepas anatifera, (tÁcÈn), neither of which was eaten.

There are also many varieties of shrimp, Pandalus sp., but I learned nothing about them, probably because I neglected to ask. Shrimps were, however, mentioned by the natives as causing phosphorescence, as were small jellyfish, although my informants seemed very uncertain about the cause of this phenomenon and contradicted each other.

By trade from the south comes abalone shell, Haliotis sp. (guna; Boas 153, guná), dentalia, Dentalium pretiosum or D. californicus (tÁè), and “pearls” or opercula, ‘dentalium-among (?) stones’ (tÁè-u-tei). These precious shells were valued for ornaments.

“Sea jelly,” possibly a kind of jellyfish, is called ’ancient tree’(?), (takwan-’Asi) and is taboo to touch. Spawn left by invertebrates, not by fish, is i. Swanton (1909, pp. 402,) records the spotted sea cucumber, yn, which my informant translated as “slug.” It is probably a species of Cucumaria. Lisiansky (1814, pp. 166–167) when at Sitka reported a taboo against eating this. Swanton (1908, p. 456, cAku) also mentions some bad-smelling things on the beaches which are eaten by Land Otter Men, but we do not know what these are.

There are many varieties of seaweed. Both dark and light ribbon seaweed, Iridea laminoides*, (atc or atc; Harrington, k’at), and black seaweed, Porphyra laciniata*, (łaÁsk; Harrington, łaak’ask; Boas, 1917, p. 128, łaÁsk‘), were gathered, dried, and eaten. Boas (1891, p. 177, tar‘d, i.e., taéde) records a word for Fucus visiculosus, but I do not think that this was used for any purpose. Kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera, (gic) furnished material for fishing lines (tł‘eani).

Insects

Of the rich insect life we need mention only the tormenting mosquitoes (táà; Boas, 1917, p. 175, t’áà plural; Swanton, 1909, p. 278, t′q!a), the small biting gnats or ‘baby mosquitoes’ (taa yAti), and the still smaller but no less voracious “No-see-ums,” called ‘with his mouth-nose he bites’ (A-łun-dagUq). There are also spiders, ‘it makes a web’ (tàqàdi; Boas 138, qàsìsàn), small flies (houseflies ?) (Boas, 158, xn), and blowflies that lay eggs in salmon hung up to dry. These larvae are called natsłAné, according to Swanton (1909, p. 230), although maggots in caribou meat are called wn (Swanton, 1909, p. 24). I recorded the term, tł’u, for “worm,” which may also be a blowfly larva, or possibly the woodworm, which I heard as ł’Ak, when rendered by the same informant. The Woodworm was the crest of an important Raven sib at Chilkat (Swanton, 1908, p. 404, L!uk!x’ ht, ‘woodworm house,’ i.e., tł’u; 1909, 151, L!uq!u’x). The red-vested bumblebees that Burroughs (Burroughs and Grinnell, 1901, p. 61) saw buzzing about the lupins may be what Boas (1891, p. 174) recorded as gandas’dji. Emmons (1903, p. 264, tla-thlu; cf. Boas 1891, p. 175, tl tlu’) believes that the butterfly as a basketry pattern originated at Yakutat. The dragonfly, according to a Yakutat informant, had a name that means ‘it steals hair’ (qacicaw); Boas (1917, p. 156, łq’acìcáw) translates this as ‘no body hair,’ which is undoubtedly correct. Head lice, of course, were not unknown, especially on slaves (note the word for ‘burr,’ p. 34). The louse is wa (Swanton, 1908, p. 411, was!).

Small “bugs” seen on ponds under the ice were called da by one of our informants. Swanton (1908, 459, ts!’nq!ê) reports that the Tlingit treated the water beetle with considerable respect, as a dangerous being whom one should be careful not to offend, and also as a power that might be utilized by the shaman for curing. (For additional vocabulary, see Naish and Story, 1963, pp. 27–29.)

The Homeland of the Yakutat Tlingit

For the Tlingit, the world, their world, łíngít-’àní, is the ‘land of human beings.’ The word, ’àn, makes no distinction between territory and village, rather it denotes the home where people live. This homeland always belongs to some sib; the actual settlements within it are shared by the owners, their spouses and affinal kin, and any others who may choose to live or visit there. The ties between the people and the land are close, and no mere geographical description is adequate unless it attempts also to display the associations which make the łíngìt-’ànì a Lebensraum. These associations are in part conveyed by the names given to places, sometimes descriptive of the locality, sometimes referring to historical or legendary events which have occurred here. Even when the names are in a foreign tongue they serve as a reminder of those who once occupied the land and are now gone, although the Tlingit attempt, probably unconsciously, to adapt the strange sounds to words which have a meaning in Tlingit.

The human meanings of the landscape are more than the mythological dimension recognized by Malinowski (1922, ch. 12). They involve not simply places visited and transformed by Raven in the mythical past, but places hallowed by human ancestors. For individuals, of course, the world has special personal meanings, for there are places about which their grandparents and parents have told them, spots they have visited in their own youth, or where they still go. None of these personal associations are completely private; all are intermeshed through anecdote or shared experiences. Not only is the world the scene of happenings of long ago, yesterday, and tomorrow, but it has human significance for what it offers in food resources, scenery, easy routes for travel, or places of danger.

The Tlingit have never been alone in their world. Always there have been other tribes for them to visit or to visit them, and ever since the latter part of the 18th century they have shared it more and more with the White man. To the explorers, traders, missionaries, surveyors, even to myself and my companions, it has been a Lebensraum, and the experiences and meanings for the White man have merged with those of the Indian, and help to illuminate the latter.

For these reasons, the lands about the Gulf Coast of Alaska, the particular homeland of the Yakutat people, must be sketched, not simply as geography, but with some hint of all these rich associations, if we are to understand the Yakutat people themselves.

In the following sections of this chapter we will begin with Yakutat Bay itself, then turn southeastward, exploring as far as Lituya Bay, with an excursion up the Alsek River. Finally we will return to Yakutat to survey the lands to the west as far as the home of the Eyak at the mouth of the Copper River. The Yakutat Bay country has already been described in some detail, but in dealing with the terrain to the southeast and to the northwest it will be necessary to introduce some brief descriptions of the country. A great deal of the information about Yakutat Bay was gathered on excursions to Disenchantment Bay and to the head of Russell Fiord in 1952, and in discussing the photographs taken then. Similar excursions with native friends were made to parts of the Ankau lagoon system, to Lost River and Situk River southeast of Yakutat, and to Khantaak Island. For other areas I had to rely upon maps and charts for identification of the places mentioned.

YAKUTAT BAY

In entering Yakutat Bay we come to Tłaata or Łaata, a name which is applied more specifically to an old sealing camp south of Point Latouche (see p. 67). ‘Inside Yakutat Bay’ is TłaayIk, which Swanton (1908, p. 397) renders as ŁaxayÎ′k, “inside ła′xa (an island).” Actually the name is Eyak, according to a speaker of that language; the name Tłá’á’t is supposed to mean ‘glacier-inside place.’ The Tlingit could not pronounce it properly, one of them admitted, and “it sounds funny to him [the Eyak man] when we add -ta to that.” The inhabitants, ‘those who live inside Yakutat Bay,’ are the TłaayIk-qwan, (or ŁaayIk-qwan) although some informants felt that this expression belongs properly to the Raven sib, Kwacqwan, because they own all the shores of the bay. The name tłá’ or ła,’ with its various endings, is said to refer to the glacier which formerly extended way down the bay.

According to Dr. Michael E. Krauss:

tła’a’lah is Eyak for ‘Tlingit habitation,’ obviously referring to the Tlingit of Yakutat. ‘Glacier’ in Eyak is ła’ not tła’, but the alternation ł-tł does occur elsewhere in Eyak. [My own transcription may be at fault.] However, glacier (ła’) is a “d-class noun,” so that ‘by (the) glacier(s)’ in Eyak should properly be: ła’dAa’ (letter of December 20, 1966).

The word Yakutat, first adopted by the Russians in 1823 (Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 207 n.), or Yakwdat, is applied to the mouth of Ankau Creek in Monti Bay. Swanton (1909, Tale 105, p. 351) renders this as Y’kud’t. By some of my oldest informants the word is said to be Eyak, meaning “salt water pond,” or “a lagoon is forming,” referring to the open water which appeared as the Yakutat Bay Glacier melted back. One specified that it meant “mouth of a salt water bay,” like the Tlingit expression, ‘eł’wAt, and referred simply to the mouth of the Ankau. Other informants, who knew no Eyak, thought that the name was derived from yakwtadE, ‘to the ship,’ since Russian ships used to anchor at the mouth of the Ankau, or even that yakwdat referred to a “canoe bouncing up and down in the tidal currents.”

Harrington recorded Yaakwtaát-yÍk for all of the Ankau lagoon area, as well as the stream. Peter Lawrence told him that it meant “canoe (yaakw) jump (taát) inside (yIk)” because a canoe will bob up and down in the waves at the mouth of the Ankau River.[18]

MAP 6.—Yakutat Bay [to Dry Bay].

All of Yakutat Bay and the adjacent lands are claimed by the Kwacqwan, who trace their origin to the Copper River. The west side of the bay, and indeed all of the shores as far west as to include Icy Bay (see pp. 95–98), was theirs apparently by right of settlement. The eastern shores were purchased from the original owners. However, the Kwacqwan Ravens were accompanied to Yakutat by the Wolf ałyI Kagwantan, with whom they had intermarried at Icy Bay. These latter (or a closely related Yakutat branch of the same sib) were known as the TłaayIk-Teqwedi (perhaps after they had settled on Yakutat Bay). While some settlements seem to have belonged pre-dominently to the last sib, or at least to have had a man of that sib as their most distinguished house chief, control of Yakutat Bay for hunting, fishing, and gathering was in the hands of the leading Kwacqwan chief. According to reports about this sib chief during Russian days, his domination extended up into Disenchantment Bay, at least as far as Haenke Island.

The West Side of Yakutat Bay

There were no settlements on the exposed west shore of Yakutat Bay. Its most prominent feature is the enormous Malaspina Glacier, known to the natives simply as the ‘Big Glacier’ (sít’ tłèn).

Point Manby was Yat‘ak (‘place behind‘?). Manby Stream just inside the point was called KIk. (Note that Kwik Stream of the maps and charts is much farther up the bay, just below Blizhni Point.) At Point Manby there was once a great hollow tree, inside which one could hear the noise of an approaching storm. The łyI-Kagwantan youth who married a shipwrecked Russian woman (see pp. 233, 256) used to go inside the tree and, if he heard no storm warning, would run across Yakutat Bay on the ice, which at that time stretched from Point Manby to Eleanor Cove.

All along the shores of the lagoons between Point Manby and Kame Stream (“Grand Wash”), there are many bears. They dig holes to sleep in, about 6 feet in diameter and 3 feet deep, so that just the tips of their ears show. “It looks as if an army had been digging foxholes.” The grass is breast high, so that one may come upon the bears unexpectedly. Despite this danger, and that of landing through the surf, and also despite the Tlingit horror of frogs which are said to be very numerous here, this region is one of the best in which to gather strawberries, and large parties often go across from Yakutat to pick them. The members of the various expeditions who passed here on their way toward Mount Saint Elias were much impressed with the luxuriance of the vegetation, so close to the edge of the Malaspina Glacier, and commented on the abundance of strawberries and berry bushes, on the multitudes of waterfowl, and on the many tracks of enormous bears—the Alaska brown bear and the still larger Saint Elias silver grizzly (Filippi, 1900, pp. 72–74).

“Between Point Manby and Esker Creek is good for silver salmon and hunting seals…. We do not stay there but go for the day. This used to be good trapping grounds [for marten, mink, fox and land otter], but whites have used poison and killed off all the animals.” [Jack Ellis in Goldschmidt and Haas, 1946, p. 75.]

I did not learn the names for the numerous streams along this shore, except that Esker Creek was called Yat’a-sé’a or Yàtà-sí’à’.[19] Near here, at the base of Amphitheatre Knob, coal was found by Jack Dalton, a White man who prospected this area before he established the famous Dalton Trail and Dalton Post of Gold Rush days. The general area was called a-yéyì, ‘Below the Point,’ referring to Bancas Point, and the site of the coal was called ‘Jack's Town,’ Jack-’ani or TcEk-’ani, because Jack Dalton had a cabin nearby (see Russell, 1891 b, p. 169; Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 168). Dalton's cabin was at the foot of Galiano Glacier, according to Russell (1891 b, p. 98). The latter, in 1890, named Turner Glacier after “Jack Dalton, a miner and frontiersman now living at Yakutat, who is justly considered the pioneer explorer of the region.” He had apparently come to Yakutat as a cook on Schwatka's expedition of 1886 to climb Mount Saint Elias (Schwatka, 1891, p. 866), and 2 years later discovered the lignite beds (Topham, 1889 a, p. 425).

MAP 7.—Southeastern shore of Yakutat Bay.

It was inland from this region, along the mountain spurs north of Malaspina Glacier, on the Chaix Hills and on Blossom Island, that the Duke of Abruzzi‘s expedition to Mount Saint Elias noted the tracks of many bears, wolves, foxes, mountain goats and “partridges,” in and near the isolated remnant of a forest (Filippi, 1900, pp. 106, 120).

Bancas Point marks the western side of the entrance to Disenchantment Bay. On it or nearby was a sealing camp in the early 19th century called ‘Village on Top of the Cliff,’ eł’-cÀkí-’án. This name was also applied to Bancas Point itself.

The East Side of Yakutat Bay

Within the southeastern part of Yakutat Bay, including Knight Island, were the more settled areas, undoubtedly located there because of the shelter afforded by the chain of low islands. This shelter also attracted traders, whose visits were added inducements for the natives to congregate here. There were also such natural resources as salmon streams, berries, and timber.

I recorded no name for Ocean Cape, which marks the entrance to Yakutat Bay, although Harrington rendered it as ‘Russians’ Point’ (Útsiikkhwaan aaÍI). Point Carrew at the mouth of Monti Bay is ‘Place Where a Monster Emerged’ (‘AnA-daq-’At-qutsitiye). This name puzzled my informant because there are no monsters there now, and none to harm people since Raven ordered them “not to bother humans.” A reputedly “Aleut” (Chugach Eskimo) word for the point is TEyinAq or TeixnAk.

It should be noted that many of the places in this part of the bay have “Aleut” names. “And that islands, too—all kinds of Aleut names, Got’e or ot’e language…. It's not native language.” By “Aleut” is meant Chugach. One explanation for their presence is that they came to Yakutat with the Russians, another is that they were the original inhabitants. However, some informants evidently used “Aleut” to refer to the Eyak-speaking Indians. “When Copper River Indians walked here over the ice there was Aleuts mixed in with them. They made skin canoes.” (Minnie Johnson) Yet this informant knew, or later learned, that it was Eyak, Yatqwan (‘local people’), who were involved. In any case, the non-Tlingit names were hard for Tlingit informants to pronounce, and many were incorrectly rendered as well as inconsistently recorded. As Davidson (1901 b, p. 44) translated Tebenkov:

“…all places east [from the Copper River] to Yakootat bay have each four names; given by the Tchugatz [Eskimo of Prince William Sound], the Oogalentz [Eyak], the Copper River Indians [Atna], and the Koloshes [Tlingit]…. ”

Ankau Point, at the northern side of the entrance to Ankau Creek, is ‘Aukciaq (or rather ‘ÁqciyÀq), an “Eyak” or, more correctly, a Chugach name. At the edge of the woods behind the point is the present ANB (Alaska Native Brotherhood) Cemetery, used by all the residents of Yakutat, and behind that again a pond. It is said that the cemetery was started (in the middle or late 19th century ?) with the grave house of a murdered Teqwedi shaman, and with the burial of his niece who wished to lie near her uncle. These graves could not be found, although we searched around the shore of the pond. Later (summer of 1952), I heard that the doctor‘s grave house had been seen near the Army road, but farther up the creek than we had been able to explore. It was in this vicinity, but well inside the creek, that Dixon in 1787 (Beresford, 1789, chart opp. p. 170, pp. 175–176) and Malaspina, in 1791 (Galiano, 1802, chart 8; Malaspina, 1885, pp. 161, 346) visited the native cemetery made famous through their descriptions. Possibly this area has been in more or less continual use ever since the 18th century; first as a depository for the ashes of the dead and later as a burial ground. Since tidal currents make the mouth of the creek rather dangerous, there have been several drownings here, and monuments to those who were lost have been erected along the bank of the stream. One of these was a cross in memory of two Kwacqwan brothers who drowned some time before 1900, and in 1949 an impressive marble shaft was set up on the point for a youth of the same sib who had drowned with an Eskimo companion.

Also in the vicinity of the former cemetery in the woods, Vancouver's expedition in July 1794, noted a temporarily abandoned village where about 50 dogs had been left behind (Vancouver, 1801, vol. V, p. 396). Although Dixon in 1787, and Malaspina in 1791 noted habitations or buildings in this area (Beresford, 1789, pp. 167, 175; Malaspina, 1849, p. 290; 1885, 161; Wagner, 1936, p. 258; quoted on pp. 311, 312), my informants were uncertain whether there had ever been a village here, and we failed to locate the site. Minnie Johnson remembered that a village here had been deserted because of a war between the Teqwedi inhabitants and the Dekina (Haida or Henya Tlingit) from southeastern Alaska, who cut off each others’ heads. This is suggestive of Malaspina‘s report of a war, shortly prior to his visit, and to the descriptions of heads put into separate boxes at the cemetery. The survivors are supposed to have moved to Port Mulgrave on Khantaak Island, according to my informant. Later, however, she denied that there had ever been a village near the mouth of the Ankau.

As already indicated, Ankau Creek, including the whole salt water lagoon system which it drains, is called YakwdatyIk, ‘Inside Where the Boat Is.’ Ankau was known to be a White man's name, but my informants were, of course, ignorant that it had been given by Malaspina in honor of the ‘chief’ (’ànqáwu), or “Ankau Juné” (Malaspina, 1885, p. 345; Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 207 n.). The pilings on the southeast side of the creek, just inside the mouth, are the ruins of the saltery built in 1901 (Moser, 1901, p. 390). From here, in 1905, a 12-year-old girl is believed to have been stolen by land otters when she tried to walk along the shore to the mission school at Yakutat (p. 754).

Monti Bay is DjiwanÍk or DjIwAnÍkta (‘inside the limb,’ likening the bay to the branch of a tree). One informant rendered the name as TanwanIkta, suggesting ‘a place beside the sea lions.’ On the middle of the south shore is a large rock, called the ‘Sea Lions’ Rock’ (tàn tÉÍ) because these animals like to lie on it. Harrington, however, reported that Monti Bay was called TjUwaanÍk, an “Aleut” name, and that ‘Monti Bay shore’ (TjUwaanÍk-thÁ) was the proper name for the present town of Yakutat.

The town of Yakutat is at the head of Monti Bay (pls. 22–26). Here are the Government dock where vessels of the Coast Guard and of the Public Health Service tie up; storage tanks for the Standard Oil Company; the cannery and its dock (built 1902–04), with the cannery store, houses for supervisory personnel, the old bunkhouses, the terminus of the railway to Johnson Slough, and other buildings. The cannery store and dock form the center of the economic life of the community. The natives moved to Yakutat about 1919 from the “Old Village” farther north, in order to be near the cannery, although many already had summer homes or tents here, and some families still continue to occupy houses in the Old Village. A well-kept road connects the new Yakutat with the Old Village, and with the airfield about 4 miles southeast, with the Coast Guard Loran Station on the ocean front to the southwest, and from there runs southeastward to a fishing camp at Lost River. In the middle of the native community of Yakutat is the old Lutheran church, beginning to fall into disrepair in 1954, and the ANB Hall (built about 1921). Beyond this, continuing to the north, is the jail (built in 1949), the post office, school, a general store, Public Health Clinic, and the sites picked in 1954 for a town power plant and for a new Presbyterian church.

The Lutheran Evangelical Mission, established in 1889 (the present buildings are newer), is about half a mile farther north along the road that parallels the water. It is called SkunyAkA, ‘By the School,’ referring to the boarding school formerly run by the mission.

The Old Village, from which can be obtained a magnificent view of Mount Saint Elias that is much enjoyed by the inhabitants, is called Qa-A-ak-’àn, ‘Town Between Someone's Jaws.’ Harrington was told that the correct name was ‘Town Between Someone's Legs’ (khaakkAt-áak-’âan), but that “this word has a bad sound, so they called it ‘Between the Jaws.’” Both names suggest its position on a curving gravel beach between two rocky headlands. On the southern hill, between the mission and the Old Village, is a graveyard used between 1890 and 1924, as far as could be judged from the dated tombstones, although some unmarked graves were probably older. On the northern point are some marble monuments to dead members of the Kwacqwan (pl. 30). The shafts were moved here from their original location when the road was built over the graves. The road winds around the point to end at the lagoon. There were also a few wooden grave houses on the point. The Old Village was founded about 1889 by Indians who had moved across from the village at Port Mulgrave on Khantaak Island so that they could be near the mission and near the store run by a Sitka merchant. The great lineage houses here were first in the “old style,” later made of sawed lumber from the sawmill on the lagoon belonging to the mission. Many of the old houses are still occupied (pl. 26).

The lagoon which opens north of the Old Village and which runs behind it is called Qautma (Harrington: khI’u’tzAnnAh,i.e., qÍ’u’dzAnA). The sawmill belonging to the mission was located at its head, and the women still go to the lower stretches of the lagoon to gather cockles, clams, and sea urchins at low tide. The small island at the mouth of the lagoon is ‘Canoe Island,’ Yakwat’i, or ‘canoe on-it always stays-there’ (yakw ‘ÁkÁAtEnÀ). Harrington recorded ‘island’ (xá-t or aat') ‘narrow’ (’ánAtjÍtck, in Eyak), or more properly ‘ground-narrow’ (‘Ah lAttshÍtsk, in Eyak). Residents of the Old Village used to keep their big canoes on this island because the beach in front of their houses was too exposed.

The larger island to the east is ‘Big Berries,’ Tł’eqwtłen, and the smaller one just to the north is ‘Small Berries,’ Tł‘eqw ÁtU, because women used to pick blueberries on them.

Puget Cove farther north is Takuk. The landlocked lagoon just south of Canoe Pass (lat. 59°35’ N.) is TÁqatłata (-?-‘inside,’ as applied to a bay). The deep water at the lower end of Johnstone Passage, between this lagoon and Puget Cove, was called Dàxàdànéyá. This name, however, evidently referred to the little island near the shore where Peter Lawrence had a camp, since Harrington was told that the name, Dáá-tłáni-’an (táakkáa ttláannii ’âan), meant ‘deep all around camp,’ because the wooded place became an island only at high tide.

Khantaak Island, according to Harrington, was called S’úus, or S’uúskhÁh, although his Eyak informant pronounced it Túus. His informants were unable to translate it and variously guessed that it might be Aleut, Russian or English! I was told that the name was S’ukA, by some said to be an Eyak word, but by others, better informed, reported to mean ’on u.’ The latter was identified from the picture in Peterson (1941, opp. p. 64) as a black turnstone, a bird which can often be seen flying around the island (Emma Ellis). Other informants identified it only as “a pretty bird” especially common in southeastern Alaska, which fits its known range (Gabrielson and Lincoln, 1959 pp. 339–340). Dall (Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 207) reports that “Khantaak” was “adopted by Tebienkoff from the native name.” If the term is Tlingit, it probably refers to the lupins (EntAkw, kántaq, gantáqw) which grow profusely on the open gravel flats of the island. According to Davidson (1869, p. 139) the name is the [Eskimo] word for ’dish.‘

MAP 8.—Yakutat Harbor.

The native village at Port Mulgrave, properly called S’ukA, ‘On the Turnstone,’ was inhabited up to about 1893. According to my informants, people moved here from Ankau Point (?), from settlements on the Ankau lakes and from streams southeast of Yakutat, in order to trade furs. One gathers from the reports of Dixon (Beresford, 1789, chart opp. p. 170), Malaspina (1885, p. 156) and others that already in the 18th century this was at least a seasonal camping place. Later, substantial lineage houses were built along the shore, the pond in back was used for washing, and a well to the north was dug for drinking water. The open grassy flat just north of the site is KAtIgAnkiya. The graveyard used in the late 19th century was on Point Turner, but this was destroyed when the land sank during the earthquake of 1899. Some of the bones were rescued and were reburied in a cemetery which occupies the old village site. The graves here are grouped according to sib, from south to north: ałyI-Kagwantan, Tł‘UknaAdi, Teqwedi, and Kwacqwan, probably as the houses were formerly alined. The dates on inscribed stones range from 1908 to 1920, although I know some graves are older. Now the site is overgrown with bushes. People gather strawberries on the sandy flat near Point Turner, or collect tern eggs from the edge of the beach. Seaweed and chitons are found on the rocky point (where the light is now), and in Port Mulgrave there are cockles and mussels. No one lives on Khantaak Island now, except for a White couple with a mink farm near the north end of the island, but the whole island has continued to be a source of black and ribbon seaweed, chitons, cockles, clams, crabs, blueberries, strawberries, salmonberries, and sweet hemlock bark (Goldschmidt and Hass, 1946, pp. 76–77).

The reef opposite Point Turner, off the southern end of Yakutat Roads, is De’àngéya, referring to the ships as big as ‘villages’ (’àn) that used to anchor nearby. This may be a Tlingit version of what Harrington recorded as the Eyak name for a point on Khantaak Island, about 3 miles from Yakutat, which means ‘[the little reef] comes out in the middle’ (taa aakkiiyyÀ’, i.e., da’agiyÀ‘). The location suggests Village Shoal at Port Mulgrave.

One half mile beyond the point mentioned by Harrington, the latter indicates another point, called in Eyak NIAgAtáł (nIIAkkAttháał). On the mainland opposite is a cove and salt water lake called AdAcÍ (AttAccÍ), which may be the cove and lagoon behind the ‘Berry Islands’ (see p. 62), although I have been unable to identify the locality.

Pyramid Point, just north of the village site, between Port Mulgrave and Rurik Harbor, is GAnaxwaník or GanAwAnIk, a place where the people used to gather “wild rhubarb.”

On the western beach of Khantaak Island “ruby-tinted black sand containing scale gold” was discovered in 1880(?), and created considerable excitement for a few years, while White men were panning it. However, in 1890 or 1891, thousands of dogfish washed ashore, their oil saturating the sand so that mercury could not be used to separate the gold. Then a great wave washed the beach away. In 1905 someone was still trying to work the small bit of sandy beach at the southeastern end of the island (Tarr and Butler, 1909, pp. 165, 167; Scidmore, 1893, p. 131). Minnie Johnson remembers the miners, because one of them married a native woman. I was also told that much of the shore along Point Munoz had sunk “during the Katmai eruption [1911].” This end of the island was further submerged in the earthquake of 1958 and three women picking strawberries near Point Turner were drowned.

The large bay on the east, which almost cuts Khantaak Island in two, is ‘Sea Otter Bay,’ YUxt ei (Harrington: yÚxtIkkeeÍi), because the sea otter used to shelter in it during storms. The isthmus here is only 150 yards wide and Harrington's informants reported that the sea otter used to cross overland by it. People used to come to the woods around the bay to collect hemlock bark in the spring, and when one of my informants was a child, living at Khantaak village, she and some other children found a shaman‘s outfit in a box cached on a big rock in a pond near this bay (see pp. 699–700).

A White couple, the Schlichtigs, have a home on the northernmost eastern hook of the island. This is Tebenkov's Tapor or “Hatchet” Point (Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 209), and it may be the ‘Low Water Point’ (łén ai) of Harrington's informants. A camping place somewhere southwest of the house was called QadAk. Harrington recorded that this campsite (kaattÀk) was a place of strawberries and tall grass at a little bay on an island about mile from the north end of Khantaak Island (see “Crab Island” below). Another (?) camping place in the vicinity was called ‘Town Inside the Trees,’ ’Às-kutu-’àn, but this name was also given to a place on the east side of Dolgoi Island (see p. 64). Somewhere on the northeast shore of Khantaak Island, however, Dixon in 1787 saw native huts (Beresford, 1789, map. opp. p. 170). The northeast point of the island, known locally as “Strawberry Point,” is called anda’Aq or Xanduaq, reported to be an Eyak or “Aleut” name. The same name was given to “Crab Island Bay” east of the point. Some confusion results from the fact that, according to Harrington, the whole north end of Khantaak Island was called “Crab Island” by the Whites, and AntA’A (an Eyak name) by the natives. Strawberry Point itself was AntA‘A łÚh (—nose). This Eyak name would appear to have been the original for “Khantaak.”

“Crab Island,” the tiny island in front of the Schlichtigs’ home, at the north end of Johnstone Passage, had the Eyak name ołet’a’tłk (Harrington: kUtłAtt'A’t, i.e., gUtłAt'A’ł), referring to ducks standing up in the water and “shaking their wings.” As pronounced by the Tlingit, this name sounds like QAłat'’ał or Kutładaqw. The open water between Khantaak Island and Kriwoi Island on the east is Qiyakw, said to be Eyak for ‘open place’ (i.e., giyA, according to Krauss).[20]The same name (Qeyaq) was also given to some spot on one of the nearby islands.

Johnstone Passage, east of Khantaak Island, was called UnaqAdEt sidi, “UnaqAdEt's Pass,” referring to an enormous, wealth-bringing water monster that was once seen here, or at Canoe Pass (Swanton, 1909, p. 165: onaqAd‘t). Informants were uncertain whether this name applied more properly to Johnstone Passage or to Canoe Pass, which branches off it from the east, south of Dolgoi Island.

Canoe Pass was called DÀdÉsìt, ‘the channel on the way to the place behind’ (Harrington: Teekkhiì-siit or tUw tee ssiít, i.e., dekí sít or duwde sít). On the mainland side of the pass, just above high water, are two conspicuous rocks that look like crouching figures. They are called HindE tuni yakw cuwa, or Łundak tuni tEyi. My informants were reluctant to translate these words, but they refer to a young man who ran his boat on the rocks in the dark and cracked it while he was sneaking after his sweetheart. The rocks are said to have been once farther from the shore (i.e., the land has recently subsided ?). A rock on the north side of the pass was once a bear swimming toward the mainland, but he turned to stone when an adolescent girl passing in a canoe peeked at him. It is called Dàq-’À-’uwahùwu xuts, ‘To-the-Mainland Was-Swimming Bear.’ Harrington's informants called it the ‘outward swimming bear’ (taák-’uwwuhhuwwu-xxúu, i.e., dák-‘uwuhuwu-xú), heading for the mainland.

There is said to have been a village on both sides of Canoe Pass, so huge that ravens trying to fly overhead would be overcome by smoke from the houses. The name, ’AgEtł’ wułuwa t‘AiyE(?), is said to refer to a contest as to who could make the most noise eating rotten salmon spawn. We found only a small shell-heap on the island on the north side of the channel.

The lagoon on the north, just west of Dolgoi Island, is GAxw-’adu-ewiyE,’ Black-Ducks They-Netted Place,’ or “Where They Caught Black Ducks (gAxw or gAw) With a Net (gew),” because the Russians used to go fowling here. Harrington renders this as ‘Black Duck Place’ (kaáxw ’aátuskeewwéh, i.e., gáxw ’ádùs gewé). There was once a settlement or camp in the vicinity.

Dolgoi Island, in Russian “Long Island” (Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 209, n.) had no single native name; rather there were names for various places on it. However, Harrington gives Qiyá (khiiyáak’) as the Eyak name for the whole island, while my informants restricted Qeyaq (i.e., giyAg according to Krauss) to a locality on the northeast side, opposite Kriwoi Island. A small site on the southeast corner, opposite Gregson Island, may have been the settlement or camp called ‘Village in the Woods,’ ‘As-kutu-’àn, reported to have been occupied in Russian times. A place on the west(?) shore is Qiyu-Adi-’ák. A lake or lagoon on the island is associated with the clever escape of a Tlingit hunter from an ambush by a war party of “Aleuts” (Chugach) led by a Russian. The lake is called WÀxÁq, but because the “Aleuts” had hidden their kayaks there it is also known as “Aleuts’ Lake,” Got’e ’ayi.

Gregson and Fitzgerald Islands, the “Sister Islands” of the Whites, are called ’IłdIłIyáł (heard as dAłíàł; Harrington: ’IłtIłiiyáał), meaning in Eyak that they are close together. Two Indians, now dead, used to live on Gregson Island, and later a White man tried to raise mink and goats on it.

Kriwoi Island, “Crooked Island” in Russian (Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 209, n.), is known locally as “John Bremner‘s Island.” Harrington reports that it is called Acaaní (Accaaaannií) an “Aleut” name.

The smaller Otmeloi Island, “Shoals Island” in Russian, is “Hardy Trefzger's Island,” known as ’AniłuwAq. Harrington reports that the word (‘Annił-łuwwÁk) means ‘head island’ in Eyak, referring to the shape of the north end, and that the island is also called “Head Island” in English. Krauss believes that the name is probably Chugach, and definitely not Eyak.

Krutoi Island, “Steep Island” in Russian, is the northernmost in the line of small islands, and is usually known as “John Ellis’ Island,” or “Fox Island.” It has an Eyak name, o’ét (Harrington: u’eét, meaning unknown; Krauss: u’e’d, ’place of (an absent) something‘), meaning, according to Annie Harry, the print of a body, as one would make in bed, but here referring to a depression in the sand, since the island was a camping place. Yakutat Chief Yaodaqet, the head of the Kwacqwan sib, sometimes stayed on this island, and sometimes at the Humpback Salmon Creek on the mainland opposite. His slaves stayed on the island, “and every time they see bad weather coming they go around and tell the people not to go out [in canoes]” I was told. This chief, who probably died about 1880 was the second of that name. His grave is supposed to be in the cemetery near the mission. B. A. Jack (1860–1948) carved a wooden Raven for his monument, which was later sold to a museum. Persons who were born about 1855 are reported to have said that during their childhood there were no trees on Krutoi Island. According to tradition, these islands were bare when the first Kwacqwan came across the ice from the west side of Yakutat Bay.

The reef running southeast from Krutoi Island is CAgułqÉ. This is said to be a Tlingit name but was not translated.

If one follows the mainland shore northeastward after coming through Canoe Pass, the first large bay south of Gregson Island is Neqit (Harrington: neekhít, Eyak). Redfield Cove, farther north, was ’Ātł’at, probably the Eyak ’an.tł’ahd for ‘head of the river’ (Krauss). A camping place was reported at the north point. On the chart, a trail is indicated as running from the cove east to Redfield Lake, one of the many lakes drained by the Situk River, and the native name most probably refers to this lake (see p. 79). One informant, however, insisted that there was no lake in the locality indicated.

On the mainland shore, two thirds of the distance from Redfield Cove to Humpback Salmon Creek, there are two conspicuous white boulders, at about the halftide line. These are said to be two old women who were quarreling with each other when they were turned to stone by the baleful glance of an adolescent girl. They are called Wuc-dAqan-tE, ‘With-Each-Other Quarreling Stones.’ (Some informants gave this name to the two rocks on the south side of Canoe Pass.)

The famous Humpback Salmon Creek (lat. 59°39’N.) is called Kwac hini; kwac being the Eyak word for ‘humpback salmon,’ and hini the Tlingit word for ‘stream of.’ A place on the lake which it drains is called NatłaAk-‘akA (see Situk River, p. 79). Although informants disagree as to who were the original owners of this stream, all concur that it was purchased by the Gineqwan immigrants from the Copper River, who thereby acquired their present name Kwacqwan from the stream. Minnie Johnson remembers stopping in spring at the stream to get salmon and big cockles. The latter were 6 inches long and had to be speared because the tide did not go out far enough to uncover them.

The area about Eleanor Cove and Knight Island offers favorite spring camping spots. Here families go for halibut and for the first salmon, to hunt the bears emerging from their dens, or simply to take delight in watching the cubs playing on the bare slopes of snow or scree, and to enjoy the beauties of the unfolding spring. Now hemlock and spruce bark are juicy with delicious sap, and the fresh green stalks of wild celery are crisp. Herring spawn, seaweed, and sea urchins may also be gathered. People will stay here until it is time to move farther up to the sealing camps in Disenchantment Bay.

The south point of Eleanor Cove is called “Around the Face,” because it is supposed to look like a face. I transcribed the native name as Qayuotła, but if the name is Tlingit, this must be incorrect.

Eleanor Cove, locally known as “Chicago Harbor,” has been called ’Asita (’àsyÍkta?, ’back in among the trees’?), and Tł’acanaqat'. Harrington renders the second as Tł’aca niqat (tł’aacaa nrkkhaat), referring to a V-shaped canyon. The head of the cove is Ł’ucayi, ‘At the Head of Muddy Water,’ from the glacier-fed stream (Ł’u) that enters it (Harrington: tł’úu-càak). Coal was said to have been found on the slope above. Harrington also gives the name Kayiyaat for a large canyon at the head of the cove, and seems to place the muddy stream (tł’úu) farther north along the shore.

Eleanor Island is ŁáÁtc, and was also bought by the ancestors of the Kwacqwan from the original owners. According to Harrington, the name ŁAAt (ŁAÁt) is believed to be Aleut, although “the only time the Aleuts came in here was when they were hunting sea otters and got caught in a storm and came in here for the duration of a bad spell of weather.”

Knight Island was ÀnÀwÁs, an “Aleut” or Eyak name. (Harrington gives it as gAnAwÁS (kAnnAwwÁs); Krauss suggests that it is from the Eyak word gAlAwAs, ‘water extends in an indefinite shape,’ or ’flows in an indefinite bed.’) A Tlingit name used by only one informant, Qacayi at'’, ‘Human Head Island,’ probably applied more properly to Otmeloi Island, since this would be a translation of what was alleged to be the Eyak (Chugach?) name (see p. 64). Knight Island was the first territory acquired by the Copper River immigrants, who obtained it by purchase after one of their women, a chief's daughter or sister, had been prevented by the owners from picking strawberries on it. At that time it was just a big strawberry patch, without trees. Informants disagree as to whether the payment was made by the woman‘s father (ałyI-Kagwantan or TłaayIK-Teqwedi), by her uncle, or by her brother, although all acknowledge that the Kwacqwan obtained it through this purchase. My informants were also uncertain as to whether the original owners had ever had a real village on it, and as to the period when the first reported permanent houses on it were built. These last seem to have included the Kwacqwan Fort House, and the Teqwedi Bear House. Certainly the Teqwedi lived here at one time, for there is a tradition that a blind man of the TłaayIK-Teqwedi, who had been left behind when his relatives went to sealing camp, was abused by a party of TłukwaAdi from Dry Bay (see p. 262). I was not told, however, whether there was a village or a camp on Knight Island at that time. When Jack Ellis (Goldschmidt and Haas, 1946, p. 76) assigned Knight Island to the Teqwedi, I believe he was thinking of the leading chief of the village or camp, not of general territorial rights, since these were claimed by the Kwacqwan. Certainly, up to modern times, the south shore of the island has been used as a camping place for hunters going up and down the bay. Here, for example, in the last century, the older brother of one of my informants had to camp because his canoe was overloaded with seals. The land otters tried to kidnap him, but were defeated through the efforts of a shaman, his uncle (pp. 716, 753–754). At the present time, two White men have places on the south side of the island.

Most informants agreed that the site on the south shore, ‘Old Town,’ TłAkw-’an, had been abandoned before the Russians came, although they also believed that the name had been given to it by the wealthy Teqwedi house chief and shaman, atgawet, to make people think it was as high class as the Chilkat village of Klukwan. (Swanton, 1908, p. 397, renders this as Laku-n [tłakw-an], ’Renowned Town.’) My most reliable informant, however, insisted that atgawet had nothing to do with Knight Island, and had lived after the Russians (pp. 246–247). The site, occupied in both late prehistoric and protohistoric times, has already been described (de Laguna et al, 1964). According to some, its correct name should be “Raven Falling Down,” Yeł ’ada qutciyE(?), because the smoke from the many houses would overcome any raven attempting to fly over the town. Others gave this name (Yeł’adA kAł tciye?) to a reported site a little farther east on the island.

Knight Island seems to have been Malaspina‘s “Isle of Pines” (Isla Pineda or Isla de Pineda), described as a fairly high island, heavily wooded, with grave monuments on the south shore facing east, like those seen on Ankau Creek (Malaspina, 1885, pp. 164, 340, 346). The island was near the mountainous mainland where the bottom dropped off sharply, and here the launches of the Descubierta and Atrevida were anchored in July, 1791, after having explored as far north as Haenke Island.

The north end of Knight Island is its ‘head,’ AnAwAs cada; the reef outside the island is GwAtsítła (Harrington: wAtsIłàa).

On the mainland, opposite the southeast point of Knight Island, the stream that drains the northern flanks of Mount Tebenkof is simply ‘Muddy Water,’ Ł’u (Harrington: tł’úu-cáak). The mountain north of this stream has a sandy slope toward the water and is called ‘Sand Mountain,’ Tł‘ew-cà.

The small island, opposite the middle of Knight Island and close to the mainland shore, is Nuw, ‘Little Fort’ (see de Laguna et al, 1964, p. 22). On Little Fort Island (as we have named it), we found the remains of stone defences, reportedly built by the Teqwedi as protection against the “Aleuts.” The island would have been easier to defend before it was elevated 12 feet in the earthquake of 1899, which exposed a landing beach.

Eggs of a sardinelike fish, ‘Thunderbird fish’ (xetł adi), were obtained from under the rocks along the mainland shore between Little Fort Island and the north end of Knight Island. One family from Yakutat used to camp regularly each March on the mainland point just above Little Fort Island before going farther up the bay to sealing camp. Here they used dip nets to catch smelt(?) that came right up to the shore. This camp was on the beach raised by the earthquake.

According to Harrington the canyon that comes down opposite the north end of Knight Island was Hasdanigág (haastannikák). A deep canyon with a small river in it (apparently the same one?) he variously transcribes as Ko-ik, or agÍk, or as aił nagí-t (kaakÍ-k or kaakił naaki-t). I was told that there had been an “Aleut” camp, oqik(?), at the mouth of the stream across from the north point of Knight Island, but the inhabitants were all killed off by the Kwacqwan.

“The name wAxEkw is Aleut [Eyak?] for ‘mountain stream.’ Sea gulls used to lay their eggs there. There was no grass. Quite a few families settled in there…. It's right across from Knight Island. A stream comes out. It used to be shacks all the way down there on a sandspit. Now it's all trees. I think that the name is Aleut because I never heard that gEkw business in Tlingit. In our language it would be ‘mountain creek.’ They have a war at that time, and some of the bunch…made some kind of protection—I don’t know what. I didn‘t see anything there…. They just try to beat one another there for eggs.” (Minnie Johnson) The informant knew no details about the war.

Roosevelt Creek is the larger stream just north of Mount Hoorts (i.e., xuts, ’brown bear’). The creek, “the biggest canyon of all,” was called GiyAAq (ki-yAkÁk cáat or KiiyAhÁk or Ki-yAAk) according to Harrington. The big sand and gravel bluffs north of this are Tłew-cà-tłén, “Big Sand Mountain.’ Harrington records the same name but assigns it to Logan Bluff, see below, indicating that the widest rock slide near Roosevelt Creek is Ta-k-wucriłIyÀh. The point beyond this is ‘Low Tide Point,’ Łen ai, because so many boulders are exposed at low tide. The stream just north of the bluff, (below Mount Hendrickson ?), is ’Agwág (‘aàkwáak) which Harrington was told was a Tlingit, an Eyak, or an Aleut name by different informants. Beyond this again was another rock slide. All this long sandy stretch, from Roosevelt Creek to the last stream south of Point Latouche, is Logan Beach, “Logging Bluff,” where the waves beating against the bluffs wash down small amounts of gold-bearing sands. These were being worked by three prospectors in 1905, but offered bare wages (Tarr and Bulter, 1909, p. 166). My informants did not mention the miners or the gold, although Minnie Johnson remembered stopping here as a child to get edible hemlock bark when the family was moving up the bay to sealing camp.

The last stream south of Point Latouche, described to Harrington as a short canyon with trees in it, was called Tł’e-tshú-t (tł’eettshúut) by his informants. At the north bank of this stream and at the north end of Logan Beach, was the site of the old sealing camp, Tłáátà (or Łá’á’tà), used before the natives had rifles, when floating ice in Disenchantment Bay rendered camping dangerous above Point Latouche. The old campsite was back in the woods, on the flat between the stream and the rocky slope. Several now middle-aged and elderly persons report that the shift from this camp to sites above Point Latouche was made when they were small children (i.e., about 1880–85?), yet their accounts are not consistent. Furthermore, according to historical traditions, it was early in the 19th century that the TłaayIk-Teqwedi were massacred at a camp above Point Latouche (pp. 264, 270). Perhaps there were periods or seasons in the middle of the last century when the campsite of Tłáátà was the northernmost point that could be reached safely.

Malaspina certainly found the natives camped here in July, 1791 (1885, pp. 162–164). The site as he described it faced south and was protected from northern winds, although the shore was exposed to heavy surf. On July 1, the young Indian chief guided Malaspina‘s boats north of Point Latouche to a gravelly beach at the foot of a gully between two fairly tall mountains, where there was a flat with pleasant vegetation, a spot corresponding to the later campsites visited by the Harriman Alaska Expedition in 1899. Malaspina found the water filled with floating ice and, as is well known, was blocked by an ice barrier at Haenke Island. It may be significant that his guide insisted on returning to his camp below the point before night.

Disenchantment Bay and Russell Fiord

Point Latouche, ’Aná’díyàc (‘Aná’díyàc), said to be an “Aleut” name, is rendered in Tlingit as ’matEyac, “in front of the stone platform.” Harrington's Eyak informant (George Johnson) pronounced it as ’uunnaaddiiyâac or ’uunnAttAyyAhc, meaning in Eyak ‘[Old Raven] has his young ones in here,’ referring to some wave-cut caves at the point. Krauss suggests that it may be the Eyak ’u-nahd ’idAyahc, ‘month when (animals) bear young.’ It is a conspicuous and important landmark. It was, in fact, cited by an informant as an example of something always noticed. On rounding it, one enters Disenchantment Bay, leaving behind the ocean swells and the forests, to come face to face with the magnificent panorama of snowy peaks and glaciers that make the ‘heart’ (‘At’e) of Yakutat Bay so beautiful to all who see it. Here are rocky slopes, bare except for scrubby alders, willows, and wild flowers, inviting to the hunter of ptarmigan, bear, and mountain goat. The only trees are a few cottonwoods or balsam poplars. The waters are filled with floating ice on which the seals lie, sometimes whole families in rows of up to six or seven on a single cake. One evening in late July, 1952, there were seals stretched out on the ice all over the bay as far as we could see. The water was faintly phosphorescent, due to tiny shrimps, according to my informants.

The glare from the water and ice is very strong, so that women and children in the old days used to smear their faces with dark paint to prevent sunburn. Men were supposed to put charcoal rings around their eyes when they passed Point Latouche, (undoubtedly to protect them from the glare), although an informant said it was to prevent rain (p. 806).

Although Point Latouche itself is bare of trees, yet there is supposed to be still standing the old dead trunk on which the Tł‘UknaAdi scout spied upon the sealing camp farther north (p. 263). Our Indian friends and ourselves looked for it in vain.

Between Point Latouche and Haenke Island are four flats at the mouths of streams where sealing camps were established. They are here described from south to north.

(1) Qégótłéyà’ (Harrington: khé-u-łe-yÀh), said (erroneously?) to mean ‘burned up’ in Eyak.[21] This flat extends between two streams, the mouths of which are close together. Behind this is a cliff or rock slide called ‘Mountain Goat's Fort’ (Djinuwu nuwu), where the father of one of my friends nearly fell when hunting black bear.

(2) The next camp is WugániyE (Harrington: wúukaaníyèh), meaning ‘burned up’ in Tlingit. This was where the TłaayIk-Teqwedi had a fortified camp, surrounded by stonewalls with loopholes for guns. It was probably on the rocky dome in the middle of the valley. The defenders were all killed by the Tł‘UknaAdi from Akwe River and Dry Bay. The baby brother of Minnie Johnson died and was cremated here, about the time of the Harriman Alaska Expedition.

(3) Calahonda Creek was ‘Big Valley,’ CanA tłen. The camp of that name was close under the hills at the north side.

(4) North of this was ‘Narrow Valley,’ CanA kusa (Harrington: cáannÁ kÙssÀ).

Most informants said that there were only three main camps in this area, that is, at the first of these localities. The whole beach was said to be called Qégótłéyà’, the first camp was WuganiyE; then came a small camping place on the “gravel between two [main] camps,” ’iyawa kAt A tAna (A is ’glacial mud’); the second main camp was at ’Narrow Valley‘; and last was the camping place at the mouth of Calahonda Creek. This would leave the stream north of the last without a name. Harrington was also told that the double canyon just above Point Latouche was called Xé·khúusAyÁ. (The first camp would have been between the mouths of these streams.)

At these various camps the people used to gather in June and July, setting up bark huts, canvas tents and smokehouses. The men hunted seals, and sometimes bears and ptarmigan. The women flenzed the seals, dried the meat, rendered the fat, and stretched the skins. At this time of year seagull eggs were gathered at various places in Disenchantment Bay. At low tide, seaweed, mussels and chitons could be obtained, and wild celery grew near a pond behind the gravel beach (Minnie Johnson).

The Harriman Alaska Expedition visited these camps in mid-June, 1899 (pls. 72–80). Grinnell (1901, pp. 158–165) and other members of the party have left descriptions of the camps and of the methods of hunting and preparing the seal oil and skins. As Burroughs (1901, p. 60) observes, while the natives are here, and later at the summer fish camps, the village of Yakutat is nearly deserted. “The encampment we visited,” he reports, “was upon the beach of a broad gravelly delta flanked by high mountains. It was redolent of seal oil.” Grinnell (1901, p. 158) specified “three camps of Indians all engaged in the hair seal fishery. The three camps were thought to represent Indians from different localities, Juneau, Yakutat, and Sitka.” When at Yakutat he had been told that Indians from as far away as Sitka came to Disenchantment Bay for seals. However, I think it more likely that the camps represented sib groups than village groups. “They were camped on the gravelly beach, just above high water, and for the most part occupied ordinary canvas wall-tents, though some few lived in the square bark-covered shelters which in ancient times were their summer homes.” He estimated that about 300–400 people were camped here (p. 161).

“For many generations this has been a sealing ground for the Indians, and in some places the beach is white with weathered bones and fragments of bones that represent the seal catches of many years. The surroundings are not attractive, for the place resembles a slaughter-house. The stones of the beach are shiny with grease; seal carcasses and fragments of carcasses are spread along the shore, and there is an all-pervading odor of seal and seal oil. The place is a busy one. Back of the beach is a lagoon of fresh water, from which the Indians get their drinking water, in which the children wade about, sailing their canoes, and in which the mothers bathe their babies” [Grinnell, 1901, p. 165].

According to C. Hart Merriam, a copy of whose field notes was given to me by Dr. Robert Heizer, University of California, Berkeley, the main camp visited by the expedition was occupied by about 150–200 Indians. “There are probably at least 600 skins in this village of seals killed during the past two weeks [June 8–22]. And there are two other, somewhat smaller villages a little farther up the coast—say mile and one mile away, where many more seal skins are drying.”

Haenke Island, close to the eastern shore of the bay above these camps is locally known as “Egg Island” a literal translation of its Tlingit name, wAt’ at’i (Harrington: wAt' âatt’ii). It is still a favorite place for gathering seagull eggs in early June from nests on the cliff along the south side. The latter is called DA tłen (‘big place behind’?), or “Big Cliff.” Below this is a gravel beach, now a much frequented camping place. When Minnie Johnson was a small child in the 1880's, her family used to come here to get eggs. At that time, before the earthquake had elevated the whole island 17–18 feet, there was no gravel flat on the south shore and no large point at the southeast end of the island, only a small rocky point called ’AdAx, (‘AdA?). As she observed, after we had picknicked on the gravel beach, June 11, 1952, “Egg Island has changed, too. There wasn’t no such thing as that rock point. That side where we built a fire seemed to be raised up. That's terrible! That's just a small rock point there [before]. In olden days they don’t let the women go up on the mountain…just the men. The women might have an accident…. They never let the women climb for eggs.” While the men and boys were scaling the rocky ledges, the women were supposed to remain at the small point. On the occasion of our visit with a large party, however, a number of the younger women and girls also climbed up the cliff. “In my grandma‘s time, my mother told me, an Aleut climbed the cliff on Egg Island for eggs. He fell down and smashed all to pieces.” (MJ) Several other persons on the excursion mentioned this accident.

The bight on the mainland just northeast of Haenke Island is sometimes used as a sealing camp when the ice is not too heavy. This is called a tłen tciye, referring to the ‘Big Point,’ a tłen. It was perhaps late in the 19th century before this site could be used, for Minnie Johnson declared that before her father's death in 1888, the ice prevented camping above Haenke Island. In 1895(?) her stepfather took a party, including her baby sister (born 1893), to camp here. During the night they were nearly drowned by a wave from a calving iceberg which swept over them. She also remembered how, despite parental prohibition, the children used to jump on the cakes of floating ice. “We dance and move back and forth and think it‘s lots of fun…. They were afraid the ice might break in two and we would slide in between.”

Kwacqwan territory included Haenke Island and as much of Disenchantment Bay as could be reached by seal hunters (see pls. 18–19).

Above Haenke Island, ‘at the head’ of Disenchantment Bay, ‘upstream’ (naki), one sees the full extent of the glaciers. Turner Glacier, formerly Dalton or First Glacier, is on the right, opposite the upper end of Haenke Island. It is called by some ‘Narrow Glacier’ (sÍt’ kusa). Harrington recorded ’Ixtee’aa–ssIt’, ‘the lower glacier,’ as its correct name. The huge Hubbard Glacier, Second Glacier (Harrington: tÁxaa–ssIt’), that thrusts its ‘nose’ (sÍt’ łutu) into the elbow bend at the junction of Disenchantment Bay and Russell Fiord, is usually known simply as the ‘Big Glacier,’ (sÍt’ tłen). The bay at its west end is Wéyna ta, named for the white clay (wéyna; Harrington: wéenaa), that is found here. This is “something that grows on the rocks. They use it for paint,” Harrington was told. The name of the bay is literally ‘gypsum-inside-place’ (Harrington: wéennaatthAh).

Several informants told me that this substance was never taken: “Long ago if you touch it, it gets foggy for days and days.” The same taboo applied to other rare minerals or rocks found in this area. One man told of being stuck for 2 days with several hunting companions on the western side of Disenchantment Bay by the north wind, which apparently packed the ice against the shore. They had no food, and to make a place to sleep had to spread sand over the ice. Finally they made their way down to Esker Creek, thence back across the bay, and up to the camp above Point Latouche.

People used to gather sea gull eggs from the eastern, moraine-covered part of Hubbard Glacier, ‘Black Glacier,’ SÍt’ t’ut. This nesting place was called ‘Eggs’ Town,’ wAt’–’ani. All the natives on the boat which took us up the bay in July 1952, agreed that Hubbard Glacier had advanced in recent years, and it was clear that the front extended farther into the bay than on the chart (U.S. C. & G.S., chart #8455, 6th ed., 1945). They reported that they no longer dared to camp on Osier Island because of the danger of waves from calving bergs. This island, on the point between Disenchantment Bay and Russell Fiord, is called ‘Little Egg Island’ wAt’ at’I AtÙx (Harrington, áat’ UtsÙ, ‘small island‘). There is said to be coal on the hillside above it. My informant who had been here before the earthquake reported that there was formerly deep water behind the island, where there is now a bar.

Rounding Osier Island, we come into Russell Fiord. In this stretch there are a few young cottonwoods or balsam poplars, and willows full of ptarmigan, but my guide, born 1914, remembered when it was treeless. The long, low, terraced mountain ridge that stretched along the northwestern side of Russell and Nunatak Fiords is his “favorite mountain.” He confirmed Tarr's observations (see p. 36) that he had almost never seen a bear here, although they live on the south and west side of the fiords.

There is a camping spot on the west side of Russell Fiord on the gravel flat behind Marble Point. This is called Ne aI (Harrington: níi aaíI), ‘White Quartz Point,’ because of this rock which also occurs in the vicinity.

The cliff on the northwest side of Cape Enchantment is ’UnaqAdEt's Cliff’ (UnaqAdEt eł’i; Harrington: kúnnaakhAtteet kÍttł‘II).

Opposite Cape Enchantment, Nunatak Fiord stretches to the east, and as one goes up it, the water becomes progressively more murky with silt. The vegetation dwindles to mosses, and finally the sides are nothing but bare rocks and gray rubble, for the glacier has left them too recently for life to have yet found a foothold. One man estimated that Nunatak Glacier had retreated 3 miles between 1950 and 1952; another remembered that in 1915 it had jutted out “around the corner” of the nunatak, between its seaward and its landward arms. Harrington in 1940 received similar information.

Nunatak Glacier, Third Glacier (Harrington: nAkI’aa ssÍt’), is also known as ’At’e sÍt’ (‘glacier at its heart’ ?), probably the same as Harrington's ‘way back small glacier’ (Att’ée–’aa–ssIt). It is also called ‘Narrow Glacier’ (sÍt’ kusa) or ‘Tiny Glacier’ (sÍt’ AtUx), but my informants disagreed as to what was the correct name. Harrington was told that it was a ‘female glacier’ (ciitc sIt’) (p. 818). One of my informants said that when the original inhabitants of Yakutat sold all their lands, they went to southeastern Alaska (Chilkat area), by an overland route, going inland from sÍt’ kusa, which she placed with some uncertainty in Nunatak Fiord. It should be remembered that Nunatak, Hidden and Fourth Glacier near the head of Russell Fiord are all arms of the great “through glacier” which stretches southeast to the Alsek River, and were all highways for travel into the interior. The native descriptive names, ‘narrow glacier’ and ‘way-back glacier’ seem to have been applied to both Nunatak and Fourth Glacier (see below).

Off the point between Nunatak Fiord and the southern part of Russell Fiord there was formerly a small island, or low point, used as a camping place. It was called eł’ at’Au (Harrington: kItł’áat‘Akuu).

The most striking peak (2,780 feet high) of the Mount Draper Range on the south side of Nunatak Fiord is known as ‘Dollar or Silver Mountain,’ Dána cá or DAna cà (Harrington: táanaa-caa ‘silver mountain‘), from the silvery shine of the wet rocks on its flanks which can be seen from a great distance. The many springs or trickles of water from melting patches of snow are said to make the shining rocks very slippery. Minnie Johnson remembers that her father used to peel mica from the rocks.

There are bird cliffs on the southside of Nunatak Fiord, just north of Mount Draper. These are called ‘Cormorants’ Cliffs’ Yùqw eł‘i, from the many birds that nest on their ledges. There is said to be a lake on top of the hill above the cliffs, where soapberries may be found. Mountain goats are hunted on both sides of the fiord.

Turning south up Russell Fiord, we pass the morainefilled valley of Hidden Glacier, where the ice has melted back since the chart was drawn. This bay is sometimes called ‘Mud Bay’ (see below). The area is a good one in which to hunt mountain goats.

Harrington recorded the name ‘Mouldy’ (khAtłhaâ) for a bench where mountain goats were hunted, so called because the face of the mountain was said to look as if it were mouldy (decaying?).

South of Hidden Glacier and opposite Mount Tebenkof, is a point off the end of which is a tiny island (not shown on U.S. C. and G.S. Chart #8402). The island is called ‘Seals’ Rock,’ tsa ’itci (Harrington: tsháa-ttheeíi or tshaa-’ittjii), because seals used to bask on it before it became covered with bushes. Jack Ellis in 1940 spoke to Harrington of a “big catastrophy” connected with the shores of Russel Fiord ‘behind Seal Rock’ (tshaa-’iittcii t‘aak), which occurred when “four lakes became three.” This would have been when the ice barrier across Russell Fiord broke.

Fourth Glacier, far up Beasley Creek, has apparently melted back one or two miles since the chart was made. It was referred to as ‘Narrow Glacier’ (sÍt’ kusa) by one informant; another used the term sIt’ qUsAnayi, possibly referring to the place where the glacier had once been. Harrington also heard it called ‘narrow glacier’ and ‘head of the bay, or way-back glacier’ (‘Attée-’aa-sIt‘)

Cape Stoss, opposite the mouth of Beasley Creek, is ŁAqAqał or ŁaguqAł, which I was told was an Eyak word meaning “it's got the glacier in its mouth,” as one might say of a dog with a bone.[22] Harrington recorded łÁ’ kohkkhooł, ‘where (two mountains) bit the glacier.’ This is because Fourth Glacier once extended all the way across, making the head of Russell Fiord a freshwater lake. At that time, hazarded Harry K. Bremner, all the glaciers on the east side of the fiord also extended across it. Indeed, as we know (pp. 27–28), probably all of Russell Fiord north of Cape Stoss, Nunatak Fiord, and Disenchantment Bay were filled with ice until relatively recently. At that time the Russel Fiord Lake drained out through the east branch of the Situk River. The ice barrier broke when my informant‘s father was a young man (about 1855–60?).

“Mud Bay,” or the expanded head of Russell Fiord is called literally ‘bay of mud’ (kałkw ei; Harrington: kUtł’kA-keeíi), or ‘this was the head of Situk’ (sItAk cAt ’ayE). The former outlet of the Situk River is SItAk t’a ’iti, “the Situk used to be there.” There were formerly many seals on the small island opposite its mouth. A stream south of Beasley Creek on the east side of Mud Bay is called WAt łAeł, and a stream south of that was QudEnixł qAnIk hini. Most of these names are said to be Eyak, although they cannot be recognized as such and seem to have been given a Tlingit form. The second cove below Cape Stoss is “slough below the point” (probably łu-yIk-’e, ’nose inside slough‘).

The 3,000-foot peak between Fourth Glacier and Russell Fiord, south of Mount Pinta and north of Beasley Creek, is ‘Mountain at the Head of Situk’ (SItAk cak). This was where the Teqwedi used to hunt mountain goats.

It should be noted that in coming to the head of Russell Fiord we have entered the territory of the Teqwedi, whose main settlements were on the Situk and Ahrnklin Rivers to the south. Presumably Russell Fiord north of Cape Stoss, Nunatak Fiord, and Disenchantment Bay above Haenke Island were not claimed by any sib, because they had been until so recently blocked by ice. Thus, while several well-informed Yakutat natives reported going into these areas to hunt and to gather eggs, they added, “There is no special ownership up there” (Jack Ellis, Sam George, etc., to Goldschmidt and Hass, 1946, p. 75).

There is said to be a run of humpback salmon in Russell Fiord every even-numbered year. This perhaps indicates something of the length of time taken to establish a run when new spawning grounds become available, since there could have been no salmon entering the fiord from Yakutat Bay while the ice barrier was present. After it broke, the Situk River no longer drained the head of the fiord, so they could not enter from this direction.

John Ellis, who pointed out and named most of the landmarks during a trip to the head of Russell Fiord in July, 1952, said that there were as many place names for localities in Russell Fiord as in Yakutat Bay, but that he did not know them as well. Harrington made the same trip in 1940 with John Ellis and the latter's father, Jack Ellis, as guides, and later checked over the foreign names with George Johnson.

YAKUTAT BAY TO DRY BAY

So far, our trip up Yakutat Bay has to some extent followed the movements of the people from their winter homes at Yakutat to the spring and early summer camps. In former days the winter villages, as well as the mid-summer and fall fishing camps, were on the sheltered waters southeast of Yakutat. Commercial fishing during the summer is now done off the mouths of the larger streams draining the coastal plain between Dry Bay and Yakutat Bay (and even farther away), but in autumn, when the season is over, a number of families still go inside the sloughs or lagoons to put up fish for their own winter use. Fall and winter hunting and trapping camps were usually located up the streams near the mountains; others were closer to the shore in order to hunt seals on the sandbars. From mid-summer to fall, berries were gathered and edible roots were dug on the flats. Families without children in school may stay on into the winter to hunt, or return in early spring. In the older days, the eulachon runs in February and March were particularly important. Before the present school was opened in Yakutat there must have been much more coming and going, or residence at the winter camps.

Between Yakutat and Dry Bay, a distance of 52 statute miles (45 nautical miles), the coastal plain is divided into sections from the mountains to the sea. These belong to the different sibs. Thus, the Ankau lagoon system within Phipps Peninsula and the lakes to the southeast that drain into it belong to the Kwacqwan. The eastern boundary of their territory actually runs from the Number Two Runway of the airfield northeast to Cape Stoss, and includes the northernmost tributary to the Situk River and a small bit along the western edge of Mud Bay. Lost River and Situk River, 11 and 14 miles east of Ocean Cape, belong to the Bear House branch of the Teqwedi; Ahrnklin, Dangerous, and Italio Rivers, 17, 24, and 27 miles east of Ocean Cape, belong to the Drum House branch of that sib. The Akwe-Ustay River, some 37 miles from Ocean Cape, as well as the Dry Bay area, belong to the Tł’UknaAdi and the allied TłukwaAdi.

In going southeastward towards Dry Bay, the coastal plain between the mountains and the sea narrows progressively from 17 to about 5 miles in width. The mountains are the Brabazon Range, 4,000–6,000 feet high, and lie in front of the great “through glacier” between Russell Fiord and the Alsek River, behind which, in turn, rises the main ridge of the Saint Elias Range. From this inland sea of ice, as well as from the flanks of the Brabazon Range itself, numerous glacial tongues protrude, the most conspicuous of which is the Yakutat Glacier, some 3 miles wide and about 34 miles east of Yakutat Bay. Still farther east, the Chamberlain and Rodman Glaciers feed the Akwe and Ustay Rivers.

According to the Coast Pilot 9 (1955, p. 85):

“A canoe can be taken from Dry Bay to Yakutat Bay at high water, but there are several portages and the route is impracticable for a boat of any size. The principal rivers between Dry Bay and Yakutat Bay have shifting bars at their entrances and lagoons or tidal basins inside; they can be used only by small boats or launches at high water and with a smooth sea.”

The natives often traveled between Yakutat and Dry Bay, paddling or poling their canoes along this chain of sloughs and streams or, in winter, tramped along the frozen courses with snowshoes, dragging their belongings on hand sleds or carrying packs, the women with babies on their backs or in their arms. The clearest description of the route is that given by Commander Moser (1901, pp. 382–388), based upon reports by “Lieutenant Rodman and Mr. Chamberlain [who], with Indian guides and canoes, from July 1 to 6 [1901], made a trip from Yakutat Bay to the Alsek.” That same summer, Ensign Miller, with Indian guides, made the portage from the head of Russell Fiord to the headwaters of the Situk River, descended this to its mouth, and returned to Yakutat via the Ankau lagoon and lake system. Charley White remembered taking Lieutenant Emmons via this last route. Of the trip from Yakutat to Dry Bay, Moser (1901, p. 388) concludes:

MAP 9.—Yakutat Bay to the Alsek River. “The dotted area is the coastal plain; the larger glaciers are shown by the broken lines, with moraines dotted, while the little cliff-glaciers are represented by the black.” (Blackwelder, 1907 b, p. 417.)

“There are no villages or permanent habitations between Yakutat and Dry Bay, and the journey, even in summer, with a light two-man canoe is not an easy one and is accompanied by some risk. The plain between Yakutat and the Alsek, and bordering the mountain system to the sea, is for the most part wooded with spruce, hemlock, alder, and cottonwood, with a smaller growth of willows and elder, accompanied by the usual berry bushes, devil club, etc. From Black Sand Island [at the mouth of the Situk] to the mouth of the Italio there is an extensive treeless sand plain reaching several miles back from the coast line. This plain is cut up by small, shallow, spreading streams, having little or no current, with some shallow ponds, and a portion of it has a scant growth of grass and weeds. In very dry weather sand storms occur, and it is said they are at times dangerous.”

In 1888 Topham (1889 a, p. 425) “met a miner who had made the journey by himself [from Dry Bay to Yakutat by canoe] in 4 days.” In 1890 Glave and Dalton with an Indian guide came from Dry Bay to Yakutat in 3 days (see p. 204). In August 1886, Frederick Schwatka went by canoe with a party of Indians from Yakutat Bay via the Ankau system to the mouth of the Situk or Ahrnklin River, as reported in the New York Times, October 26 (p. 2), 1886.

The timber, as far as I could determine from the air and from trips to Situk and Lost Rivers, is confined to sand ridges parallel to the beach, at least as far as Situk River, while the eastern shore of Yakutat Bay is heavily wooded. Here the trees grow on the moraine of the Yakutat Bay Glacier. This moraine extends westward from Ocean Cape about 3 miles, or 2 miles east from the town of Yakutat. The forest ends abruptly, as if cut off by a knife, midway along the road from Yakutat to the airfield, except for stands along the old beach ridges, and for a few tongues of trees on higher ground bordering Lost and Situk Rivers. Much of the last obviously represents new growth, and the natives remark on how the trees are encroaching upon their former berrying grounds. Some trees have certainly sprung up on the treeless stretch since it was traversed by Lieutenant Rodman in 1901, perhaps spreading down from the foothills at the headwaters of the streams. This open plain formed the major portion of Teqwedi sib territory, whereas Kwacqwan lands farther west were within or close to the forest. The following sections describe these sib areas in more detail.

MAP 10.—Monti Bay to Black Sand Island. (Subsketch from Moser, 1901, p. XLIII.)

The Ankau Lagoon System

“The Ankau,” YakwdatyIk (Harrington, yaakwtáatyIk) lies within Phipps Peninsula southwest of Yakutat, between Monti Bay and the ocean. This is a maze of shallow tidal lagoons, separated from the Pacific by a narrow barrier beach and glacial moranine, and is studded with small islands and rocks. Its mouth is Ankau Creek; its upper or southeastern end is “Salt Lake” or “Russian Lake,” into which flows Tawah (t‘awał) Creek, draining “Rocky,” “Aka,” and “Summit Lakes” to the southeast. The last lake, just east of the Coast Guard Loran Station, also drains in the opposite direction, i.e., southeastward, into Lost River, by a stream called “Tawah Creek” on the U.S. C. & G.C., chart #8402, “Ancau Creek” on the U.S.G.S. topographic map, and “An-kau River” by Moser (1901, pl. XLIII, pp. 383–384). This whole route was formerly navigable at high tide, but I doubt that it would now be possible to take a canoe through, since the upper reaches of the streams and Summit Lake seem to be silted up or blocked by vegetation. Where the roads cross the streams the latter run in culverts. Orphir (“Over”) Creek, which rises on the swampy ground just east of Yakutat, flows into Summit Lake.

During World War II a military road was built that ran south from near the airfield to the beach, followed northwestward along the shore, turned north at Ocean Cape, and finally completed the circuit by returning eastward to Yakutat by a bridge across Ankau Creek. This bridge is now fallen, and the western part of the road along the ocean has been made impassable by storm waves which have washed parts of it away or thrown huge piles of driftwood on it. Most of the maze of roads around the airfield have also been abandoned, but the section from the main road to the Loran Station is kept in repair. In 1952 we were able to drive northwestward along the shore to Ocean Cape, and in the other direction to the fish camp at the mouth of Lost River. A few natives at Yakutat own cars and trucks.

The Ankau area is important because it was on the innermost lagoon that the post of “New Russia” was established in 1796. One reason for its destruction by the natives in 1805 was that the Russians denied the Indians access to their traditional fishing grounds in this region. Unfortunately, military regulations during World War II also kept them out. From 1902 until 1925, when Federal law closed the Ankau to commercial fishing, this area supplied the saltery and later the cannery, but even by 1913 the runs of reds and cohoes had been seriously depleted (Rich and Bell, 1935, p. 447). However, enough salmon still come to the Ankau to make this a place where the natives go in the fall to put up fish for their own needs. The lagoons and lakes are visited annually by thousands of migratory waterfowl, and many breed here.

If one enters the lagoons through Ankau Creek, one can continue westward to the shallow tidal ponds behind Ocean Cape, or turn southward to “Russian Lake.” The first course is taken by women who want to gather seaweed on the boulder-strewn shores of the cape, or who are looking for cockles in the lagoon. North of Ocean Cape is the wreck of the Kayak, a ship that went ashore here in the 1920's. The lagoon inside is marked by a prominent boulder, and is called, ‘Lake Where the Rock Sticks Up,’ ‘AnÁ tE nacuwuwÉ. The lagoon south of this, and east of the cape is appropriately called “Inside Your Little Ear,” (qa-gukww-yIk ’inside of someone's little ear‘).

The largest lagoon is “Russian Lake,” Gù-Ayí-qwan ’áì, literally ‘clouds out'side-of people lake-of.’ It is also known as “Ankau Lake,” and as ‘Salt Lake’ (in Tlingit, ‘eł’ ’áì). It is entered from the north when coming from Ankau Creek by a narrow tidal channel just east of a small island. Rapids (‘i) form here except at high water, which make passage difficult or impossible at other stages of the tide. Just north or outside of these rapids lives a lone White man, Bill Hall, at the site of an abandoned saltery. His place is called ‘This Side of the Rapids’ (‘iUtagi; perhaps ’iU tai, ’rapids-outside ground-of’). The rapids in the smaller channel on the far (west) side of the little island are called wAnkA ’i, ’Along-side Rapids.’

Schwatka tells about running the rapids on a rising tide when entering “Russian Lake” from Ankau Creek. “These cascades fall about 20 feet in [a] 40 to 50 feet run,” down which the Indians shot their medium-sized hunting canoe at full speed, paddling hard to give the helmsman steerage way. From here their route wound left to the mouth of T‘awał Creek, through shallow channels.

The Russians had their fortified agricultural colony, Novo Rossiysk (“New Russia”), on the ocean side of Salt Lake, reportedly at a narrow place on the isthmus between the ocean beach and the lagoon. This does not seem like a suitable place for such an establishment, but the ocean waves may well have eaten away some of the land, since the bank above the beach is undercut. Unfortunately, the survey upon which Tebenkov's chart is based is not sufficiently accurate to show the exact location of the fort, although this is placed in the general region indicated by informants. According to Minnie Johnson, who accompanied us to the place, the Russian fort was on the southeast side of a small stream that ran beside the cabin and smokehouse belonging to William Milton (1888–1950). The latter is said to have found charcoal when digging the foundations of his cabin. Although we explored around the cabin and in the vicinity we could find no evidence of the fort, even though a depression 25 feet square, southeast of the cabin, suggested a house pit. My informant was sure of the site because the Indians used to land here when coming from Ankau Creek, and would store their gear in a log cabin which her father told her was where the fort had been. “My grandpa used to pack me in the log cabin the Indians had where the Russians used to be. They used it to store things in when they were going to walk along the ocean beach.” (MJ) She did not believe that the fort had been on the hill northwest of this spot, although that location seemed better and had been designated as the site by another informant. It was generally agreed that the Russian fort was “supposed to be by William Milton's smokehouse” (map 26, p. 168). The site was called ‘Russians’ Town,’ Gù-Ayí-qwan-’àní (Harrington, Utsii-khwaán ‘aan-níi, or ‘Annúuccii nuuwwúu ‘Russians’ Fort‘). Dall and Baker (1883, p. 207) report that “the settlement contained seven buildings defended by a stockade, and five others outside. Even the site has not been seen by white men for half a century.”

Just northwest of Milton's smokehouse, the cove in the lagoon is called ‘Cows’ Bay,’ as ei (Harrington, xaás keeyyii), because the Russians kept cattle there. One woman said she had found a Russian glass pitcher and liquor bottle in her garden on the point west of the reputed site of the fort.

An island northeast of the fort (not shown on the chart) was said to have been garrisoned by the Russians, who kept guards on each side to watch the mouth of T’awał Creek where they had built a “gate” of boulders to keep the Indians from going through with their canoes. The Tlingit name for the island meant “island on which spears are ready to use,” but I was not able to record this successfully.

Tawah or T’awał Creek (t’áwáł) runs from Rocky Lake into the head of Russian Lake. Somewhere near its mouth, an Indian found a carved boulder when gathering moss to cover a trap. The petroglyph originally represented a bear, including the body and paws. The piece with the head alone was taken to Yakutat where I saw and photographed it, but it later disappeared (de Laguna et al, 1964, pl. 3, b). It is generally supposed to commemorate the destruction of the Russian post by the TłaayIk-Teqwedi.

According to Moser (1901, p. 383), “Ta-wah” Creek is less than half a mile long, and drains a small pond, about 300 yards long, with a rocky bottom. “The rocks and boulders have been removed from the bed and piled along the side [of the stream], forming a shallow channel up which canoes are tracked at low water, but may be poled at high water.” A loaded canoe could be poled or pulled across the pond. The latter is evidently “Rocky Lake,” KAtsItEi-’á (possibly kA-It-tEi-’á?), translated as “rocks on the lake,” or “full of rocks.”

A few hundred yards up the shallow winding stream one comes to Aka Lake, about a mile long. The Russian “gate” was supposed to have been on T’awał Creek between Rocky and Aka Lakes. The Russians made the Indians pay a sea otter skin to go past. When the gate was closed, canoes had to be portaged over a trail, informants reported. Perhaps the “gate” was a zapor, or fish weir, such as the Russians made and which were later maintained both by commercial fishermen and natives in Alaska until banned by law. Moser's party found the remains of several slat barricades along this stream (Moser, 1901, p. 244, pl. 20). The total length of T’awał Creek from Russian Lake to Aka Lake is about mile.

Schwatka (New York Times, October 26, 1886, p. 2) describes T‘awał Creek as a “shallow salt-water creek,” so narrow that the sides of the canoe were scraped by boulders, as well as the bottom. Just above a “little space of deep water” [Rocky Lake?], his party came to a stone fish dam, “large and well constructed,” which evidently blocked the stream so that the rising tide could not ascend farther. There was a break in the center of the dam, through which water poured and through which the Indians managed to take the canoe. Schwatka observed that:

“This dam deserved more than passing notice. The rocks of which it was built seemed as old in place as any of those lining the shores themselves, and not one of them had apparently been displaced since its making. I naturally asked if it had been used at all within recent times; and Yeet [i.e., Yeet-shwoodoo-kook] (which name I will give my guide hereafter) replied that the Yakutats nor any other clan of Thlinkets had ever used it, and that it was built by the Aleuts many years ago.”

Schwatka satisfied himself that the “Aleuts” were not those in Russian employ, but were “the Aleuts who once occupied the land now held by the Yakutat Thlinkets.” A short distance above the dam, Schwatka found the water fresh.

“Here a pretty little rivulet came through gravel and small stones, and I noticed that these had been scraped out of its bed to the two sides, forming a sort of diminutive levee on either bank, and my first idea was that it had thus been cleared to allow the salmon to ascend, for the stream was actually so small that obstructions would have to be taken out to allow such large fish as salmon to swim up it. I thought this too might be Aleut, but was told that it was Thlinket or Yakutat…. [The party dragged the canoe up this stream, which was] small and shallow, [although] very swift…. Another portage through a creek full of boulders and where we had to wade and we entered our first fresh-water lake.” [This was evidently Aka Lake.]

Aka Lake is northwest of the Loran Station on the ocean beach. The name, ’ÁkÀ, ‘on the lake,’ refers to a former village on the ocean side near the head of the lake. It was primarily a Kwacqwan place, but “not their capital.” and was wiped out by smallpox, which informants believed had come before the Russians (pp.277–279). Emmons in 1883 was told that there had been six Kwacqwan houses at “Ah-ka,” of which nothing remained at the time of his visit, but he locates the village of that name at the mouth of Ankau Creek (see p. 61). The site on the lake was later used as a fish camp, for one informant, born in 1896, remembers a row of smokehouses there when she was a small child. Another, born in 1914, also said there were smokehouses when he was a little boy. When we stopped there in June, 1952, there was nothing to see but a clearing choked with bushes and nettles.

Aka Lake is connected with Summit Lake by a little brook, 6 feet wide and – mile long, according to Moser (1901, p. 383), which carried just enough water to permit a loaded canoe to be hauled through. The stream is called NEtIłhuwA, and was said to have been a “canal dug by slaves” according to informants. This suggests the boulders cleared from the lower part of T’awał Creek. There was a village on Aka Lake, at the mouth of this canal, which was called NEtIłhuwA-wÁt-’àn. It was occupied by Eyak-speaking natives who were wiped out by the Teqwedi.

Schwatka (1886) observed both of these villages on Aka Lake in August, 1886.

“On this lake were two Summer fishing villages, one of which [Aka] must be occupied a great deal in that season—though we saw no one there—from the large number of graves that were on one side of it, as in wholly temporary camps they transport the dead that have succumbed there to their more permanent villages. All these fishing villages are, as far as I could see, of as permanent construction as any other houses they build, and seemed more like deserted towns than temporary ones. [The “second place,” NEtIłhuwA-wÁt-’àn, was within 200 or 300 yards of the ocean beach.] After leaving this place, for nearly an hour the course is on a narrow stream and through timber and heavy underbrush, where we waded and pushed and pulled the canoe along…. Then we emerged into a shallow lake full of grass and pond lilies full of stripes cut through them in the direction of the lake, showing where the canoes of fishing parties had preceded us and cut their way through. [This was evidently Summit Lake, for] By 4 o‘clock we were leaving this lake so full of fish, and passing another Indian house entered quite a large creek, but I was surprised to find its waters running the other way. The lake had been the dividing water between two emerging streams.”

Summit Lake, which drains both towards Ankau and Lost River, is described as varying in width from 100 yards to mile, and is about 1 mile, in length. Its depths range from 1–24 inches (Moser, 1901, p. 383), hence it was called ‘Very Shallow Lake,’ KUwAtUn’á. There was formerly a village on the sandy ridge between the ocean and the eastern outlet, called ‘Hill Top Town,’ Gùtc-cAkí-’àn, variously reported as inhabited by Eyak, by Kwacqwan, or by an “all mixed” population, who died in the smallpox epidemic before (?) the Russians came. Another name for the lake is simply Gùtc-cAkí-’án-’á.

Ophir Creek, “Over Creek,” a fine clear stream which rises close behind the town of Yakutat and “forms the main spawning ground for this system” (Moser, 1901, p. 383), flows into Summit Lake. It is called KuxtcIník. The road from the Yakutat-Airfield highway to the Loran Station parallels this stream.

No lakes beyond this point were mentioned by our informants, but Moser reports that a mile beyond Summit Lake there is a “so-called third lake,” consisting of a series of small pools and swamps, about 1–2 miles long, from 20 yards to mile wide, and full of marshy islands and weeds. I do not believe that this was recognized as a lake by my informants.

Schwatka found that the stream running eastward from Summit Lake was “large,” but “disagreeably full of sand bars.” At first his party had to wade, but soon came to a “well-marked river, down which we sped aided by current and paddle. Just as we were leaving the sedgy swamps at the head of the stream we came to a high pole, there being a weather vane on its top, which Yeet told me marked the spot where a young Indian had perished some years ago in a terrible storm of cold and snow.”

The stream draining eastward from Summit Lake is called simply ‘Channel’ or ‘Slough’ (‘e). Harrington refers to this as ‘a salt slough, tributary to Ova Creek,’ called ‘ee. According to the natives, it should be called Lost River, like the lower part of the stream which it joins and which empties into the sea about 9 miles east of Ocean Cape. The upper part of this stream, actually its lesser, northern branch, is known locally as “Little Lost River.”

The western branch of Lost River from Moser's “third lake” to the confluence is about 3 miles long, from 15–40 feet wide, and 4–6 feet deep. Just south of the airfield, on the ocean side of the stream, in the middle of its course and at about the highest point affected by the tides, was the former village called NEsúdàt. The name is Eyak and Dr. Krauss suggests that this is derived from lis-…‘spruce, tree,’ -da’d ‘place in front of.’ Before the Russians came this was an Eyak settlement, consisting of smokehouses, not named houses. After the arrival of the Russians it became the “capital” of the Kwacqwan, where the chief, Yaodaqet, lived in Raven‘s Bones House (also known as Big House). Other houses of this sib were Fort House, Moon House, and lesser residences (p. 316). Mountain (Saint Elias) House of the same sib was also mentioned (MH). From here the people moved to Khantaak Island.

Emmons (in 1883 ?) was told of the site of “Nis-too-dart (facing the mountains)” which had formerly contained three Kwacqwan houses and one belonging to the “Ka-kuse-hit-tan,” apparently represented by a single family from Prince of Wales Island. (These were the Qà-ùs-hÍttan of Henya, or the Qaq!ōshÎt tn, “Human-Foot-House People” of Swanton (1908, p. 398).) The site was abandoned at the time of Emmons’ visit. Schwatka in 1886 mentions passing “a deserted Indian village of four or five well constructed houses called Yess-too-doot.” In 1888, however, it was occupied by at least one family, perhaps only as a summer fishcamp, for Minnie Johnson remembers spending the night here with relatives when her family was taking her father‘s body from Situk back to Khantaak Island for burial. In 1901, there were “three houses and some drying racks…on the southern bank…where the natives cure fish during the season” (Moser, 1901, p. 384). Our archeological investigations here are briefly described (de Laguna et al, 1964, pp. 24–26).

This site marks the eastern boundary of Kwacqwan territory, except for rights to Little Lost River.

Lost River to Italio River

The original inhabitants of Lost and Situk Rivers at the western edge of the coastal plain, were the łuedi or TłaayIk-Teqwedi; the present owners are the Bear House branch of the Teqwedi who came originally from southeastern Alaska, via the Dry Bay area. Present-day claims are confused by attempts to will the land to sons and daughters, who are, of course, Ravens and not members of the original owning sib (Goldschmidt and Haas, 1946, p. 78). My informants spoke about the ill-feeling thus created between the nephews and the children of the owners, aggravated by the hope that oil would be found in the region.

The most famous chief of the Teqwedi was atgawet. Despite the popular association of his name with Knight Island, my most careful native historian said that he lived alone in a single house in a clearing on the ocean side of the stream from Summit Lake, i.e. the west branch of Lost River. This place, east of NEsudat, was called ‘Strawberry Leaf’ in Eyak, CUkwÁłt‘ał, because of the three-lobed shape of the clearing (HKB).[23]

Farther east, on a sandy rise on the ocean side of the stream just above its junction with Little Lost River, was the “capital” of the Bear House Teqwedi. This was originally an Eyak village Diyaguna’Et, called dí’yà’-guna’ Et’ by an Eyak speaker, which means “salt water (dí’yà’) comes in here,” or refers to a bend in the tidal stream.[24] It is pronounced diyaguna’Et by the Tlingit. There was a battle here between the TłaayIk-Teqwedi and the “true” Teqwedi, in which the latter suffered serious losses, but later gained control. When a smallpox epidemic killed off everyone in all the villages from the mouth of the Ankau to Lost River, the only survivors were a few people at Diyaguna’Et. Informants are not clear as to whether this was the epidemic of 1839 or an earlier one, and I cannot reconstruct the sequence of events.

Mrs. Emma Joseph, at one time the oldest living native in Yakutat and reported to have been born in 1867, gave the following confused statement to Goldschmidt and Haas (1946, p. 77 a). Apparently she was thinking about both the old village and a later camp at or near the site, as I have tried to indicate by my own explanatory additions in brackets.

“Lost River was owned by the Teoquedi people who [once] had a large village which was used the year around. In my time there were four [temporary?] houses there. They trap salmon and got all kinds of berries. They [the inhabitants of the old village] move away when smallpox killed the people. This was before I was born. They moved to a little place called Nastudat, which was also on Lost River. By the time I [was old enough to] remember they had moved to Situk and would go out there for a month or so at a time.”

During the Teqwedi occupation there were several houses inside a fort: Shark House, Bear House, Bear Paw House, Golden Eagle House, Coward House, and Valley House were all mentioned but it must be remembered that one house might have several names. Sidewise House of the TłUknaAdi was also here, but its site is now believed to be in the muskeg, while the stream has washed away some of the high ground where the others stood. Emmons (MS.) reports that “De-ah-gun-ah-ate (where the salt water comes up and the people moan for fresh water)” was the earliest Teqwedi village in the Yakutat area, and had eight houses inside a stockade. The doorway to the chief's was cut through a totem pole on which the Bear crest was carved. My informants mentioned this, as well as the carved house posts that were later taken to the village on Khantaak Island. The last known occupants of the village, who later moved to Situk River and Khantaak Island, were the parents and grandparents of persons born in 1880–84. Our explorations at the site indicated a long period of occupation (de Laguna et al, 1964, pp. 25–26, pl. 1, b). There is some suggestion that the Teqwedi moved away because a shaman had been killed in a quarrel up the Situk River (p. 320).

In August, 1886, Schwatka evidently passed Diyaguna ‘Et which he described as “another deserted village of such construction that we could have found perfect shelter during the night both from mosquitoes and the rain.” His Indian guide had, however, “most emphatic superstitious scruples against sleeping in deserted houses of his race unless a medicine man was with him.” This would be understandable if the body of the murdered shaman had been entombed nearby.

Little Lost River, i.e., the upper part of “Lost River” on the maps, above the junction of the main branch from Summit Lake, has been called Dàgí’à, QełgI’a (said to be an Eyak name derived from qeł, ‘woman,’ and ’a, ’river’),[25] and Teskw. The last term was given by a woman who had called the western branch Se (not ‘e), and so may be a diminutive form of the latter (perhaps ew?), although the word is said not to be Tlingit. Moser (1901, p. 384) calls it “Tha-ghe-an” (clearly the name of a settlement), and reports that it drains a lake 6 miles to the north. It enters Lost River about 1 mile above the mouth.

On the east bank of Little Lost River, just above the confluence, is an abandoned landing at the end of a spur from the cannery railroad. Here are a smokehouse and Bear Paw House, built in 1918, but now long unoccupied.

On the west bank of Little Lost River, about mile above the landing, is the site of ‘Shallow Water Town,’ WUtł’iya-’àn (ANH and SH). This was reported to have been the oldest village of the Ł’uedi, but my informant may have confused it with Diyaguna’Et, since investigations here failed to reveal any evidence of antiquity (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 26). The ranking chief of Bear Paw House at Diyaguna’Et, a man named DaqusEtc, is said to have planted native tobacco here, and later to have given the site to his Kwacqwan brother-in-law, so it became a village of that sib. “The White people call it Little Lost River where it splits. The natives from NEsudat go way up above. I don’t know what language the name is [teskw]. It's not Tlingit. Sometimes my grandfather's people trap fox and wolf and so on in the winter time.” At the site, “CAtiguw-‘ic and all his big family stay there. And after they get through with that [moved away], they got a cabin way up Situk.”

At the mouth of Lost River is a modern fishcamp, located on the west bank and reached by road from Yakutat. Its name, Guciné, “Point of Timber,” (from guc, ’thumb, fin’), is also given to Diyaguna’Et, but more particularly to the point of timber on the west bank of Lost River about half a mile from the mouth. This is where two Teqwedi shamans were entombed in a grave house, and, after the mission was established, were buried in the ground. No trace of the sepulcher or the grave could be found. The shamans were TE-’ic, ‘Little Stone's Father,’ and QadjÁdaqinà, the man from Diyaguna’Et who had been killed on the upper Situk. According to Swanton (1908; p. 405), the name, Qdjêxdaq’na, means “Eagle going around a dead thing and making a noise,” but I would translate it as ’[Eagle] flying around a murdered man.‘

There was formerly a slough connecting the mouths of Lost and Situk Rivers, called WAnkA hín, ‘Alongside [the beach] Stream,’ but this has silted up during the past 50 years, and the mouths of both rivers have recently shifted to the west. The man who pointed this out to me was afraid that the salmon would avoid them. There are said to be sand dunes east of Lost River (I saw only muskeg) called XuqaÉkà. A small island between Lost and Situk Rivers (probably that forming the connecting slough) was “Head Island,” Qacai at’, ‘human-head island.’ The Coast and Geodetic Survey Chart (#8402; 1949) shows the tidal lagoon into which both Lost and Situk Rivers formerly emptied. This also continued eastward, behind Black Sand Island, to the large lagoon which received the waters of Seal Creek and Arhnklin River.

The mouth of the Situk River is now one of the main places for commercial fishing, and many Yakutat natives have summer cabins or tents along the sandbar west of the mouth. The Yakutat and Southern Railroad, operated by the cannery, runs the 9 miles from Yakutat to a landing on Johnson Slough, an eastern tributary of the Situk which enters the latter just above the mouth. “About 2 miles from the sea the Ku-na-yosh, about half the size of the Seetuck, joins the latter from the eastward” (Moser, 1901, p. 385). Cannery tenders run up to the landing at high tide to unload fish and take on supplies. Goldschmidt and Haas (1946, fig. 6) published a photograph of the natives rowing their skiffs from the camp up to the landing and report as follows about the whole drainage area:

“The lower portion of the river was important for fishing and berrying. The region yielded salmon and eulachon, swamp berries, high-bush cranberries, lagoon berries, strawberries, blueberries, salmon berries and dewberries.

“The upper reaches of this stream are hunting and trapping territory—some of the best in the whole Yakutat area. It yields black bear, mink, land otter, mountain goats, and weasel. Old salmon are caught, as well as fish for current use.” [Ibid., p. 80.]

“The Situk River is by far the largest producer of red, coho, and pink salmon in the Yakutat district,” according to surveys up to 1927 (Rich and Bell, 1935, p. 411). My informants remember when two trains of several cars each were needed to haul the daily catch to the cannery; in 1952 only one car might be filled in a day.

The name Situk (pronounced sItAk; Harrington, siithak) is believed to be Eyak, but the meaning is unknown. According to Emmons (MS.), the river is said to have been named by or for an Athabaskan man from the interior. Krauss informs me that the older pronunciation was tAtA, but the name was probably not Eyak.

On the lower Situk, about a mile above the railway trestle, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service maintains a fish weir and station for the purpose of counting the salmon that come up the river to spawn, in order to determine how many days should be open to commercial fishing. On the eastern bank, between the weir and trestle, are a number of collapsed framehouses, house pits, and graves, marking the former village of SItAk. This was established by Teqwedi men who had moved from Diyaguna’Et on Lost River. The first house to be built was Coward House; Bear's Nest House of the son-in-law of a Coward House man was built later. Farther upstream, above the weir, was the Tł’UknaAdi Boulder House, and at least one unnamed house, for in 1866 Emmons (MS.) reported 40-odd persons living in four houses. Some of the framehouses below the weir were certainly built later. After the settlement ceased to be a place of permanent residence it seems to have been used as a fishcamp. A number of my informants were born here, or lived here for shorter or longer periods. Graves among the ruined houses belonged to the last house chief, Situk Jim (died 1912), his younger brother, Situk Harry (died 1945), as well as to the Tł’UknaAdi chief, Dry Bay Chief George (died 1916), and the at’kA’áyi man, Lityua Bay George (1845–1926), and to various others. According to one informant who had lived here as a child (1884–90), “There‘s been nothing but glaciers here. No bushes or anything in Situk when I was small—just flat gravel spit. No bushes, nothing.” (MJ)

The open grassy place below the weir and west of the railway trestle on Situk River, extending half a mile to Johnson Slough and beyond, is called De’angéya (like the reef near Yakutat Roads). The landing on Johnson Slough is called ‘Pitching the Fish Place’ (xáat-’aatukUtje), according to Harrington.

MAP 11.—Yakutat to the Alsek River Delta. (Moser, 1901, pl. XLIII.)

As has been explained, the Situk until relatively recently drained an ice-dammed lake at the head of Russell Fiord. Its muddy waters gave the name, Ł‘uedi, to the original inhabitants of Situk and Lost Rivers. Now, the Situk rises in two connecting lakes, close to the western shore of Mud Bay, both of which lie against the mountainous slopes south of Mount Tebenkof and are dammed by glacial moraine. The first, a narrow lake, is only a mile over the hills from Cape Stoss, and is 190 feet above sea level. Four miles downstream, meandering to the west, is the larger circular lake, about 2 miles in diameter and 110 feet above sea level (Moser, 1901, p. 384, pl. XLIII). This has been named “Lake Miller,” after Ensign Miller who came through it going down the Situk in 1901. The natives (and the most recent chart) call it “Situk Lake.” The dead spruce and hemlock on the western and eastern shores were believed by Moser to have been killed by a subsidence during the earthquake of 1899. From the southern edge of the lake, the Situk winds to the sea, about 13 miles away by direct line, and during its course receives several tributaries, a good proportion of which have their origin in lakes or swamps. Near some of these lakes the ground is so full of salt that it does not freeze in winter. One man thought this was due to sea water which once came way up the Situk River, but did not make clear whether this was from the mouth of the river, or down from the head with the flood which accompanied the breaking of the ice dam in Russell Fiord, or even whether it was due to the subsidence noted at Miller Lake.

About one third of its length below Situk (Miller) Lake, the main course of the Situk is joined by the “On-klat” from the west, evidently draining Redfield Lake. The name of this stream is evidently derived from the Eyak word, ’an-tł’ahd, meaning ‘head of river,’ according to Krauss. Moser (1901, pp. 384–385) reports two more tributaries from the west and two from the east along the middle third of the Situk. Most of this area seems to be low and swampy, and sparsely timbered. Unfortunately, it seems to be poorly mapped.

Harrington was told of three lakes on the Situk River, but I cannot identify them with certainty. “First Lake” (nÍktł’aAk ’aa) is perhaps Lake Redfield, although my informants denied that this had a native name and applied the name NatłAAk ’akA to a lake (or place on a lake) that drained into Humpback Salmon Creek. Next (presumably going upstream) is a big lake right at the foot of the hill, or ‘lake at the head of Situk’ (AtthAk cÚk ’aaii), probably Situk Lake. Last is a long narrow lake surrounded by mountains, with a waterfall on its outlet stream (‘AccUkU ‘aakkuu).

The main branch of the Situk had an Eyak name, variously rendered by informants as GAdItł-exł (MJ), GUdiyíł-tł’eł (JE), GUdał’-teł (HKB), and GudÀł-exł (CW). These variations are probably due as much to my faults in recording as to mispronunciations by Tlingit-speakers of a foreign word. It was not translated, but Krauss identifies it as Eyak for ‘nest’ (udAłtł‘ihł).

On this stream, over one-half of the way to “Situk Lake,” perhaps near or above the confluence of the “On-klat,” was the site of the fort built by the TłaayIk-Teqwedi after they had destroyed the Russian post on the Ankau. It consisted of three or four houses, connected by tunnels, and surrounded by a wall, in which was the door from the Russian fort. This was called ‘Eagle Fort,’ Ta nu in Tlingit, or utcgalaq glaca’ł in Eyak (Krauss, g/u-djgAlA-tła-ca’ł). Here, the occupants repulsed an attack by the Tł’UknaAdi from Dry Bay, only to be destroyed by the latter at WuganiyE in Disenchantment Bay. After this, the former ł‘uedi territory on Lost and Situk Rivers was preempted by the Bear House Teqwedi.

A hunting camp on the upper Situk was called GíyÀq (Krauss, giyA), which my informant said was an Eyak word suggesting an open space (see p. 64). Many of my informants had or have camps ‘way up the Situk’ (sItAkyIk).

The eastern branch of the Situk, which formerly drained Russell Fiord Lake, was called ’A axiaq; poorly recorded, but probably meaning something ’between the trees.’

Johnson Slough, which enters the Situk from the east, is GAniyac (Uniac) hín. About 1 miles above the landing at the end of the railway, on the western side of the stream, was once a single Tł’UknaAdi house, Boulder House, on top of a sand bluff. This was built by the greatgranduncle of Minnie Johnson, perhaps early in the 19th century; at any event so long ago that the place, “Gunne-ash,” was known to Emmons (MS.) only by name. The settlement was called GAniyac or GAniyacyIk, ’Inside Johnson Slough.’

Black Sand Island, enu, formerly extended between the mouths of the Situk and the Ahrnklin Rivers, but has been largely washed away since the chart (# 8402; 1949; cf. revision of 1963) was made. Situk Harry, a Teqwedi house owner, started to build Valley House on it; but the island was largely washed away after his death in 1945. Now it is described as a sandbar with a few fishermen‘s cabins on it, and all the rivers from Situk to Ahrnklin have a common mouth, since the bar now extends across the old mouth of the Ahrnklin (see U.S.G.S. topographic map, 1951; chart #8402, revised 1963). In 1901, there were extensive lagoons at the mouths of these rivers, with strong tidal currents sweeping in and out at each end of Black Sand Island. These lagoons and the connecting slough “were full of jumping salmon”: king, sockeye, and coho (Moser, 1901, p. 385).

In passing east of Black Sand Island we enter the territory of the Drum House branch of the Teqwedi. They had been living in the Dry Bay area before they purchased the lands to the west.

The first stream east of the Situk, and west of Seal Creek, has no name on the maps but is known to the natives as Qacai’e, ‘Human Head Slough.’ Seal Creek is literally that: Tsa ’iE (or ‘ii).

The Ahrnklin River was the heart of the Drum House territory. The name is ’Antłén, shortened from ’At-’àni-tłén, ‘big town (or country) of the animals,’ a name applied to a village on the river about 2 miles above the mouth and apparently between the two main branches of the river. Here were four big houses, including the original Drum House, Thunderbird House, and Golden Eagle House, all belonging to the Teqwedi. A tale recorded by Swanton (1909, pp. 365–368) recounts the story of Heavy-Wings who built Thunderbird House. The river is now said to be undercutting the site. On the Ahrnklin there was also a settlement, or house, called ‘Wolf Cave,’ ùtc tAtukw, belonging to the Teqwedi. According to Emmons (MS.), the inhabitants of “An Klain” were all but wiped out by smallpox, and the town deserted. He believed that the original Drum House line had become extinct, although my informants’ stories would indicate that it barely escaped that fate.

The central branch of the Ahrnklin River, rising just below Slate Peak, is ’Antłén hín; a northwestern tributary is GAnEtitsk or GUnet'sitsk (Krauss, guletsitsk, ‘narrow body of water’ in Eyak); and the main western arm is Tał’-Itu hín, ‘River Through the Small(?) Willows.’ The main eastern branch is Staéya; this, as well as the name for the northwestern tributary, is in the tongue of the original inhabitants and cannot be translated. The latter had various names, but were also known as the StaAdi, after the eastern tributary of the Ahrnklin, which was the last bit of territory they owned in the whole Yakutat area. After selling this, they emigrated (to southeastern Alaska?).

There was rich hunting on the mountain slopes at the head of the Ahrnklin. The father of one elderly informant had a hunting camp at what we believe to be the head of the east branch, Staèya cAk. Slate Peak, near the headwaters of the central and western branches, which can be seen from the head of Russell Fiord, is called Laut and was a good place on which to hunt mountain goats. Fish, mink, land otter, and wolves were obtained in the area by the natives. The river itself was closed to commercial fishing by the Government, and the Indians who owned traplines in the vicinity have tried to prevent the Whites from encroaching (Goldschmidt and Haas, 1946, p. 81).

An island in the river was known as “Rice Island,” Ku at’i, literally, ‘island of Kamchatka lilies,’ evidently because the natives used to gather “wild rice” here from the roots of these plants.

The Ahrnklin country is full of historic associations for the Drum House Teqwedi. Not only was it purchased because the people from Dry Bay found it so beau….tiful, but later, it was a hunter from ’Antłen village who encountered a wounded Golden Eagle in the mountains, learned its song (1954, 1-1-F; p. 253), and from it obtained from the Drum House people the right to use the Golden Eagle as a crest. On the river, half a century ago, the older brother of one of my informants was drowned, but because the Wolf was a Teqwedi crest, the wolves guarded his body. This story, as well as the Teqwedi claims to the river, are symbolized in a magnificent beaded blanket (pl. 151). Lastly, a song composed by Olaf Abraham (1954, 1-2-A; p. 1291) interprets the mountains at the head of the Ahrnklin River as symbolic of all the ancestors of the lineage.

According to informants, a slough or channel, not shown on my map or chart, has recently been formed connecting the mouths of the Ahrnklin and Dangerous Rivers. This will take a skiff on a 10-foot tide. In 1901, Lt. Rodman's party had to ascend to the head of the eastern branch of the Ahrnklin and make a portage “across a small plain to Dangerous River,” a matter of 45–60 minutes (Moser, 1901, p. 386).

Dangerous River, Kutłitciki hín (Harrington, khAłłIttchIkkI hîin; see Boas, 1917, p. 67, k’ùłÌxéLcAn, “dangerous”), drains Harlequin Lake at the foot of Yakutat Glacier. It is dangerous to cross because of the swift water and floating ice, and while purchased by the Teqwedi, had no settlements on it. Moser (1901, p. 386) notes that it is full of quicksands, has a strong current, and is continually changing its bed. “It is considered a very treacherous stream and is feared by the natives.” The water is muddy with glacial debris, and can only be navigated with a very small canoe at high tide (Robson, 1910, p. 165). There is a long portage between the tidal basins at the mouths of the Dangerous and Italio Rivers, so that Moser (1901, p. 386) advises travelers going westward to cross Dangerous River where they have reached it from the Ahrnklin portage. “The quickest and easiest way is to cache the canoe at Dangerous River and pack across the sand plain to the Italio, skirting the tree line and fording the [Italio] river; the depth is less than 2 feet.” Otherwise, one must descend Dangerous River by canoe, and make a long portage from the eastern end of the tidal basin at its mouth to the mouth of the Italio. Dangerous River carried salmon, and many seals could be shot on the bars in the middle of the river. “They make good eating in the winter when they are fat, or in the spring,” it is said. Harrington was told that seals were “always lighting on the bar” (tsháa ’aayeekkhîi-tjiié).

According to my informant, the eastern boundary of Teqwedi lands was just east of the Italio River, and just west of the present mouth of the Akwe-Ustay Rivers, that is, due south of Harlequin Lake. Beyond this is the Akwe River-Dry Bay country, belonging to Raven sibs. Emmons (MS.), however, includes the Italio River with the western territory, reporting that in 1886 there was one Tł’UknaAdi house with 12 occupants, all that remained of an old village. According to Goldschmidt and Haas (1946, p. 83): “The dakestina clan own the Italio River.” This is simply another name for the CAnkuqedi, and the two men belonging to this sib, who were mentioned by these authors as having trapping rights here in 1946, were Frank Italio and Sam George, both sons of the Tł’UknaAdi chief, Dry Bay Chief George. “Like other areas in the Yakutat territory, the Italio river area was transferred contrary to the native rules of inheritance, with the result that clan ownership has been confused” (Goldschmidt and Haas, 1946, p. 82). A distinction should, however, be made between villages and house sites, traplines, and general hunting territories. Teqwedi tradition recounts that they were living on the Italio River, as well as at Dry Bay, before they purchased the Ahrnklin area. Possibly exclusive title to the Italio was never clearly established by any of the sibs. In 1909, Robson's party photographed some Indian cabins on the river, apparently a summer fishing camp, but give no details (1910, photo. opp. p. 171).

The Italio River, called Qétłhwa, is reported to rise either in Harlequin Lake or in another lake about 4 miles to the southeast; more likely, it receives water from both. The western arm, used in traveling by canoe to Dry Bay, is not, however, connected with the Akwe River, as indicated on Moser's map (1901, pl. XLIII). In any case, from the confluence of the eastern tributary about 7 miles above the mouth, the main stream runs southwestward; “when near the coast it is deflected more to the westward and parallel to the ocean beach, from which it is separated by a low sandspit, about one-eighth of a mile wide, for a distance of 3 miles, when its channel leads into the sea” (Moser, 1901, p. 386). The lower part of the stream is like a tidal lagoon, and this description fits most of the rivers in the area. Moser's party further noted that the stream mouths were in general working westward, as sandbars were built up. The Italio River was described as “a fine stream, clean and clear,” with sandy bottom, and runs of sockeye, coho, humpback, dog, and a few king salmon. It can be easily forded, since the depth is only 2 feet. Other resources obtained by the natives included strawberries, land otter, mink, fox, and brown bear. In the mountains at the head of the river were mountain goat.

A mountain, described as at the head of the Italio or back of Akwe River, Mount Reaburn, or one of the lesser peaks in front), is called Taca or Taca (Harrington, thaà ccaa). It was the slave of Mount Saint Elias and Mount Fairweather, and its owners used to send it back and forth to carry messages between them (JE). Another informant specified that it was from this mountain that Raven‘s partner threw him down a cliff in a box, after Raven had cheated him (MJ). This reference to Raven indicates that we are already close to Dry Bay, where so many localities are associated with his deeds.

THE DRY BAY AREA

The Dry Bay area, in native thought, extends from the Akwe-Ustay River system on the west to Cape Fairweather on the southeast, since all this region was occupied by the same groups of intermarrying sibs.

Dry Bay is sometimes called ’Ałse, referring to the Alsek River, of which it is the mouth. The region is also called Unao (Harrington, kAnnaa úu), contracted from Unanao, ‘among the foreignors [Atha-baskans],’ because the original inhabitants, the Raven TłukwaAdi, spoke Athabaskan. Another term for the bay, possibly a literal translation of the English “Dry Bay,” is WUugU e (i.e., wUUkw e?). It was to Dry Bay that came the Hoonah man, QakewtE, who had killed his own sleep. Here he encountered the Athabaskan TłukwaAdi, taught them Tlingit arts, and from them obtained a wife. A TłukwaAdi man married a Chilkat CAnkuqedi woman, so other members of this Wolf sib came overland to Dry Bay. Later, the Drum House Teqwedi are said to have used this route—if indeed they were not then a part of the CAnkuqedi—up over the Chilkat Pass and down the Alsek. Other Tlingit from southeastern Alaska, the Raven Tł’UknaAdi, the Wolf Kagwantan, and the Bear House Teqwedi, came along the coast, presumably by canoe, possibly on foot from Lituya Bay.

The original language at Dry Bay was said to have sounded something like Copper River Atna; it was most probably a dialect of Southern Tutchone spoken on the upper Alsek. Later, the Tlingit speech at Dry Bay was like that of southeastern Alaska, not like that at Yakutat where so many sounds are pronounced farther back in the throat. Since many of the Dry Bay people used to ascend the Alsek to hunt and trade in the interior, and so many of the Southern Tutchone used to visit the coast, all the Dry Bay people could speak Athabaskan, and affected Athabaskan songs, dances, and costumes for ceremonies.

Landmarks in the Dry Bay area are associated with Raven, with QakewtE, and with the CAnkuqedi boy who was lost on the Alsek and lived with the Thunder-birds, as well as with historic events. Here we are dealing with a different tribe from that of the Yakutat Bay area, even though during this century the original distinction between the peoples has been lost.

Although the cAkuqedi and the Sitka Kagwantan had lineage houses in the Dry Bay area, and the Teqwedi also once lived here, this territory, particularly the Akwe (‘akwe) River region, was claimed by the Athabaskan Raven TłukwaAdi, with whom the Tlingit Raven Tł’UknaAdi mingled and came to dominate. With them lived lesser Raven groups, including remnants of the at’kA’ayi from Lituya Bay.

Dry Bay itself is simply the delta of the Alsek River which rises in southern Yukon Territory and cuts its way through the mountains. The delta flats cover an area of some 80–100 square miles (Moser, 1901, p. 387), and are filled with bars and small islands, between which the channels continually change. Eight miles from the ocean, the river is almost blocked by the Alsek Glacier on the east, and above this are still more glaciers on both sides of the river. The river carries down a quantity of glacial silt, so that at times in summer the sea for 10 miles offshore may be discolored. In summer, too, when the glaciers melt, the river is subject to sudden, dangerous floods of water that may trap and drown persons walking on the flats, or overturn canoes. In the middle of the bay is a rocky wooded island, “Bear Island,” 200 feet high. The westernmost of the three channels crossing the bay is the largest. According to the Coast Pilot (9, 1955, p. 85), it “is about 400 yards wide, has depths of about 6 feet at low water, and has been used to some extent by small craft.” But Riddell and Lane who visited Dry Bay in the cannery tender during stormy weather, September 1953, will appreciate the further warning that to enter “a smooth sea is essential; during heavy weather the sea breaks fully 2 miles off shore.”

“The streams which flow from Dry Bay are navigable for boats and canoes, but have bars at their mouths which require great care to pass over, as the sea generally breaks on them. The Indians, however, get their large canoes, forty to sixty feet long, in and out by selecting the time, and it is reported that once inside there is continuous or nearly continuous navigation by these streams and lagoons behind the sea beach all the way to Yakutat.” [Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 206.]

This is the route which we have been following all the way from the Ankau.

In approaching Dry Bay, we come first to the Akwe River, which joins the Ustay from the east, to empty through a common mouth about 12 miles west of Dry Bay. The Akwe rises in a lake at the foot of Chamberlain Glacier and also receives a tributary from a small lake near the easternmost branch of the Italio. About a mile from the sea, where it meets the Ustay, it “is deflected around a high wooded point through 180°,” then the combined streams flow westward almost 4 miles before entering the sea (Moser, 1901, p. 387). The Akwe, according to our informants, formerly joined the Ustay between 3 and 4 miles farther west of their present junction. The Ustay also rises in a lake below Rodman Glacier on the west, while its eastern branch, Tanis River, rises in a lake of the same name at the foot of Fassett Glacier. From the Tanis-Ustay three streams or creeks flow southeastward or eastward to empty into Dry Bay, that is, into the main channel of the Alsek River which follows the western shore of the bay. These streams are: in the north, from Tanis River, Gines (“Williams”) Creek; then closer to and parallel to the ocean, Kakanhini (Moser‘s Ko-kon-heen-ni, or “Stickleback”) also known as “Muddy Creek,” to distinguish it from a “Clear Creek” which joins it near the mouth; and lastly, the small Stuhinuk or “Cannery” Creek. The Kakanhini and Stuhinuk enter Dry Bay near the mouth of the Alsek, forming a long, narrow island between them, on which is a now deserted cannery and Indian village.

If coming by canoe, we would ascend the eastern branch of the Italio to a small muddy lake, from which there is “a hard portage through the timber” to the westernmost tributary of the Akwe (Moser, 1901, p. 387). Robson, who made the trip in 1909, also reported (1910, p. 166): “At the head of Italio River is the ‘stick portage,’ so called because the portage is through timber and over a hill to the Akwe.” From here, one would run down the Akwe to its confluence with the Ustay, go up the latter, and then down the Kakanhini. This route is dangerous because of the many bars in the rivers and patches of quicksand. However, it is also possible to make the journey on foot, if one has cached the canoe at Dangerous River and followed the edge of the tree line until the Italio River could be forded just above the lagoon at its mouth. From here, one would walk along the ocean beach to the Akwe, then follow up the right bank for about 3 miles from the mouth, crossing two wooded belts separated by a “broad, treeless, sand plain,” until, beyond a “low, grassy plain,” the Akwe “can be forded under normal conditions. Caution, however, must be used as there is considerable quicksand, but by using a pole and sounding ahead a passage can be made” (Moser, 1901, p. 387). The ford is apparently just below the confluence of the Akwe and Ustay. Near here, however, Moser noted that a canoe was usually kept on the eastern bank of the Akwe for ferrying. This place was probably near the former junction of the rivers, where an old village site was reported (one of the two locations given for Gue, see below). The route leads from here along the shore, where “the sea beach affords an excellent highway, particularly at low water,” and a “well-defined trail” led up to the village at the mouth of the Stuhinuk and Kakanhini Creeks (Moser, 1901, p. 387). Along this route, there is now a road between the mouth of the Akwe–Ustay to the fishcamp at the very southwest entrance point of Dry Bay.

Emmons (MS.) translates the name “Ah-qway” as “great water.” My informants pronounced it ’akwe; it is probably Athabaskan.

Tebenkov's map (VII; Davidson, 1904, map VI) indicates that the Akwe and “Akse” or Ustay Rivers emptied directly into the sea at their confluence. On each was a village, designated as the “Nearer” and “Farther Village to the Russian Post [at Yakutat].” Davidson (1869, p. 136) also reports these villages as some 6–12 miles upstream from the common mouth. The first seems to be on the south or west bank opposite the confluence of the western and northern (main) branches of the Akwe; the second appears to be on the west bank of the Ustay opposite the opening into Gines Creek. (See map 23, p. 160.)

Tebenkov's “Nearer Village” is certainly the main Tł’UknaAdi and TłukwaAdi town, Gue, described by one informant as halfway up the Akwe, near a lake. It was originally an Athabaskan settlement, where the wandering QakewtE from southeastern Alaska taught the Athabaskans how to catch fish. In Swanton's version of the story (1909, Tale 32, pp. 160–161), the L!k!nAxA’dî (Tł’UknaAdi) the next year built Sleep House at Kos!’x. Swanton's Wrangell informant located this village vaguely on the Ałs’x, and referred to it also as Kos!’xka at “the mouth of Copper river,” but it is evidently the same place (Gue). Here, the Tlingit Tł’UknaAdi established important houses that were built or rebuilt after the defeat of the Russians at Yakutat, and to it they brought the Russian loot taken from the Tł’UknaAdi-Teqwedi or ł’uedi. The houses said to have been built here were variously listed as Mountain (Fairweather) House, Sea Lion House, Whale House, Far Out House, and Frog House. The last was named for an enormous frozen frog found when digging the foundations. The town was abandoned after 1852, perhaps as late as 1865(?), after a Tł’UknaAdi party, enroute to southeastern Alaska, was drowned in Lituya Bay. From Gue, the inhabitants moved away, some to Hoonah and Sitka, others to the settlement near the Dry Bay cannery from which their descendants came to Yakutat.

On the Akwe, Emmons (MS.) mentions “Kul-se-gun-ke-ye (to see through the trees),” where 20 people lived in three houses in 1886, but which later became only a summer fishing camp. It was near a thinly timbered point, but is otherwise not located. He also reports “Gooch-ache (hill town),” named for a peculiar cone-shaped hill at the confluence of the Akwe and Ustay. It was occupied especially by the at’kA’ayi with Kagwantan wives, and was once very large, although only four houses remained in 1900. While the name suggests Gue, the site was apparently farther downstream than most informants would place the latter. If Emmon's translation of “hill town” is correct, it would be gútc-’àní in Tlingit. In any case it seems to be near the canoe ferry mentioned by Moser.

My informants called the Tanis-Ustay River, Tanís, but did not translate it. When there were (TłaayIk-?) Teqwedi at Knight Island, the TłukwaAdi from Dry Bay provoked war with them. To protect themselves, they built a fortified village somewhere on the Alsek, “back towards the mountains,” called “Eddy Fort;” Cia’a núwu. This was probably well up the Alsek River (see p. 89). Later, when peace was established, they moved downstream and settled at DInÉtki-’àn, “it wiggles like jelly,” evidently referring to the shifting sand (see Boas, 1917, p. 142; yÀ-nAt’, ’to shake’). It is said that “no trees or greens grow here at all…. It's like it's floating…. It's where the Alsek is just running out swift…. There's a big bluff there, a clear place,” on the west side of the river (MJ for Frank Italio). Emmons (MS.) also mentions a settlement, “De-nis-te-nar (shaking ground)” on the Tanis, named for the quicksands in that river, which suggests the same settlement. Here a mixed Tlingit–Athabaskan population of 40 was living in two large houses in 1888. Riddell and Lane were told of a former village on Gines Creek, which flows from the Tanis to the Alsek. Tebenkov's “Farther Village” was on the Tanis, where Gines Creek branches off. Possibly all these accounts refer to a single settlement, established after “Eddy Fort.”

Emmons (MS.) noted a village with three houses belonging to the at’kA’áyi, called “Tlu-tu-heen-nok (water from the nose) [possibly Łutu hinnA], literally meaning Dry Point.” He located it at the mouth of a northern [sic] branch of the Alsek, where a point sticks out into Dry Bay. The name suggests what our informants called łtuhinU (probably very poorly recorded), and applied to a village on Stuhinuk (“Cannery”) Creek, or rather on the island between it at Kakanhini Creek, farther inland.

At the Dry Bay (eastern) end of the long, narrow island between these two sloughs, there is a sand dune. On this I was told could still be seen the footprints made when Raven with a cane shaped like a devilfish tentacle drew ashore an “ark” filled with all kinds of food animals. Canoe Prow House of the TłukwaAdi refers to the enclosed prow of this canoe, and the Tł’UknaAdi use a dance paddle shaped like the cane. The point, ’Atuqka, was “a place just like the prow of a canoe—like an island.” In 1901, Moser noted a settlement on the southeast side of the island. On the ocean side are the ruins of the Tł’UknaAdi Far Out House (also called Frog House) and Thunderbird House of the CAnkuqedi. Canoe Prow House of the TłukwaAdi is on the north side near the old cannery. One informant also mentioned a Tł’UknaAdi Boulder House. It is not clear how many sites or locations were involved, for my informants vaguely described several places, and spoke of the houses as having been built or rebuilt several times. The last time was in 1909–10 for Frog House and Thunderbird House; Canoe Prow House is a frame house built in 1925. At an earlier period, the houses are described as having been farther “back” (more inland towards Kakanhini Creek ?). All are now deserted, as is the cannery, built and abandoned between 1901 and 1912. There are graves near the village site and on the sand dune bearing dates from 1905–30.

According to Goldschmidt and Haas (1946, pp. 84–85) the village with Far Out House, Boulder House and Thunderbird House was on the east side of Dry Bay, near the mouth, but this seems to be in error, for my informants clearly placed it on the west.

Emmons had heard of a village on Kakanhini Slough, called “Ko-ghan-heenee (Stickleback)” but nothing remained of it in his day. The Tlingit name would be ágAn (Boas, 1917, p. 128). “Huskay (back of the trees)” [’as-t'á?] was also remembered as a village somewhere in Dry Bay.

When Robson went to Dry Bay in 1909 along the streams and sloughs from Yakutat, he found about 50 members of the “Dry Bay tribe” living in temporary summer huts and tents near the mouth of the Kakanhini, where they were putting up salmon. By the middle of September, however, “The huts were still standing, but the Indians had long since caught their winter supply of salmon and retreated to the shelter of the mountains” (Robson, 1910, pp. 173, 166–167).

The sandy flats of Dry Bay are traversed not only by the mouths of the Alsek River, but by other streams coming from the mountains on either side. According to Tebenkov‘s chart, these various streams are (from west to east): the Kakagina; Vankagina (west of Bear Island); and the Kunakagi, Taaltsug, and Tlegan, (east of the island). Most of these cannot be identified with the present streams and sloughs. The latter are the main channel of the Alsek on the west, East (or Easting) River (now called East Alsek River) in the middle of the delta, and the Dohn (now called Doame) River that skirts Deception Hills on the east.

The rocky island in the middle of the bay is called “Bear Island,” because it is frequented by so many bears that it is dangerous to go there without a gun. The native name is Áłtcinuwu (untranslated). (It sounds like ał, gał, ’clam’; djIn, ’hand’; nuwu, ’fort of’.) Swanton's Sitkan informant (1908, p. 413) gave it the name Ałts’nîwâ, and reported (in error, I believe) that it had given the name ‘people on the island’ to the Q!At!ka’yÎ (at’kA’ayi). The island looks like a stranded whale, and is in fact the Whale down whose blowhole Raven flew, and which he caused to wash ashore at Dry Bay. The Alsek delta is sandy because Raven wished the Whale to strand on a fine sandy beach. The people that flenzed the Whale and whom Raven cheated of the blubber lived on the east side of the bay, at Yay tayi, ‘Whale's Fat.’ On or very close to the island are rocks that were once an adolescent girl in her puberty hood, her two brothers, and their two dogs, all turned to stone because she looked at them. To approach these rocks will cause stormy weather. Swanton (1908, pl. XLIX, c) figures a TłukwaAdi hat which illustrates “the story of a man (the figure in the center), and two girls (on the sides) who turned into stone while trying to cross Alsek river.”

Dry Bay is where Raven opened the box of Daylight which he had stolen. The sudden burst of light not only so frightened the people that they ran away and turned into various sea and land animals according to the furs they were wearing, but also drove all the rocks away. Raven also tricked the king salmon into coming ashore at Dry Bay.

On the lower part of the Alsek River in Dry Bay is a small place called KunagÁ’a, where people living on the east side of the bay used to go to put up king salmon. “We always go up to the [Alsek] glacier here and stay, and then go to KunagA’a in Dry Bay over here,” I was told. Emmons (MS.) reports “Ku-nar Ka-ha” as a sand flat at the mouth of the Alsek where people caught king salmon in the early summer. Possibly it was on the north shore of the bay, opposite the entrance to Tebenkov‘s “Kunakagi” or what we now call East River.

My informants applied the name Diyáyì or Diyayi to the Dohn River, or, more probably, to the land bordering the eastern shore of Dry Bay. “Dog Salmon River,” Titł’ híni, is either the correct name for the Dohn River, or else for one of its main tributaries that drains the west slope of Deception Hills. Minnie Johnson said that Diyáyì was a rocky mountain or hill, east of the Alsek, where a big rock stands up like a man. It was here that QakewtE taught the Athabaskans how to catch eulachon in a fishtrap. People used to live partly up Titł’ hini, and this settlement is probably what Emmons (MS.) called “De-arge (across the river)” and described as a small village on a “southern branch of the Alsek.” A woman, who had lived here as a child, said of the place: “Deception Hills are above it. It was an old place—all sandy. They lived on the north side, I guess. That sand was all over. There was no fresh water near the mouth.”

The last man to live on Dohn River, after all the TłukwaAdi had died off, was John Williams (1887–1943), builder of Canoe Prow House on the other side of Dry Bay. It was on the Dohn River, or Titł’ híni, that the parents of an informant were drowned by a sudden flood of glacial melt water in 1907. Her Kagwantan paternal grandfather used to set his salmon trap in a nearby stream, Gun hín, ‘Clear Spring Water.’ Perhaps his Box House was on the Dohn or Titł’ híni.

Although the coast from Dry Bay nearly to Cape Fairweather is considered to belong to the Dry Bay people, a discussion of this area is best postponed until we have visited the upper Alsek River, as the natives used to do. On the lower Alsek, in the Dry Bay–Akwe area there was formerly excellent fishing, especially in the smaller rivers and sloughs where eulachon, king, red or sockeye, silver, humpback, and dog salmon were caught. By 1925, however, the Akwe River and the “basin” of the Alsek River had to be permanently closed to commercial fishing, and other regulations have severely limited the length of the commercial fishing season off the mouths of the rivers. Many Yakutat people go regularly to Dry Bay early in the summer to fish for the cannery, before the season opens off Situk and Lost Rivers. Around the shores of Dry Bay are salmonberries, blueberries, highbush cranberries, and other fruits. In the mountains above are brown and black bear and mountain goat, but there were no deer or porcupine. Fur-bearers were lynx, marten, wolf, wolverine, fox, and land otter (Goldschmidt and Haas, 1946, pp. 83–85).

THE ALSEK RIVER

Despite its swift currents, the Alsek formed a highway for travel between the coast and the interior. According to Robson (1910, p. 169), who made the ascent during the summer, there are two difficult canyons to pass. The first is 20 miles (by river) from the mouth, and lies between a cliff 1,000–1,500 feet high on the west, and the 200-foot ice wall of the Alsek Glacier on the east. Beneath the latter was a lake, which probably does not form every year. The canyon is only 1,000 feet wide and is filled with swirling water.

“The Indians have a superstitious fear of the place, for several of their number have been drowned and they cannot be induced to go near it except in winter when everything is frozen over. In the cranky little dugouts having only a few inches of freeboard it is little wonder that they met destruction in the terrible waves and swirls.” [Ibid., p. 169.]

Above the first canyon is a 25-mile stretch of valley, midway along which is the receding end of a glacial tongue belonging to the great “through glacier” which connects the Alsek River and Russell Fiord. Robson (ibid., p. 171) commented on the beautiful summer weather experienced above the first canyon, because “the mountain ranges through which we had passed shut out the rains and storms of the Pacific.”

The second canyon is some 40 miles above Dry Bay, where the Alsek in descending makes a right-angle bend from south to west, and where a second ice-discharging glacier, the Melbern, enters from the east. Above this, in British Columbia and some 70 miles from the sea, is the confluence of the Tatshenshini from the northeast with the main branch of the Alsek. Still farther upstream the Kaskawulsh enters from the northwest.

Although Robson did not travel above this point, he saw no floating ice here, and so concluded that there were no glaciers discharging into either river, although, of course, most of their tributaries flow from icefields. He noted that from the forks one could travel in winter to Glacier Bay, via the Melbern and the Grand Pacific Glacier. Possibly this was the way QakewtE was supposed to have come to Dry Bay.

Robson's journey downstream was exceedingly rapid, since the canoes made 50 miles in only 5 hours, whereas there had been many days of hard labor cordelling the boats upstream (ibid., p. 172). In the summer of 1890, Glave and Dalton had gone into the interior from Lynn Canal, via what was to be known as the Dalton Trail over Chilkat Pass, and then crossing a pass, had gone down the Tatshenshini and Alsek to the coast. Glave (1892, p. 880) describes the Alsek as:

“…a wild dangerous river which races along with an eight-knot current, its volume at times spread over the rocky valley in a dozen channels which combine in one deep torrent when the mountains close in and narrow the limits with their rocky walls. Along the banks of the Alseck old moraines slope to the river‘s edge, and active glaciers are pushed far out into the stream; the internal working of the icefield maintains a continued rumble, and blocks of ice topple into the river, and whip the waters into a confused, seething mass. Eighty miles to the east of Yakutat, on the south coast of Alaska, the Alseck River plunges in one deep, angry torrent through a cañon of rock and ice, flows over the stony waste known as Dry Bay, and pours a muddy volume into the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean.”

Because of the difficulties of getting a canoe up the river, the prospectors avoided the lower stretches by traveling over the “through glaciers” east of the Alsek. Tarr and Butler (1909, p. 35) write:

“For example, it is said by prospectors that one could start from the terminus of Yakutat Glacier, whose end rests on the foreland east of Yakutat [at the head of Dangerous River], and, ascending to a broad ice divide, pass on down into the Alsek Valley by one of several courses…. [The icefield could also be crossed from Hubbard Glacier, Nunatak Glacier and Hidden Glacier.] In fact, several years ago some of these glaciers were actually used as highways by scores of prospectors as a means of entrance to the Alsek Valley, some going to the head of Russell Fiord and ascending a glacier (called “Fourth Glacier”), which comes down to the foreland just east of the fiord, others going from the head of Nunatak Fiord up Nunatak Glacier (called “Third Glacier”)…. The ruins of a store at the head of Russell Fiord and the remnants of sledges at the base of the nunatak in Nunatak Fiord and of boats at the landing place near by are relics of these days of over-ice travel.”

Hundreds of prospectors went this way during the Gold Rush, and Fourth Glacier is “still a highway to the Alsek Valley” (Tarr and Martin, 1910, p. 7). Blackwelder (1907 a, p. 87–88) reports that in 1898 the prospectors dragged their sleds about 40 miles from Nunatak Glacier to the head of “American River,” a tributary of the Alsek, but that crevasses later rendered this route impassable. Farewell (1909, p. 536) states:

“At the time of the Klondike excitement a number tried to go up the Alsek. A little settlement was formed on the west branch of the river, called New Hamberg, which is evidence that there was a German in the party. It lasted only one winter. It is said that some of the men were four months getting over the glaciers from Disenchantment Bay, and whether any ever succeeded in getting into the Klondike that way is highly problematical.”

The Whites were not the first to use this route. One informant said that after the original owners had sold the Ahrnklin area to the Teqwedi they walked into the interior over one of the glaciers from Russell Fiord, probably Nunatak Glacier. They went to Teanukwa, probably on the headwaters of the Alsek, near Scotty Creek and below Wesketahin (Dalton Post). It took them 3 months walking. From here they went in 1 months to “Taku Lake,” identified as Taku Arm of Lake Atlin, walked all around Atlin Lake, and then went to Klukwan on Lynn Canal. Even if this exceedingly circuitous route seems difficult to credit as historically accurate, it indicates something of Yakutat knowledge of the interior, unana ’àní, ‘Athabaskans’ land.’

Travel on the Alsek itself was so dangerous because of the extent of the glaciers which were formerly greater than today. When Topham (1889 a, p. 425) was at Yakutat in 1888 he heard, perhaps from the prospector who had come from Dry Bay by canoe, that just above “the lagoon at its mouth,” the Alsek “passes beneath a portion of the Pacific Glacier which descends from Mount Fairweather. The Indians portage across the ice, and launch their canoes above it,” and had explored as far as 100 miles above the mouth of the Alsek. According to Robson (1910, p. 171); ’Dalton and Glave, who floated down the Alsek in 1890, speak of a place where the river runs under a glacier near the sea. The two places described above, the first and second canyons where glaciers discharge directly into the river are the only approaches to that condition, and it is hardly possible that so great a change has occurred in twenty years.” While I believe that such a change could have occurred in this space of time, Glave‘s account of their descent of the Alsek (January 3, 1891) does not mention passing under the ice. Presumably, however, Glave and Dalton heard the native traditions about it. My own informants mentioned the ice bridge (see below), and while similar ice barriers are reported by various native groups to have spanned every major river from the Copper to the Stikine (Tarr and Martin, 1914, p. 416; Garfield, 1947, pp. 438, 447; de Laguna, 1956, p. 2; 1960, pp. 132, 137), there is no reason to discredit these traditions. We may infer, rather, that an ice bridge across the Alsek has formed and broken several times. These changes would be due to temporary advances of the ice, despite the general retreat of the glaciers since the 18th century, and to floods caused by the breaking of ice-dammed lakes on the headwaters.

Two such occurrences in the last century were reported to us by an Indian who lived at Mile 1022 on the Alaska Highway near the Alsek headwaters, and who had heard from his mother of the ice dams’ breaking. In contrast, in 1908 the Alsek River terminus of the Grand Pacific “through” Glacier was advancing into the forest (Tarr and Martin, 1914, p. 193).

As with all glacier-fed streams, the amount of water and the strength of current in the Alsek were likely to vary greatly over a short period of time. Thus Tarr and Martin (1910, p. 35) state: “The natives residing at Dry Bay, 60 miles southeast of Yakutat Bay, report that in the summer of 1909 there were remarkable and long-continued changes in the volume of the Alsek River, which may be related to the advancing and breaking of some of the glaciers whose ends lie up this valley.” An informant who lived in Dry Bay has told of many drownings caused by sudden rushes of water which overturned canoes or swept across the mud flats.

Although it is not possible to identify the majority of the localities involved, our informant's accounts of travel up and down the Alsek are not without interest.

“My father's people, TłukwaADi, used to go way up to the head of Alsek, ’Ałseyik. They would catch king salmon, slice it and cover it over with cottonwood branches. They used duq (cottonwood) leaves (kaani) and put it on top of the dry fish. They would just leave it there, and when they came down from the head of Alsek, it was just dried good. Up at Tinx kaani [’Kinnikinik Leaves’] at the head of Alsek, they used to get soapberries and other kinds of berries and put them in a box. They used to go up there for all kinds of meat—black bear meat, and then they come down. That's where my father‘s people stay, way up there on an island, getting soapberries and king salmon.

“When they were going up the river, they used to cross the glacier the whole way across. They took their cottonwood dugouts with them. They took their canoes up a gully between two mountains, like a V, with a ravine, eł’ or eł‘w, like a steep place between the two mountains. They carry the canoes over. It takes them one or two days.”

This portage is apparently over the point of land on the west bank of the Alsek, opposite Alsek Glacier. The mountain on the west was called eł’guwa, while the hill on the east side of the Alsek, Gateway Knob, was called ita in Athabaskan, or YAdagwAł in Tlingit, referring to the stones that continually ‘rolled down’ from it (or from the glacier).

Of Gateway Knob: “That's where the rocks fall all around, and they call it Yeł tsunayI [’Raven's work’?]. There are rocks that big [the size of golf balls] coming down. It's funny they don’t go in the boat. They just fall around the boat. When you are going to die—that's the time they go in the boat. Old Crow [Raven] made it like that. His wife is just scared. ‘Oh, it's going to drop on our boat and go through!’ [she said], ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Raven. ‘Oh no, they won’t go through.’ I believe it [my informant added.] When my father was going up to TInx kaani, it touched his boat. That same summer they drowned.”

One gathers that the ascent might be made in the spring or in the (late?) summer, when the snow was melting and rocks falling, as well as in the fall or winter when the river was frozen (see below). In fact, another woman explained: “You know the Alsek is very swift. They need lines to take the canoes up,” implying that canoes were towed upstream (MJ). Blackwelder (1907a, p. 87) reports, however, that the Alsek can be ascended by small boats only during low water; which would mean that from some time in May or June until sometime in August, swollen floodwaters fill the whole lower canyon and make ascent impossible.

“They used to cross the glacier to go up the river, but going down they had to go under the glacier. That water is pretty rough. Every time they come out, everybody sings. They put on their new shoes [sic] and all their good clothes before they go under the glacier, for fear they will drown. The clothes are of moose and caribou hide, tanned white, and sometimes have porcupine quill embroidery. I know that song, too. That man, he stands up in front of the boat and he sings that song. [It is now used as a dancing song for pot-latches (1954, 6–2-D; p. 1230.]

The informant's son explained the trip: “The TłukwaAdi lived in Dry Bay, and used to go up the Alsek, and take their canoes over a point called eł’w, through a V-shaped notch. They would go up every fall or winter to YewAłtcA hín, a river where there is a glacier and the ice breaks in spring. [There, or somewhere else up the Alsek, is a place called “King Salmon Bone,” T’aketci, (possibly t’aici,’dried king salmon’?).] When they went up in the fall they would hang fish to dry there and it would take care of itself. Nothing happens to it. They would spend the winter in the interior and come back in the spring. [He also mentioned Yeł tsunayI] “a place up the Alsek where pebbles keep falling all the time, but they won’t hit the canoe unless someone is going to die. Yeł [Raven] told his wife the pebbles would fall outside the canoe—that‘s why…When they came down [under Alsek Glacier], they would put on their best clothes, and after they had passed the glacier they would yell, and it would break behind them, because they were so happy.” He also reported that they sang.

MAP 12.—The Alsek River. (Davidson, 1901 a.)

Not only did the glacial arch apparently break between 1888(?) and 1890(?), but it also broke when Emma Ellis’ father's mother was a little girl (about 1850?), creating such a big wave that many people drowned in Dry Bay.

The second glacier ascending the river (on the northwest side, near the British Columbia boundary), is where Raven threw away his wife‘s sewing basket and a big king salmon stomach. It is said that one can still see them.

Four days’ hard journey up the Alsek, but only one day's run down, was a camping spot called ‘Glacier Point,’ SÍt' ai. It was here that a CAnkuqedi boy was left behind by accident, but was rescued by the Thunderbirds, an event which entitled his sib to use the Thunderbird as a crest and to sing Thunderbird songs (1952, 2–1–3, 5; pp. 249–251).

A mountain at the head of the Alsek where the Dry Bay people obtained white rock (marble) to carve into dolls’ heads is near a place called ‘Mountain Goats’ Stream,’ DjInuwu hÍni.

Probably some of the places visited by the Dry Bay people are the two “Stick's Villages” on the map drawn by the Chilkat Chief Koh-Klux for Davidson in 1852 (1901a). These settlements appear to be on the Tatshen-shini, at the confluence of the O’Conner from the east and just below it. “Tin-cho-hani” evidently TInx kaani, is still farther up the river. (See map 12, p. 88.)

When Dalton and Glave started down the Alsek in 1890 from Weskatahin (Dalton Post), they came first, after passing some rapids, to an abandoned settlement consisting of a few dilapidated log buildings, including a crude plank gable-roofed house and a cache on poles. According to their native companions, these had belonged to the “Nua Qua,” a coastal tribe that had come into the interior many years before, looking for flint with which to make tools. This they obtained from a mountain called “Klécéá.” They met the “Gunena” (Athabaskans), and gave them seal oil in trade. Some of the “Nua Qua” never returned to the coast. Eventually, those that had settled in the interior died off, through sickness and starvation, or mingled with the local Indians (Southern Tutchone). Glave's guide, Shank, was one of their descendants. “The last chief of the Nua Quas was old Tena sarti [TInna ati, ’Master of Copper‘], who died many years ago” (Glave, December 20, 1890, p. 376).

A short distance below this abandoned village, Glave and Dalton came to

“the remains of a once important settlement. There was still standing an old plank house, very strongly built. The timber had been scored and hewn by some well-instructed mechanic who had gained his experience, undoubtedly from the early Russians. [The heavy planks and timbers had been squared and dovetailed with an ax and fastened with iron spikes, while the stout door was put together with copper nails. The smokehole was circular, as if in imitation of the hole for a stovepipe.] The old houses at Sitka much resemble this one. There was a large square, formerly used for a council hall, composed of heavy planks jutting out from the main building, the whole edifice being roofed with rough shingles. [This was evidently a fort or a fortified settlement.]

“It is said that after the massacre of the Russians at Yakutat, many of the natives of the place, fearing the vengeance of Saranoff [sic., Baranov] when he should return and find all his people killed, penetrated the Alseck country and settled at Tin Char Tlar, the place where stands the house I have just described. Here they traded with the inland tribe of Gunena Indians. But they all died off; even the local trails around the settlement are now obliterated.” [Glave, December 27, 1890, p. 396.]

The fate of these settlers seems to have been the same as that of the “Nua Qua,” whose village was not far upstream. One wonders, in fact, if they were not one and the same group, even though two stories are given to account for their movement into the interior. On the other hand, the tradition of a flight from Yakutat to escape Russian wrath reminds me of the building of “Eagle Fort” on the Situk; and these two traditions may have been confused. The Alsek River fort, however, would appear to have been what my informants called “Eddy Fort,” built by the Dry Bay people as protection against the Yakutat Teqwedi.

Davidson (1901 a, p. 82), in reporting the travels of the Chilkat Chief Koh-klux, states that on a journey down the Tatsenshini to its confluence with the Kaska-wulsh, “he encountered the rapids, Tchu-Kan-nagh’, a log hut on the right [west] bank (built in the style of the Russian log huts of Port Mulgrave—with a legend thereto), with the name [missing in the text; see Tinchor-han on the map], and other villages of ‘sticks’; hence to its junction with the Kaskar Wurlch.” From this it would appear that Koh-klux's “log cabin,” the fort reported by Dalton and Glaves, and “Eddy Fort” (cia’a núwu) of my informant (see p. 83) are all one and the same, located at or near ‘Kinnikinnick Leaves,’ just below the swirling rapids.

Other localities mentioned are impossible to identify. Thus, according to a tale recorded at Wrangell by Swanton (1909, p. 118) the place where Raven gave a feast to the Wolf clan is on the Alsek. “You can still see his house there with the boxes inside (a rock hollowed out like a cave with other rocks inside of it). When they came in sight of that the Indians would pray to it.” One of my informants specified, however, that Raven's Rock House was “the other side of Lituya Bay” (MJ).

A rock way up the Alsek is TAnaku, according to my informant. Swanton's Sitka storyteller (1909, Tale 27, p. 68) placed TA’nAku just south of the Alsek River, which is undoubtedly correct (see p. 91). In the same story (p. 67) was mentioned a place above the glaciers, called CnyukA’, where the Dry Bay people went for soapberries. There is also a hole in the cliff(?), called the “Hole-Raven-bored, (Ył-djuwAtu’łia),” from which come rocks whenever there is to be a big run of eulachon or other fish. My informants did not mention these last two localities.

Undoubtedly the Dry Bay people were familiar with much of the interior country sketched by the Chilkat Chief Koh-klux in 1852 for Davidson (1901a). Some of them were, in fact, interior Tutchone married to Dry Bay spouses. Parties from Dry Bay must have known the way up the Alsek and Tatshenshini to Weskatahin, the great native trading center to which the Chilkat Tlingit formerly came every year to trade for furs (Glave, 1892, p. 682), and near which Dalton was later to establish his famous Post. It was also a center for native copper, obtained from the White River far to the northwest. Some of it was taken to Chilkat country; some, informants indicated, was taken down the Alsek to Dry Bay.

Chilkat Indians from Haines and Klukwan, going into the interior or to Dry Bay to trade, used to ascend the Klehini River, (Davidson's “Tklae-heenae”), a western branch of the Chilkat River (now the route of the Haines Cutoff from the Alaska Highway), and cross northwestward to Weskatahin or southwestward to the O‘Connor River and thence down the Alsek. Such journeys were most frequently made on foot in winter. Swanton (1909, Tale 32, p. 162) tells of a Chilkat chief who sent a slave with a gift of tobacco to his father-in-law at Yakutat via the Alsek. The Dry Bay people also traveled on foot into the interior, and the CAnkuqedi who lived at Dry Bay felt that their real home was at Chilkat, and used to go there via the interior route. Winter travel on snowshoes up the Alsek is said to have taken only 2 days, instead of a week as in summer, but the point reached was not specified.

In May, 1890, when Seton-Karr (1891, pp. 80–81) was camped on the upper Klehini,

“…some Indians came into camp, having crossed the Pass from the Altsekh river, carrying heavy packs. One of the women was a Yakutat. They pointed out to me the position of the Pass, and explained that other Indians had remained a short distance up the valley, in order to manufacture cotton-wood canoes. [In other words, travel upstream would be made on foot in winter, while dugouts would be quickly hollowed out in spring for downstream travel.] They stated that it took seven days to reach Dry Bay, and that there were canoes upon the Altsekh, which shot down to salt water with great velocity. This agrees with the account of Glave and Dalton.”

Southern Tutchone Indians whom I met with Catharine McClellan in 1954 at Klukshu (tł’Uk-cu, ‘salmon end’ in Tlingit), at the very headwaters of the Alsek above Weskatahin, knew about Dry Bay, even though they themselves had not visited it, and they spoke with awe about the former Dry Bay shaman, ‘Wolf-Weasel’ (utcda), who had died about 40 years before.

One of my Yakutat informants, Jack Reed, a man born in Sitka, had served as a porter during the Gold Rush, packing over the Chilkoot Pass, via Sheep Camp, Stone House, Crater Lake, etc., and doubtless there were others who could have described trips to the interior if good maps and interpreters to explain them had been available.

CAPE FAIRWEATHER AND LITUYA BAY

From the eastern edge of Dry Bay, the almost unbroken coast trends southeastward to Cape Fairweather, about 25 nautical miles distant on a straight course, with the entrance to Lituya Bay some 16 nautical miles beyond, but, of course, along the curving beach the distance is much greater. Lieutenant Emmons is reported to have “crossed overland to Dry Bay” from Lituya Bay (Scidmore, 1893, p. 130), and one of my informants, a woman who formerly lived at Dry Bay, had once walked from there to Lituya Bay. This route, at least from Cape Fairweather or Lituya Bay, if not from considerably farther south, is associated with the travels of the Hoonah man, QakewtE, who, unable to rest after he had killed his sleep in the form of a bird, wandered north to meet the Athabaskans at the Alsek River (see pp. 270–272; Swanton, 1909, Tales 32 and 104). According to one version of the story, he started from a place, Seayi or TAqAE, vaguely localized as southeast of Cape Fairweather, and walked ‘back along the beach [to] Alsek’ (dak łunitc ’Ałse), over a glacier which has apparently since retreated. At a place called ł‘e-dA-nítc, he imagined that the boulders were people. This man, who belonged to the Kagwantan or to a closely related Wolf sib, gave the Sleep Bird to his wife for a crest, while the Kagwantan built Shadow House, commemorating his hallucinations (Swanton, 1909, Tale 104). According to another version, he began his journey at Cross Sound. It would certainly be possible to walk all the way from Icy Point (17 nautical miles northwest of the entrance to Cross Sound) along the beach to Dry Bay, provided transportation were available across Lituya Bay; or, one could walk from Glacier Bay on Cross Sound over the “through glaciers” to the Alsek River.

According to Swanton's Sitka informant (1908, pl. L, g, h, i; 1909, Tale 27, p. 68), the rock, TA’nAku or TA’naku yukuI’da, was just south of the Alsek River, and contained the spirits of the shaman, Qtsatî’. (This name suggests ‘master of fish,’ at ati; and as we shall see there were a number of Dry Bay shamans, TłukwaAdi, who claimed Fish as spirits.) “When a person wanted to kill some animal he placed things there [at the rock], and now the T!A’q!dentn make a door like it and use it as an emblem. Near by is a place where many wild onions grow. They were planted there by Raven.” Many puffins also lived around the rock, and were also represented in DAdentan face paintings that illustrated this crest.

Dry Bay territory is considered to have extended almost to Cape Fairweather.

The stream immediately southeast of Deception Hills is “Sea Otter Creek,” but I did not learn the native name. Another stream entering the sea southeast of Dry Bay is the Kakhvegina River of Tebenkov. I was given the name KantUq híni (‘lupin river’?) as the name of a stream east of Dry Bay, although it was not located.

The most prominent landmark on the beach between Dry Bay and Cape Fairweather is the seaward end of the Grand Plateau Glacier, an arm of the enormous icefield that stretches between the Alsek River and Lituya Bay, and which extends inland into British Columbia, and eastward to the shores of Glacier Bay. Emmons (MS.) reports that there was once a Kosedi village at the mouth of the “Scar-tar-heen,” which he indicates as a stream flowing from the Grand Plateau Glacier. This is, however, considerably northwest of the waterfall which my informants designated by the same name.

Cape Fairweather, or a rocky reef which can be seen from Dry Bay, is called łagAsI aI, ’Green Seaweed Point.‘

Cape Fairweather is described as:

“…an evenly rounded point sloping gently to the sea and abruptly back to the mountains. The summit of the cape is bare of vegetation but is covered with large piles of glacial drift, some of a bright iron-rust color.

“Protection from southeasterly weather can be had northward of Cape Fairweather, which appreciably breaks both wind and swell. Small-boat landings can be made on the sand beach in moderate southeasterly or southwesterly weather. Just northward is a high rocky slide, with a cataract several hundred feet high, which is prominent from offshore,” [Coast Pilot, 9, 1955, pp. 84–85.]

The landing place on the beach is called Yakw dei or Yeł yakw dei, ‘Raven's Canoe Road.’ According to Swanton (1908, pl. LIII, b), this place, ył yA’kudeÎ, is claimed by the Dadentan, a Raven sib at Sitka, and is represented by a face painting. The waterfall, from which the Raven Kosedi have named a house in Sitka, is CkAdai hín. Swanton (1908, p. 407) gives the form cd’Î hÎt, or ‘Waterfall House,’ and indicates that it was first built at the waterfall.

Conflicting claims to some DAdentan crests, and to the area southeast of Cape Fairweather, can best be understood if we accept the explanation of our Yakutat informants that originally the owners were Tł’UknaAdi. When so many of their villages were deserted, however, those who moved to Sitka and Hoonah were called DAdentan, even though there were also “real Tł’UknaAdi” at Sitka—probably representing those who had never moved north. Some of the sib who remained at Lituya Bay were the at’kA’ayi, ‘People on the Island,’ but eventually their descendants moved north to Dry Bay and became absorbed by the Tł‘UknaAdi there.

The whole area from Dry Bay to Icy Point is dominated by the snowy peak of Mount Fairweather, TsAłán (Harrington, sÀł-xaan), some 15,300 feet high. Its appearance gives promise of calm seas or warns of storms, and it is therefore called ‘the paddler's mountain’ by the natives. Swanton (1908, pp. 418, 420, pls. L, e, f, and LVIII, a) reports that the DAdentan use the mountain, Tsałx’n or TsAłx’n, as a crest, representing it by facial painting and by a basket design. I was told, however, that it was claimed as a crest by the Tł’UknaAdi, in memory of the lost canoes from Gue to whom it failed to give the sign of danger. A stone “nest” or refuge is said to have been built on top during the Flood, called Qi kAnada, “High Tide All Around.” This peak can be seen even from the ocean beach and the airfield near Yakutat, over 80 miles away. Like Mount Saint Elias, Mount Fairweather has captured the imaginations and played an important part in the lives of both the aboriginal inhabitants of the Gulf of Alaska and of White voyagers. Thus, between 1846 and 1851, the Fairweather Grounds, in the Gulf of Alaska off Cape Fairweather and Lituya Bay, was a center for whaling. During this period some 300–400 ships were hunting the right whale, never landing, but cruising off and on, within sight of Mount Fairweather. “When the whalemen saw the summit of that snow-clad peak unveiled by clouds they were sure of fair weather for several consecutive days afterwards, hence the name” (Elliott, 1886, p. 72). The name had, however, been given by Cook in 1778 (Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 205 n.; Cook and King, 1784, vol. 2, p. 346).

MAP 14.—Lituya Bay.

Along all the shore between Dry Bay and Icy Point, some 80 nautical miles to the southeast, the foreland is low and wooded except where interrupted by Lituya Bay and by protruding glacial tongues. Behind the foothills rise the snowy summits of the Fairweather Range, towering to elevations of 10,000 feet to over 15,000 feet. One of these peaks, southeast of Lituya Bay, is said to have been slashed by Raven when Echo angered him by imitating the slurping noises Raven made in eating sea urchins. It is, therefore, called Yeł nIA kawułica (kAwAł’i-ca ?) or Yeł nIA kUxłitA CA (MJ and AG). It may be Mount Crillon or Mount LaPérouse. Raven‘s stone house was somewhere along this coast, as was the place where Raven obtained plants and medicines by fooling the Sea Otters. My informants were unable to show us on the chart these localities.

Also southeast of Lituya Bay, according to a Hoonah man, was a “place where the people used to camp in the olden times, but this camp site was covered up by the glacier when it came down. I never saw the place, but was told by the old people when we went by that place” (Goldschmidt and Haas, 1946, p. 94).

Lituya Bay, some 39 nautical miles northwest of Cape Spencer, was visited by native canoes from both southeastern Alaska and from Yakutat, for purposes of hunting and fishing, and as a stopping place on long voyages for war and trade. It probably never supported a large permanent population, and unfortunately we do not know what tribes or sibs were encountered there by LaPérouse in 1786, nor do we know who were the occupants of the large skin boats that had been wrecked shortly before his visit. Were they Chugach from Prince William Sound or Yakutat Indians? The bay is called łtu’a, apparently referring to its lakelike shape (possibly: łItu’a, ‘to-be-inside lake’?). Emmons (1911, p. 294) states that “Lituya is a compound word in the Tlingit language meaning, ‘the lake within the point,’ and the place is so called from the almost enclosed water within the extended spit,” i.e.,łutu-’a.

[According to the strictly practical Coast Pilot:] “Lituya Bay affords protected anchorage in all weather when once inside, but the entrance is dangerous and on account of strong currents should never be attempted except at slack water. [It is a long, narrow bay with a bottleneck entrance through which the tides sweep with velocities up to 8 or 12 knots.] The ebb currents, running out against a southwest swell, cause bad topping seas or combers across the entire entrance through which no small boat can live, [as LaPérouse‘s men discovered to their sorrow. Such craft should keep away from the entrance to avoid being shot through, like a cork out of a champagne bottle.] The ebb current flows in a narrow stream for several miles out to sea, and can be seen at a distance of several miles, forming a prominent landmark for the entrance…no stranger should attempt to enter except at slack water.” [Coast Pilot, 1943, pp. 424, 425–426.]

[The dangers of the passage make clear the skillful seamanship of the natives, for as reported by LaPérouse (1799, vol. 1, p. 390):] “Every day we saw fresh canoes enter the bay; and every day whole villages departed, and gave place to others. The Indians seemed to have considerable dread of the passage, and never ventured to approach it, unless at the slack water of flood or ebb. With the help of our glasses we distinctly perceived, that, when they were between the two points, the chief, or at least the principal Indian, arose, stretched out his arms toward the sun, to which he appeared to address a prayer, while the rest paddled away with all their strength.”

In the middle of the bay, about 3 miles from the entrance, rises the hilly, wooded island named Cenotaphe Island for the wooden monument which LaPérouse erected on its southeast point in memory of the officers and men lost at the mouth of the bay. No trace of this remained in 1874 (Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 204).

At the head of the bay, which is T-shaped, three glaciers descend the steep sides of Mount Lituya and Mount Crillon, and here landslides and avalanches have plunged into the water. The cross arms at the head of the bay lie directly on the Fairweather Fault, which begins near Icy Point and runs northwest for at least 115 miles to form the axis of the northwestern part of Russell Fiord. Because of the peculiar shape of Lituya Bay, it has been repeatedly subjected to the devastation of giant waves which have reverberated within its narrow confines. The sites of the settlements near the mouth of the bay (one on the south shore, two on the north), which had been seen by LaPérouse in 1786, were overridden by the terrible wave of 1958. I do not know what effect this may have had on the site of the former fishcamp on the salmon stream, Huagin River, some 2 miles northwest of La Chausée Spit at the entrance to the bay. (See pl. 20.)

These giant waves (Miller, 1960; summary in de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 19–20) are known, from a study of the forest growth destroyed and reseeded, to have occurred in 1853 (or early in 1854), about 1874, in 1899 (probably associated with the Yakutat earthquake), in 1936 (caused by a landslide), and in 1958 (caused by a landslide due to an earthquake). The flood of 1899 destroyed a native village and saltery near the mouth of the bay. There are also reports of “catastrophic floods caused by breaking of a glacial lake near the head of the bay in 1890 and again in 1928” (Miller, 1960, p. 74).

In addition, we should note that Lituya Bay, like other areas along the Gulf Coast, has suffered considerable changes due to glacial movements. Thus, “ice stood at or near the mouth of Lituya Bay within the time required for growth of a climax forest in this region, possibly less than 1,000 years ago.” Within the parts covered by this recent glacial advance, “an ice-sheared stump, rooted in a humus-rich soil just below the surficial till on the south shore near the entrance of the bay…has a radiocarbon age of 6,060±200 years B.P.” as of May, 1959—i.e., 4,101 B.C. ±200 years or from 4,300 to 3,900 B.C. “However, the ice fronts were farther back when LaPérouse visited Lituya Bay in 1786 than at the present time.” Thus, the combined length of the cross fiords at the head of the bay was then about 9 miles, whereas since 1894 it has been only 3 miles long (Miller, 1960, pp. 54, 55).

These geological changes are mentioned because they appear to corroborate native traditions of the destruction of a village by a giant wave (in 1853?), and by the advance of glaciers.

Emmons (1911, p. 295) recorded Indian beliefs about the dangers of Lituya Bay, caused by

“…a monster of the deep who dwells in the ocean caverns near the entrance. He is known as Kah Lituya, ‘the Man of Lituya’ [qa łItu ’a?]. He resents any approach to his domain, and all of those whom he destroys become his slaves, and take the form of bears, and from their watch towers on the lofty mountains of the Mt Fairweather range they herald the approach of canoes, and with their master they grasp the surface water and shake it as if it were a sheet, causing tidal waves to rise and engulf the unwary.

“This legend of Lituya is illustrated by a carved wooden pipe (fig. 50) [pl. 123], of spendid proportions, which was obtained in 1888 from the chief of the Tuck-tane-ton family of the Hoon-ah Kow [DAdentan sib of Hoonah], who claimed this bay as his hereditary sea-otter hunting ground. It was used only upon occasions of particular ceremony—when the clan assembled to honor the dead, or to deliberate upon some important question of policy. At one end is shown a froglike figure with eyes of haliotis shell, which represents the Spirit of Lituya [possibly the Frog crest of the sib?], at the other end the bear slave sitting up on his haunches. Between them they hold the entrance of the bay, and the two brass-covered ridges are the tidal waves they have raised, underneath which, cut out of brass, is a canoe with two occupants, that has been engulfed. [Author‘s note:] This illustration was furnished through the courtesy of Mr George G. Heye, in whose collection the pipe now is.”

Emmons (1911, pp. 296–298) also recorded in 1886, from a chief near Juneau, the Tlingit story of their meeting with LaPérouse in Lituya Bay in 1786. At Yakutat I heard a shorter version of the same story, but the main tradition associated with the locality was the capsizing of eight canoes of Tł’UknaAdi men from Gue on the Akwe River, when they were enroute to Chilkat. The rock on which they were wrecked was Tan tei, ‘Sea Lion Rock.’ [26] It was after this disaster that the Akwe region was largely deserted.

According to the Coast Pilot of 1883 (Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 204):

“The bay described by LaPérouse is one of the most extraordinary places in the world. It is in fact a sort of Yosemite Valley, retaining its glaciers and with its floor submerged six or eight hundred feet…. There are few fish, except halibut, in Lituya Bay; but wild animals, birds and seal appeared quite abundant in 1874. There is no permanent village here, and perhaps has never been, but parties of natives going north and south put in here to camp quite frequently. Strawberries and numerous other kinds of berries are plenty in their season; and in June wild flowers are abundant…. During the fishing season there is an Indian camp at the mouth of the Huagin River, a small stream called Rivière aux Saumons by LaPérouse…. ”

The flora consists of the usual stands of alder, willow, and cottonwood on newly exposed land; with older forests of Sitka spruce, hemlock, and Alaska or yellow cedar (Nootka cyprus). Berry bushes include salmonberries, huckleberries, loganberry, highbush cranberry, and black currants. Animals are the ordinary black bear, several species or varieties of brown bear, and the blue or glacier bear, as well as mountain goats, deer, wolves, cross and red fox. LaPérouse also noted such fur bearers as marten, ermine, beaver, marmot, and muskrat(?). Seal, porpoise, and sea otter were once plentiful. Wild fowl include such edible land birds as ptarmigan and grouse, as well as migratory ducks, swans, and geese (Mertie, 1931; Jay Williams, 1952, pp. 138–140; Miller, 1960, p. 54).

When Jack Ellis (1892–1952) was a small boy, there were two native houses on the north side of the bay. A Hoonah man described Lituya Bay as “a place with many houses. It was one of the main places they hunted the sea otter. The Yakutat people did not come down this far” (Goldschmidt and Haas, 1946, pp. 72, 94). According to Frank Italio (1870–1956), a Dry Bay man, the CAnkuqedi and Tł’UknaAdi were in Lituya Bay when they saw the first European vessel. According to others, there were formerly TcukAnedi (a Wolf sib) at Lituya Bay, and a few lived at Dry Bay. Other Lituya Bay people were a branch of the Tł’UknAdi called at’kA’ayi.

Emmons (MS.) reports that the campsite used during the salmon runs and sea otter hunting season on the Huagin River, “Ka-huagh heen, (fish egg water),” obviously Kahákw hín (or híni), was called “De-yaghe (on both sides) [of the river],” and was occupied by DAdentan of Hoonah and at’kA‘ayi.

Although the Yakutat people were familiar with Lituya Bay, and with the coast to Icy Point, some 22 nautical miles southward, and down to Cape Spencer at the entrance to Cross Sound (Harrington, IIeh) and beyond, we need not follow their journeys further. They could walk along the beach from just below the boulder-strewn entrance to Lituya Bay down to Icy Point; or their canoes could find a number of sheltered beaches and stopping points in the irregular bays between Icy Point and Cape Spencer, 18 nautical miles southwest. However, this territory was definitely felt to belong to the DAdentan of Hoonah.

THE GULF COAST WEST OF YAKUTAT BAY

Icy Bay

It will be remembered that the Kwacqwan of Yakutat claim Icy Bay as part of their territory. The present bay (pp. 28, 286–287) is about 5 miles wide and 6 miles long, lying about 58 nautical miles northwest of the town of Yakutat. It is entered between Point Riou on the southeast, which shelters Riou Bay, and Icy Cape on the northwest, which protects a shallow lagoon, Guyot Bay. Both of these entrance points are formed by the terminal moraine of the glacier which once filled Icy Bay. Across the mouth is a curving bar, 7–10 fathoms deep. At the head of the bay, Tyndall Glacier on the east and Guyot Glacier on the west, both arms of the huge Malaspina-Bering Glacier system, discharge their ice into the water, making this, like Disenchantment Bay, an excellent breeding place for seals. Surf and icebergs hinder landing on the western shore of the bay above Guyot Bay. On the eastern shore, above the sheltered waters of the Riou Bay, is a low island, “Egg Island,” beyond which are the present mouths of the Yahtse and Caetani Rivers, both emerging from beneath the Malaspina ice field. To the north, beyond the head of the bay, lie the Chaix Hills and the Karr Hills, where mountain goat are hunted and where bear and ptarmigan may also be encountered.

While this whole area is made famous by the reports of the various expeditions, 1886–91, that attempted to climb Mount Saint Elias from the south or southeast, the “Icy Bay” where they landed was simply the former mouth of the Yahtse River, which then entered the sea east of Point Riou. “Icy Cape” was then the actual front of Guyot Glacier which protruded into the sea (Plafker and Miller, 1958).

The Yahtse River is known to the Tlingit as aé hín. The first word is now often pronounced waté, as one of my informants observed. Topham (1889 a, p. 432) translates “Yahtsé” as “swampy, or muddy ground,” suggesting that it may be derived from À, ‘clay.’ Icy Bay is aéyIk (Harrington, aaseeyyík) and Mount Saint Elias, towering above, is aét’a cà,’ Mountain at the Head of [behind] Icy Bay.’ It is also called ’[the] Big Mountain,’ Cà tłén, and is one of the most important crests of the Kwacqwan because its snowy triangular peak, 18,000 feet high, served to guide them on their journey across the ice from Copper River.

According to Swanton's Sitka informant (1909, Tale 1, pp. 6–7), the halibut fishing ground, “Just-on-the-edge-of-kelp,” or Gī’ck!ÎcuwAnyÎ’, was near Mount Was!’tÎ-c, and this was where Raven induced Bear to kill himself by cutting off his own penis to use for halibut bait. A Wrangell informant (Swanton, 1909, Tale 32, p. 160) referred to the mountain as Mas!Î‘ca.

When the GIneqwan, the ancestors of the Kwacqwan, came to Icy Bay, it was, of course, covered by the glacier, and they camped somewhere to the west. The spot is called Tiy ’ani, ‘Yellow Cedar Bark Town,’ from the material used for their shelters. Here they met and intermarried with a party of ałyI-Kagwantan who were moving eastward, and who were seal hunters. The GIneqwan apparently stayed some time near Icy Bay before moving on to Yakutat Bay.

MAP 15.—The Mount Saint Elias Region. (Russell, 1893, pl. iv.)

The western boundary of Kwacqwan territory was at “Big Valley,” or “Williams Creek,” described as “near Mike Sullivan's place,” just west of Icy Bay. It is called ùtáw(?). According to Krauss, this is obviously ‘muddy water’ (gu-nta.xu) in Eyak. It could not be located on any map. There is a Big River about 4 miles west of Icy Bay, but the largest valley is that of the White River, which enters the sea between 18 and 19 miles west of the camp. Big River is referred to as HÍn tłén, but this may be only a translation of the English name, or the latter may be derived from the Tlingit descriptive designation.

A Yakutat man told me how his Kwacqwan father (died 1935?) used to go to hunt at Icy Bay. He had a camp on the west shore of Yakutat Bay “across from Point Latouche” where he would leave his canoe, and from here he would walk along the beach to Icy Bay, past the 80-mile front of Malaspina Glacier. ‘Glacier Point,’ or Sitkagi (SIt’ ai) Bluffs, where the Malaspina reaches the beach to form a cliff about 5 miles long, is also called ‘Glacier Nose,’ SÌt’ łutu. The river beyond this was QwáłAxuk (or qwátłAhAq), probably Fountain Stream. The next river was NAsai (indicated on our map at longitude 141°5’ W.), probably Yana Stream. Beyond this was łÍàsA hín, ‘Tabooed River.’ My informant's father “had log cabins along the way. It took him 6 days to get from the camp near Point Latouche to łÍàsA hín. łÍàs means ‘against nature.’ They used to call it łÍàsA ’á, ‘Bad Luck Lake.’ There wasn’t a river there then. First there was a lake. And you had to be quiet as you go by it. That was when people hunted big sea otters from a boat. You couldn’t say a word. You just have to keep quiet. Then the lake broke open.” This was before the informant's birth in 1911. The location which he indicated, about longitude 141°12’ W., is at the chain of lagoons, lakes and small streams near the former outlet of the Yahtse River, (East Yahtse River of the chart). Tebenkov‘s map VII of 1849 shows “Shoal Lake” at this location, close to Point Riou or “Shoal Point” (see Davidson, 1904, map VI).

According to another man, when the ancestors of the Kwacqwan came to the coast they encountered a people who made special canoes for sealing in the ice (gudíyE; see p. 339). These seal hunters lived in the Icy Bay area and kept their canoes hidden in łÍàsA ’á, ‘Tabooed Lake,’ because they did not want the newcomers to learn how these craft were made and used. This informant believed that the lake was named because of the efforts of the Icy Bay people to keep their invention a secret. “I don’t know the name of that tribe at Icy Bay. They made war with us when we came from Copper River. I asked Old Sampson [1866–1948] and Jimmy Jackson [1861–1948], my uncles, but they didn’t know. They sneak up in war in the nighttime.” No other informant associated this kind of canoe particularly with ‘Tabooed Lake.’ It seems to have been an invention of the original Eyak-speaking inhabitants of the Icy Bay-Yakutat Bay area, and was used at Yakutat almost until the present century.

No names were recorded for Point Riou or Riou Bay. In fact, there is some confusion as to which side of Icy Bay is designated by the names which I did record, and this is not surprising in view of the fact that the bay itself is so recent.

Point Guyot on the northwest side of the bay was called SIt’ łutu, like Sitkagi Bluffs. “They call any place the glacier sticks out SIt’ łutu, or ‘glacier's nose.’ There was a little camp out there, and they say it seems like it moves. It's right on the glacier. I don’t know any name for it. In bad weather they camp here safe. It's a harbor when they are getting sea otter. The glacier used to be out 2 or 3 miles [into the water].” This probably refers to the 1890‘s when the Tsimshian used to come up to hunt sea otter in Icy Bay.

Guyot Bay, or “Mud Bay,” inside Guyot Point, is known in Tlingit as ‘Tsimshian Bay,’ TutsAn ei. This was because one of the Tsimshian hunters was accidentally shot to death by a companion, and to preserve his body for transportation home, he was eviscerated here, “There is a flat rock there—about 4 inches thick. They put his guts on it. It used to stand up like a totem pole. Now it's all washed away.” Thus, “The natives here claim that because the insides of the man is buried in that ice, that's why the glacier is melting away so fast. The glacier used to be sticking out. Now you can hardly see any glacier there.” A third informant said that ‘Tsimshian Bay,’ was Riou Bay, and that Point Riou was ‘Tsimshian Point,’ TutsAn ai. This would seem to have been cleared of ice before Guyot Bay. Plafker and Miller (1958) date the retreat of the Icy Bay glacier at about 1904. From the observations of Captain Belcher in 1837 (1843, vol. 1, pp. 79–81) one would assume that the ice had actually advanced since Vancouver's expedition saw and named Point Riou in 1794.

At a much earlier period, perhaps in the 17th or early 18th century, before the glacier filled Icy Bay, there was a village in Mud Bay. Because some young fellows laughed at the glacier it came down and overwhelmed the village. I heard one version of this story, and another was recorded by Topham in 1888 (see p. 286). My informant had seen remnants of the forest above Point Guyot which had been destroyed by this advance and then uncovered by the retreat of the ice. “Where you can see the trees still standing in the mud and in the ground, you can make a fire with the trees. There's nothing but oil in it and the trees burn just like coal. I thought all of the wood was wet and wouldn’t burn. We just put a little in the stove and it flared up and we burnt all our clothes…. I think it‘s oil that gets in the trees…. Those trees that are in the ground are just as hard as this table.

“In that mountain, too—I don’t know how they make it out. You can see the things that's supposed to be on the beach way up in the rocks. Those twisted shells are in the rocks. The shell is all rotted away, but [the print in] the rock is still there. We saw some way up high but we couldn’t carry them home because we had about six mountain goats to carry.” He undoubtedly refers to the fossil shells in the Chaix Hills, in what Russell called the Pinnacle formation, and which were identified by W. H. Dall (Russell, 1893, pp. 25–26). My informant told me that at Icy Bay one could also find banded greenstone, rock crystal, and the rock called “weight on the glacier,” sÍt’kA, uwu. (See Boas, 1917, p. 148; yÀ-u ‘to pin a blanket,’ k’À-yÀ-u ‘to peg,’ and sì-u ’to peg’; p. 162, uw).

At Mud Bay, and down the coast westward to Cape Yakataga, there has been considerable prospecting done for oil during the present century. Minnie Johnson told how her first husband used to freight supplies from Yakutat to these camps. “Mud Bay is at the mouth of Icy Bay, on the left side going in. It has a narrow entrance. The anchor won‘t hold there. The bottom is quicksandlike…. The mountain sheep [goats] are like sea gulls right in Icy Bay on the Mud Bay side.” A White man, “Tiny” Mike Sullivan, had a cabin on the point, and Ed Herman started a road-house near by. Oil from the drilling is said to have killed all the fish in one of the streams (MJ). Still earlier, when the prospectors were first investigating the area, one native who hunted there refused the handsome offer of $20 a day for taking canoe loads of freight to Icy Bay, because he knew that the white men would litter the ground with tin cans, frighten away the game, and start forest fires through their carelessness.

Icy Bay is still a favorite seal hunting area, and some of the Yakutat men make regular excursions here, before or after the fishing season. On his second expedition to Mount Saint Elias, Russell (1893, p. 26), climbed from the old mouth of the Yahtse River to the Chaix Hills, where he noted

“a broad game trail which had evidently long been used by bears, wolves, foxes, and mountain goats. This well beaten thoroughfare skirts the foot of the hills for several miles, and, as we afterwards learned, is continued across the glacier 6 or 8 miles northeastward to the Samovar Hills. [He also noted the luxuriant strawberry patches on the old beaches near the mouth of the Yahtse River, where they covered a triangular, parklike area, about 4 miles square.] In July and August it is one great strawberry meadow, where luscious berries may be gathered by the bushel. The Yakutat Indians visit this natural garden in summer and they have temporary houses near at hand in which they live during the strawberry season. Bears, too, are fond of the fruit, and their trails were seen everywhere through the berry covered plain and along the adjacent shore.” [Ibid., p. 12.]

The vegetation along the edge of the Malaspina Glacier in the Icy Bay area formed a dense forest of spruce, alders, cottonwood, salmonberries, huckleberries, devilclub, and ferns (mostly Asplenium) (ibid., pp. 20–21).

A number of Yakutat Indians told Goldschmidt and Haas (1946, pp. 73–74) about Kwacqwan claims to Icy Bay and about the hunting cabins some of the Yakutat people had there. One of my friends told me: “In May, you can see mountain goats any place around back of Icy Bay. My father would start from ałyI [or AłyA, Kaliakh River] and go the whole way back of Icy Bay in the summer time. All young fellows would do this—just camping. My father told me how he liked hunting way behind the mountains. It was always sunny there—no rain—just sunshine all the time.”

Icy Bay to Copper River

The coastal lands extending westward about 100 miles from the Kwacqwan boundary at “Big Valley” near Icy Bay to Strawberry Point in Controller Bay belonged to the ałyI-Kagwantan. Beyond them lived the Tcicqedi, considered to be an offshoot from them. In going west of Icy Bay we are not only entering the territory of another sib, but, in some respects, entering that of another “tribe,” since the inhabitants were less influenced by Tlingit culture and language than were their relatives at Yakutat. The ałyI-Kagwantan are the people whom Emmons (1903, pp. 231 f.) called the “Guth-le-uk-qwan,” whose territories were described as “extending west from Cape Yaktag, through Controller Bay, and including Kayak Island.” (See Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 340 ff., for discussions concerning their identity.) In his later notes, Emmons refers to the same people as the “Qwolth-yet-kwan,” distinguishing them from the Yakutat Tlingit, although they were dominated by the latter. Both renderings of the name seem to refer to the Kaliakh River, where one of their most important villages was located. Their original language was Eyak, and even in the early 20th century, when they were practically extinct, they still spoke both Eyak and Tlingit. These people, like the Copper River Eyak, were subjected earlier and much more intensively to the disintegrated effects of Russian and American contacts than were the Yakutat. In fact, they had almost ceased to exist as a separate people by the beginning of the present century. Those who were drawn to Katalla and then to Cordova have suffered the fate of the Eyak (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 356–361). The descendants of others who came to Yakutat have merged with the local population, and it is through them that the Yakutat people base their claims to the rich oil lands of Cape Yakataga and Katalla.

According to the Coast Pilot (9, 1955, p. 89), the coast between Icy Cape and Cape Yakataga is backed by a line of stratified mountains, from 3,000–6,000 feet high, their steep lower slopes clothed with dense thickets of alders and other bushes. There has been considerable prospecting and drilling for oil along the 15-mile stretch between Umbrella Reef and the lowland just west of Cape Yakataga. West of the cape the land slopes much more gently, and there is a wider area between the edge of Bering Glacier and the sea. West of Kaliakh River, the terraine becomes low and swampy, until one reaches the stratified ridge of Suckling Hills, which extend for about 9 miles northeastward from a point about 2 miles north of Cape Suckling. The latter is a low, wooded point, but along the face of the hills west of it there are sheer bluffs, 100 feet high. Between Cape Suckling and the mouth of Kaliakh River, and about 20–25 miles west of the latter, Bering Glacier comes down to tidewater at a lagoon called Seal River.

The entire stretch between Icy Cape and Cape Suckling is about 67 nautical, or 77 statute, miles on a straight course. It was somewhere along this shore that a alyI-Kagwantan youth found the wreck of a Russian ship, the first vessel ever seen, in which was a sole woman survivor (see p. 256). Another informant vaguely located the wreck as near Point Manby, much farther east. Although differing in details, the native story suggests the report received by Lieutenant Puget in 1794 when he met Purtov at Yakutat Bay. The Russian told him about a dangerous rocky shoal about 15 miles long, and about 63 miles off a place called “Leda unala,” which Puget believed was Vancouver's Point Riou. As Dall and Baker (1883, p. 213) have pointed out, there is no such Russian word as “unala,” although “ledi-anoi” means ‘icy.’ The shoal was apparently the same as the “Bajo Pamplona” of the Spanish, sighted by Arteaga's expedition in 1779, but incorrectly located (Wagner, 1937, vol. 1, p. 194; vol. 2, p. 481; Jordan, 1958, pp. 147–148).

“Portoff himself had been on this shoal, taking sea otters, and stated that the first discovery of it was owing to a Russian galiot having had the misfortune some years before to be wrecked upon it; two of the crew were drowned, but the rest escaped in their boats. Since that period an annual visit had been made to it for the purpose of killing sea otters, which are there met with; and as it generally proves advantageous, Portoff meant to stop there on his return.” [Vancouver, 1801, vol. 5, p. 386.]

Later the Spaniards told Vancouver himself about this dangerous “Roca Pamplona,” placing it S. 41°E., 26 leagues from Cape Suckling, or about 8 miles from the position indicated by Purtov to Lieutenant Puget (Jordan, 1958, p. 148). (See map 24, p. 162.)

Vancouver suggests further that the shoal may have been responsible for the loss of the Sea Otter under Captain Tipping, who was lost in the summer of 1786 after leaving Captain Meares in Prince William Sound.

“The Russians, it seems, in navigating this coast make but little use of the compass, even in steering for the above shoal; on such occasions they depart from some particular point on the coast, shape a course by the land, and never fail to hit upon some part of the shoal; and hence arises the probability of its being extensive, as has been already mentioned.” [Vancouver, 1801, vol. 5, p. 388.]

Davidson (1869, p. 148) quotes Tebenkov to the effect that: “In 1794 Mate Talin, in the ship Orel (Eagle), saw it and named it after his vessel but did not determine its position.” Apparently the navigators of the Russian-American Company could not agree as to its existence. One reported it as a “three-pointed rock,” and as such it is indicated on Tebenkov‘s chart VII, while another insisted that he had sailed close by its supposed position on a clear day without seeing it. Although no one has since sighted any bar or rock in this area, including Davidson who headed the U.S. Coast Survey party aboard the U.S. Revenue Steamer Lincoln which looked for the shoal in 1867, Davidson himself (1869, p. 149) concluded that: “The circumstantial evidence appears too strong to doubt the existence of this rock.” In this, his opinion was sharply disputed by Dall and Baker (1883, pp. 213–214), and since various searches failed to discover any reef or shoal in these waters, “Pamplona Rock” was omitted from subsequent Coast Pilots and charts.

Recent bathymetric surveys, however, have revealed the existence of a submerged ridge, some 15 miles long, lying at right angles to the shoreline, and some 30-odd nautical miles south of Cape Yakataga, that is, in the locality described by Purtov and also quite close to where Arteaga had sighted the shoal (making reasonable corrections in his observations). Although this Pamplona Searidge is now covered by some 400 feet of water, it is considered quite likely that it formed a reef or rocky shoal in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but later sank, perhaps gradually or perhaps suddenly during an earthquake (Jordan, 1958).

The Pamplona Searidge is of interest to us not only because it seems to fit the general locale of the alyI-Kagwantan tradition of a wrecked ship, but also the halibut fishing grounds where Raven tricked Bear into killing himself (p. 868; Swanton, 1909, pp. 1–7).

Cape Yakataga is called Taĺs, ‘Little Adze,’ or Taĺs, ‘splitting Adz,’ because of its shape.

Inside the cape is Raven's ‘Canoe Road,’ (yakw dei). There is a long reef here, and it is the only possible landing place on this part of the coast, according to our informants. The Coast Pilot (9, 1955, p. 89) warns that “landing is possible only with occasionally smooth seas.” Emmons reported a sea otter camp here in 1887, and said that boulders had been rolled out of the way to make places on the beach where canoes could be drawn up, hence the name ‘canoe road.’ The big breakers or ground swells on the reef are Yeł dut or Yeł t’ut (‘Raven black’?). Raven's wife was afraid of them, but since he reassured her that they would not break, they don’t actually do so, and that is why one can go in and out with a canoe, I was informed. The landing place was made by Raven who came here with his wife, and here they quarreled. “Up to this day a man always has to quarrel with his wife when packing” (MJ). She threw his adz ashore to make the point, and he threw her sewing basket overboard. It is now a rock full of clams and sea urchns, and is called Yeł nasA ‘ayi. The marks left where Raven dragged his fish rack to the shore can still be seen.

These associations with Raven remind us of features at Dry Bay and Cape Fairweather, and the episode is evidently one to which Galushia Nelson, our Eyak informant at Cordova, alluded in his story of how Raven made the world (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 259).

At Cape Yakataga there is now a small airfield, post office, and a few houses. I do not know whether any natives hve here. The salmon stream at Yakataga is called ‘Black Bear’ in Eyak (tiiyyúu), according to Harrington.

The Duktoth River which enters the sea just west of Cape Yakataga is called exta’ał, and is particularly important as forming the last lap of a trade route, or “shortcut,” from the interior, by means of which native copper in rough bar form was brought to the coast, tradition records. The barrier of glaciers which would have to be crossed, consisting of the eastern edge of the Bering Glacier, the central part of the Bagley Ice Field, and the latter's northern arm, the Tana Glacier, at altitudes of 2,000–5,000 feet, seemed so impassable that I consulted the late Don Miller of the U.S. Geological Survey, who was very familiar with this whole region. He informed me (letter of October 30, 1957): “The site reported on the Duktoth River as a trading place for copper brought from the interior is plausible as this route over the Bering and Tana Glaciers to the Chitina Valley was followed by several prospectors in the early 1900's, the first attempt apparently having been made on the basis of the native legend.” He was kind enough to furnish me (letter of December 6, 1957) with references to Moffit (1918, p. 77), to field notes of A. G. Maddren of the U.S. Geological Survey, and to information which he himself had collected. These reports refer to trips made by prospectors in 1905 and 1906, possibly also in 1907, after an unsuccessful exploration in 1904. The length of the journeys across the ice took 3, 10, 16, and 18 days, perhaps depending upon the particular routes chosen. The prospectors might line a skiff up the Duktoth River, then follow up a small tributary to the northwest which heads in a divide about 200 feet above the surface of Bering Glacier. This place (or a nearby locality) was called “Natural Arch.” From here the route mounted the glacier, between Mounts Steiler and Miller, until a point on the middle of the Bagley Ice Field was reached.

It was then possible to continue in one of two directions. The first way led past a 4,000-foot nunatak, “Spruce Island”(?), slightly east of north, to Granite Creek, at what was called “North Landing”(?), where the creek was crossed. From here, there was an easy pass to the Kiagna River, a tributary of the Chitina, and a scene of some gold excitement at various times. Or, one could take the longer but perhaps smoother route to the northwest, descending the Tana Glacier, then following down the Tana River to the Chitina River, and thus to the Copper River. Moffit (1918, p. 77) notes that one of the parties who crossed the icefields to Granite Creek “saw evidence that the Indians knew this route to the coast.” A second party found a piece of split wood about 2 feet long on a moraine on Bering(?) Glacier, which they thought the Indians had left.

It should be noted that to the Atna Indians, the Chitina River, the big eastern tributary of the Copper River, is the ‘copper river,’ TEdi’nà’, and the Tana River is the łtánà’. The latter is transposed into Tlingit, and is used for a man's name, curiously enough, by the Tł’UknaAdi, as łdaÉn or łdaxÍn (properly, Łta-hin). In one story, Swanton (1909, pp. 163–165) renders the name as Łdahī’n, but in his version of the Kwackqwan migration story, reference is made to a “valley called Ltaxë’n, leading down to Copper river,” where the emigrants had left behind a valuable copper (1909, Tale 105, p. 354). The Kwacqwan believe that their ancestral name, GÍnèx, refers either to the Bremner or to the Little Bremner River, tributaries to the Copper River that rise near the Tana River. None of our Atna informants, however, was sufficiently acquainted with localities below Chitina for us to check the names of these rivers.

MAP 17.—Controller Bay.

It is probable that the Kwacqwan migration followed the route up the Tana Glacier, over the Bering Glacier, and down the Duktoth River. The great terraced steps on which they rested and sang during their descent toward the shore were features which Belcher (1843, vol. 1, pp. 76, 81–82) noticed on the Bering Glacier near Cape Suckling.

Kaliakh River, from which the local Eyak-speaking ałyI-Kagwantan derive their name, drains the western part of Bering Glacier. It was here that the Kagwantan came, drifting in canoes, during the Flood, and landed because they were attracted by the beautiful mountain above the river. This is Kul-thieth or “Robin”(?) Mountain, called TÁwà, which was described as striped with all pretty colors (banded sedimentary rocks?), as if it had been painted, and was bright where the water ran down. There was formerly a village,łIyA-or ałyA, on the Kaliakh River near this mountain, reported by informants and by a resident of Cape Yakataga to Don Miller. Harrington gives kałyÁ as the Eyak name for the river. According to Krauss, gałyA means ‘the lowest’ of a series. One of my informants who had visited this area as a boy in 1900 saw the remains of a large old-style house on the west side of the river. This was the Beaver House of the ałyI-Kagwantan, and the village their “capital town,” where they defended themselves against an Aleut attack. The famous Teqwedi from Yakutat, atgawet, is said to have fought beside the local chief, his father-in-law. The Kwacqwan also lived here. In 1900, I gather, the main settlement was at Yakataga Village.

This area is traditionally rich in furs, especially beaver and sea otter, but was too small to support a large population. In consequence, the Tcicqedi (Eagles), “cousins” of the Kagwantan, who had followed them, had to live “farther west in the swampy place.” Later, when the Kagwantan multiplied and spread into Controller Bay and to Bering River, they continued to use the Kaliakh country for hunting. The Tcicqedi were given territory near the mouth of the Copper River, by their Raven fathers, the Copper River “anAtedi.” Later, the “anAtedi” took back some of their land, because the Tcicqedi were getting too many furs. The last two sibs are represented among the Copper River Eyak.

Billy Jackson (1883–1951) told Goldschmidt and Haas (1946, p. 74) that his people, the Kwacqwan (traditionally spouses of the ałyI-Kagwantan), used to go to

“…a river called gaLgox which belonged to the Kagwantan. It is about eight miles west of Yakutegi. We went up to the head of the river and had houses at the mouth and at the head of the river. One of these houses belongs to my brother and me. My brother was there last in 1911. Nobody goes up there now except a man named Sawak, a Tlingit from Katalla [the informant‘s nephew.]”

On a stream, Tcue or Djue, entering the Kaliakh River from the north, Yakategy John, who built the Wolf Bath House at Yakutat, used to put up fish. There were presumably other fishing and hunting camps in the area about which we were given no specific information.

Emmons (MS.) mentions the tradition of an ancient village, “She-ta-ha-na-ta,” somewhere west of Yakataga, but otherwise not located, which was swept away by an advance of the ice, or by a flood of glacier melt water. It may be in the Kaliakh River area, or possibly on the Bering River (see below). Krauss suggests that the name “She-ta-ha-na-ta” may be Eyak for ‘northward (upstream) he lives’ (ci.da‘ gAlAtah).

On the cliffs at Cape Suckling are said to be faces, some turned sidewise, and also arms and legs. These were made by Raven, who “did a lot of funny things around there, shaping the land,” it is said. Captain Belcher who sailed eastward along this coast in 1837 reports (1843, vol. 1, p. 77): “In one direction from the southward, Cape Suckling exhibits on its lower profile, the brow, nose, and lips of a man. It is a low neck, stretching out from a mountainous isolated ridge, which terminates about three miles from it easterly, where the flats of the ice pyramids just aluded to terminate” [i.e., the evenly cracked steps on Bering Glacier].

A man who has walked from Cordova to Yakataga said that there was a cave at Cape Suckling, with rock crystals, but that these did not seem to be valued by the natives. This is evidently ‘Raven's House,’ Yeł hIdi. The same man said that he had been told that there were whale bones on top of “Cape Suckling Mountain.”

At Controller Bay one leaves the exposed coast and again enters somewhat sheltered waters. We may consider the eastern limit of this area to be Cape Suckling, from the base of which the low sand dunes stretch westward 7 nautical or 8 statute miles, to form Okalee Spit, even though the cape itself is exposed. Similarly, Kayak Island, which with Okalee Spit shelters Controller Bay from the south, thrusts itself far into the Pacific. This is an island some 20 miles long, narrow, and rising in the middle to peaks about 1,390 feet high. The western edge of Controller Bay is formed by the smaller Wing-ham and Kanak Islands. The eastern shore of Controller Bay is low and swampy, with quicksands reported near the mouth of one of the main streams which drain into the bay from the western edge of Bering Glacier. Bering River enters the bay from the north, and from here until one reaches the edge of the Copper River delta beyond Cape Martin, the north shore is low but backed by higher hills, and is scalloped into three small bays, from east to west: Redwood Bay, Strawberry Harbor, and Katalla Bay.

Controller Bay was an area claimed by both Chugach and Indians (see pp. 18–19; and Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 17, 341–354). There is no question but that the Tlingitized Eyak were established in the area at the end of the 18th or beginning of the 19th century, and that there were Chugach on Kayak Island at the time of Bering's discovery. The extent of the Chugach holdings and the validity of their claims are naturally disputed by both sides. Dr. Krauss (letters of December 20, 27, 1966, and January 9, 1967) believes that the Eyakwere on the mainland shores of Controller Bay, becoming progressively more Tlingit acculturated, while the Chugach were on the islands of Controller Bay, from which they were finally expelled by the Tlingit and Tlingitized Eyak.

As observed by a former native resident of Katalla, when asked why so many places in Controller Bay had “Aleut” (Chugach) names: “The Aleut tried to take the land away from us. They are the strongest and smartest nation. My tribe [Tcicqedi] chased them back to Hinchinbrook Island [in Prince William Sound]. This was long before the Russians came,” said my informant. Actually, this may have been about 1792, only a few years before the Russians established themselves at Yakutat, but, of course, the enmity between the Eyak and the Chugach is traditional and there were probably plenty of battles before that. In any case, the 19th-century population in the Controller Bay area seems to have been mixed, for there were not only Eyak-speaking ałyI-Kagwantan, Tcicqedi, and others, but Tlingit-speakers from Yakutat, and one very old lady remembered as a child hearing Atna spoken at Chilkat on Bering River (KDI).

Controller Bay was evidently an area in which Raven was active. I have already mentioned his cave house and the faces in the rock at Cape Suckling. Kayak Island was a whale which he harpooned, and Wingham Island was his kayak (see below). Okalee Spit was Raven's harpoon line, sometimes called Yeł atł’i or otł’i (probably Yeł xUktłi, referring to the line from the shaft to the float). A rock between the base of the spit and Cape Suckling was Raven's float, Yeł kAtsis.

Okalee River, which enters Controller Bay just north of Okalee Spit, was the site of a ałyi-Kagwan-tan settlement, Qatalé (pronounced ‘a.dAlih by the Eyak, but probably of Chugach origin, according to Krauss). Here was a Beaver House, where a woman shaman revived some boys who had been stabbed by their uncle, the chief, for being cowardly (see p. 714). This happened about 1860–70(?). Now all that can be seen near the mouth of the river is one old log cabin and the remains of two others.

As is well known, it was Cape Saint Elias, the conspicuous southern point of Kayak Island, some 1,600 feet high, that was Bering's landfall in 1741. The spot where Steller landed and found a semisub-terranean Chugach house or cache was near the south edge of the promontory on the northwest side of the island, at about latitude 59°55’ N. The Russians landed at the stream on the northwest shore, near longitude 144°30’ W. Bering's fleet master, Khitrov, explored Wingham Island just north of Kayak Island, where he found a summer hut of planks. For an account of what the Russians found and what they left in exchange, see the descriptions in Golder, 1925, and the interpretation in Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938 (pp. 341–351).

Emmons denies that there was ever a permanent village on Kayak Island, but thinks it was a camping place for sea otter hunters. This is corroborated by the Chugach whose camp had been visited by Steller, as reported to Sauer and Sarychev in 1790, and by the Chugach that Zaikov's expedition met in Controller Bay in 1783. However, the Chugach interpreter with Ismailov and Bocharov, who visited Kayak Island in 1788 reported that both Chugach and “Ugalak mutes” (i.e., Ugalenz, or Eyak-speakers), used to visit the island when hunting sea otters. In mid-July, 1794, the Chatham found a “village that had been recently deserted” (presumably for the summer) on the low, wooded shore “near the north-east point of Kaye‘s island,” that is, Kayak Island (Vancouver, 1801, vol. 5, p. 381). The expedition also visited the bird cliffs on the western side of Wingham Island, where they secured 60 dozen eggs of “two sorts of gulls, sea parrots [puffins], shags [cormorants], and curlews” (p. 380).

Kayak Island (Kaye's Island), or “Big Kayak,” is referred to as ‘On the Whale,’ YaykA, and it is said that one can smell the fat on it. The meat is black and the fat is white. Raven's harpoon is stuck into it somewhere. Lemesurier Point, at the northeast end, is the ‘Whale Head,’ Ya ca. A crack where “steam” comes out is the whale's blowhole. Also on the island, is a “Spirit House,” S’ee qawu hIdi, literally ‘dead person's house.’ This is probably a cave. It is slippery in front of the “house,” and if you fall when walking past, you must scream like a fox, or you will die. A human “spirit” (ghost) lives there, and the rock looks like a curtain tied up for a door. There is a high cliff on the island, too, down which fall rocks like marbles. Raven said, “Don’t drop on anyone's head,” so they don’t. They fall all around you when you walk, but they don’t hit you.

A man who well acquainted with Kayak Island, having carried mail to the lighthouse at Cape Saint Elias for 5 years, and who had also walked along both sides of the island, was able to confirm some of the above information. The place where pebbles drop is probably near the lighthouse, for once when he was walking there, a tiny pebble fell off the 1,400-foot cliff, bounced, and struck his companion on the knee. “So the Raven didn’t stop that.” Just north of Steller's hill on the west side (Golder, 1925, vol. 2, fig. 4), and barely above high water mark, is a big cave, the inside of which is stained brown as if painted. This may be the ghost's house. There is no crack emitting steam, but near the middle of the eastern shore where big boulders have fallen down, the surf that comes in is thrown up like a whale's spout. There is a lot of white rock on the island, but my informant had never detected any smell. Now, the island is overrun with martens, abandoned after an unsuccessful venture in fur farming.

In 1886, Seton-Karr (1887, p. 147, p. 157 and illustration) visited a small settlement, “Kaiak,” on “Kaiak Island,” where some Scandinavians had a trading post (pl. 68). This was “picturesquely situated behind cliffs, facing the mainland, sheltered by the two islands Kaiak and Mitchell [Wingham].” There were a few Indian huts, corresponding in style to the Chugach summer smokehouses, although the names of the sea otter hunters whom he met, at least those that could be recognized, seemed to be Tlingit (p. 158). The language was a mixture of “Chilcat, Russian, and Chinook,” and although the Indians “designate themselves as Chilcats [from their main village on Bering River]…[they] are known to the traders as Coloshes” (pp. 160 f.). Reference in this account is also made to “the point of Little Kaiak you see just opposite,” so that we cannot be sure whether the post was on the northern end of Kayak Island, or was the settlement called Kayak on Wingham or “Little Kayak” Island.

Wingham Island is a low, wooded island about 4 miles long, lying north of “Big” Kayak Island, and was supposed to have been Raven's kayak, pronounced kayak by a Tlingit-speaker, and qiyA (giyA) by an Eyak-speaker. This was recognized as a Chugach word. Harrington's informant gave the name thaattł‘aát for “Small Kayak” or Wingham Island. My Tcicqedi informant claimed the island for his sib, but others reported that it belonged to the ałyI-Kagwantan, who used to come there in spring for seals, halibut, cod, and black seaweed. There was a Beaver House at the old village, built of Seattle lumber, and was still standing in 1900–1908. There was also a ałyI-Kagwantan cemetery nearby. The White people were already here at the time the Beaver House was built, and had a cannery. The village is called “Kayak” on the charts and is located on the southern part of the east coast. There was probably a Raven house here also, since Galushia Nelson, a Cordova Eyak, remembered going to a potlatch on “Kayak Island” when he was only 8 years old, to which all the Copper River Eyak were invited by the Yakutat Tlingit (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1838, pp. 181 f.). Undoubtedly this was at Kayak village on “Little Kayak” or Wingham Island, and we may assume that the hosts were Kwacqwan.

Emmons (MS.) reported an old village site, “Tark Ilart,” on the northeast point of “Little Kayak Island,” with 10 log cabins in 1888. By 1903 it was only a stopping place for steamers.

According to Moser (1899, pp. 129–133), 20 canneries were built in Alaska in 1889, of which 4 were near the Copper River delta, but of these only 2 were still functioning 10 years later. One cannery was built by the Central Alaska Company on Wingham (“Little Kayak or Mitchell”) Island in 1889, but moved away the following year. On the same island was the cannery of the Peninsula Trading and Fishing Company which put up packs in 1889 and 1890, and then was moved to “Coquenhena” (Kokenhinik) on the Copper River delta where it was operated until a change in the river channel forced its abandonment in 1897. More permanent were the two canneries in Prince William Sound: Odiak near Cordova, and Orca farther up the channel. However, all drew upon the same runs. Moser (1899, pp. 132 ff.) describes the “wanton fishing” of Eyak Lake near Cordova, and reports how the Copper River Indians rejoiced when the Coquenhena cannery was closed, for in 1896 they were on the verge of starvation for lack of fish. A Yakutat man (born 1893) remembers going to Kayak when he was 4 or 5 years old and walking over the rusty cans left at the abandoned cannery site. His family would go there in the spring, then move to Bering River in August to put up salmon. Already the native population was declining, and because he was the only little boy, so lonely without any other child with whom to play, some White prospectors coming through from Yakataga with dog teams gave him two pups.

Kanak Island, low and flat and about 3; miles long, does not seem to have been inhabited until it, like Wingham Island in recent years, was turned into a fox farm. It is called “Egg Island,” or GInÀ, said by an Eyak-speaker at Yakutat to be an “Aleut” word. Harrington rendered this as KInnák, and Krauss reports the Eyak pronunciation as ginA, although it was probably derived from the Chugach word for ‘fire’ (kInIq).

The most important settlement on Controller Bay was on the firm ground just west of the mouth of Bering River. This was Chilkat, or DjIłat (Harrington, tjIłkháat), meaning ‘salmon cache’ in Tlingit, and apparently named in imitation of the Chilkat tribe on Lynn Canal in southeastern Alaska. It was inhabited by ałyI-Kagwantan, Tcicqedi, and, according to Emmons, by the “GanAtedi.” He noted that the first sib had Wolf House and Beaver House here, the Tcicqedi had Eagle House, and the anAtedi had Raven House; all were in ruins by the beginning of the century. Many Kagwantan are buried here.

According to my informants the “original” houses had been farther up the river, even above Bering Lake. When the river flooded, Beaver and Wolf Houses were washed down to the south side of the lake, below Skookum Mountain. A place called ’Anakwe, said to be an Eyak name (probably not, according to Krauss), was where the beavers had built their den, and there a flood had drowned them all, leaving only the single little beaver from whom the ałyI-Kagwantan acquired the Beaver crest and the Beaver's mourning song, now used at potlatches (1952, 7–1-B; pp. 254–256). Apparently the original Beaver House of the sib was built at the same place and suffered the same fate. The Tcicqedi had a house on the center of the south shore of Bering Lake, opposite Poul Point, perhaps at the spot to which Beaver House and Wolf House had drifted. There was a fishing place at “Smoke Salmon Stream” up Bering River, where they used to put up fish in August. On the mountains above Bering River many Kwacqwan men (visiting hunters, relatives of the owners?) were killed in a big snowslide, presumably about 1900. This mountain was called ’Ukwyanta.

Billy Jackson (1883–1951), a Kwacqwan man who was born in Cordova, his mother‘s home, and whose father was a ałyI-Kagwantan man, told Goldschmidt and Haas (1946, p. 73):

“There was a place just below Cordova [sic] called djiLgat where I smoked salmon and hunted. We got black and brown bear, fox, land otter, king salmon and berries. I left there in 1911 but have been back a few times to hunt. There were five smokehouses when I was there about four miles up the river. This place belongs to the Kagwantan tribe.” Moving westward along the north shore of Controller

Bay from Chilkat, one comes first to the shallow indentation of Redwood Bay, behind Point Hay or “Pete's Point.” The point is apparently called Tsadli-yÀt, said to be a Chugach word. Krauss reports, however, that it is Eyak, meaning ‘in a stone (container)’ (tsa˙dla˙ya’d), an expression commonly applied to bodies of water. Beyond this again is Strawberry Harbor and Strawberry Point. The last is called in Tlingit ‘Where They Dig Spruce Roots,’ Àt ’AdułÉł’yE, and was formerly an important settlement. The “second” Beaver House was built here, after the destruction of the first on Bering River. This was an old-style building, belonging to Helen Bremner's mother's mother's mother‘s brother. Until recently an old war canoe is said to have been visible near the foundations. The “third” Beaver House was the one built on Wingham Island, but when the earlier one on Strawberry Point fell down in 1908, it was replaced by a frame building built by Chief John and his nephew John Bremner, and was named both Beaver House and Wolf House. There is also a ałyI-Kagwantan cemetery on the point. The descendants of these men now live at Yakutat, and it is through them that the native claims to the oil lands are based. Even when the last Beaver House was being built, White men were disputing Indian land rights, but a friend of Chief John, a White man named Frank Laughton, is said to have helped him to establish his title before Judge Wilson(?) at Katalla. The house was built not only to honor the ancestors, but “to hold the land for the Kagwantan” (Harry K. Bremner).

“The oil people have driven the natives away. The ground is just soaked with oil. My mother's uncles can’t make a fire, except on a sandy place. They use the moss to start the fire. They can’t drink water from there. They can drink Bering River, but not water around Redwood Bay…. In Katalla Bay, between Katalla and Strawberry Point, even when the high tide comes in, there's a blue flame of fire. But even in the southeast storm, it disappears. You can light it again with a match. ’ (Helen Bremner.) [cf. Martin, 1907.]

From Strawberry Point to Copper River, the territory belongs to the Tcicqedi.

Katalla, on the western side of Katalla Bay near its head, is now only a village. Landing is difficult because the sea generally breaks on the bar in front of the Katalla River, and on the beach to the west “with southeasterly or southwesterly winds, landing is impracticable” (Coast Pilot, 9, 1955, p. 92). The settlement is called QatánÀ. (Note that n and l are frequently interchanged by Tlingit speakers.) This was occupied by the ałyI-Kagwantan, Tcicqedi, and anAtedi. About 1870(?), the Tcicqedi had an Eagle House, also known as On-a-Platform House, with two carved house posts.

When the Copper River Railroad was being built to bring down ore from the great copper mines at McCarthy and Kennicott on the upper Chitina River, it was expected that Katalla would be the salt water terminus. An informant, who had been here as a boy, said, “Katalla was only a tent town in 1907, but the next year there were big saloons. The boom didn‘t last long.” Another, who has lived in Katalla all his life, told me that at one time there were 4,000 people in Katalla and 14 fancy saloons, with real mahogany bars and beautiful glassware. Although the right-of-way had been cleared, trestles built over the sloughs and rivers from Katalla to Copper River, and even some of the rails laid, it was found impossible to build the needed breakwater at Katalla. So the railroad was put in from Cordova, where there is an excellent harbor, even though the route is longer. As soon as the decision was made in faver of Cordova, Katalla became a ghost town, the saloons and stores with all their contents abandoned. This happened before the steamer Portland was wrecked on Katalla beach in 1910. At Katalla were also 17 producing oil wells, a refinery and an absorption plant, finally closed in 1929.

Some of my Yakutat informants had worked on building the railroad, and in this way met the Chitina Atna from whom the Kwacqwan were descended.

A small Tcicqedi village on the “Salmon River” between Katalla and Cape Martin was called Kuutłiya, or Aotłeya, an Eyak name (uuułAyah), meaning ‘tooth’ according to Krauss. The lake here is called Lake Kahuntla on the map.

Just west of Katalla Bay between Palm Point and Cape Martin lie the two Martin Islands: Whale, and Fox or Kiktak, the outer island on which the light is located. The latter is known as QIxtA, the Chugach name for “island” as pronounced by an Eyak-speaker at Yakutat (See Birket-Smith 1953, p. 237; qIqertuAq, ’island‘).

The Tcicqedi village on Cape Martin is QIxtAłAq, ‘Behind Martin Island,’ as pronounced in Eyak, or GitadAq according to a Tlingit-speaker. (Harrington records these names as kiixtÁk and kiixtÁk-lAkt; Krauss as gixdA and gixdAlA, confirming my derivation.) I was also told that inland from Cape Martin was an old forest. Long ago, when looking for mink signs, a man came upon an old, old native graveyard, consisting of grave houses, which he believes had been established long before White people. There was someone in Cordova who had heard about it and wanted to dig there, but my informant threatened to report him to the authorities if he violated the graves. This man had not heard about the village at Cape Martin, however.

Seton-Karr (1887, p. 164) stopped at this village in 1886 on his way from Yakutat to Nuchek. “The Indian village is partially fenced with stockading; the houses are merely single-roomed, but of moderate size. Long ago, there was a fur-trading post here, but it was abandoned.” This sketch (pl. 69) shows the buildings to be of ordinary log cabin construction.

There has been some question as to whether this settlement should be classed as “Eyak” or “Tlingit.” Apparently Eyak was spoken here in 1884, although Tlingit from Yakutat used to come to the trading post (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 22–24). A precise distinction however, should not be attempted, although west of this point we are certainly dealing with the classic Eyak among whom Tlingit influence was far less pronounced than among their relatives east of Cape Martin.

All of the area between Cape Martin and the edge of Prince Wiliam Sound at Point Whitshed, about 50 statute or 43.5 nautical miles, lies behind the chain of low sand islands, 4 or 5 miles offshore, which have been formed by the vast silt deposits brought down by the Copper River, and its companions, the eastern most of which is the Martin River. Since this area has been described already by Birket-Smith and myself (1938), I will add here only the additional items of information obtained at Yakutat.

From Katalla, a trail led behind the mountains (i.e., Lone Baldy, about 1,200 feet high) to another Tcicqedi village on Softuk Lagoon. This was called in Tlingit Saxwt’a or SAwdAq, ‘Behind the Cockles’ (in Eyak sahwlAg, according to Krauss). It was supposed to have been the first settlement established by the Raven anAtedi, a branch of the Atna GIneqwan who had become separated from their relatives when crossing the glacier, and who turned westward to the Copper River while the others went east to Yakutat.

A camp on Martin River, S’a’di˙é, was used for hunting in fall and spring. This is Ta’di˙, from ta-dA-’e’-qa;, meaning in Eyak ‘on the place of (frequently absent?) mud flats,’ according to Krauss. In 1886, Seton-Karr noted two Indian houses on a point, apparently in this locality, where the Indians were hunting seals (1887, p. 168).

A Tcicqedi camp at the mouth of the Copper River was called agAn hini, Tlingit for ‘stickleback River.’ This is Kokenhenik where the cannery was established, 1890–97.

On a western branch of the Copper River was the Eyak town of Alaganik, known at Yakutat as ’AnAAnÁq. Krauss derives the Eyak name ’AnAAnA from the Chugach alaaRanaq, ‘mistake’ (or ’wrong turn’?), a common Eskimo place name. It came to the Eyak via the Tlingit who transformed the l to n. This was a anAtedi village, where also lived some “TłukwaAdi” (not to be confused with the Raven sib of the same name at Dry Bay).

The present town of Cordova and the former native village near by called Eyak (no distinction was made at Yakutat) were both known as ’I˙áq, and the inhabitants as ’Ì˙yáqqwàn. According to Krauss, the name ’Ì˙ya˙ is in origin a Chugach place name. The sibs that lived here were the Raven anAtedi and Qusédi (or usedi) and the Eagle Tcicqedi. Many older Yakutat people had visited Cordova in their youth, and now some of the men go there for commercial fishing. But the Eyak community is gone.

The Copper River itself is known to the Yakutat as ’Iq hini (‘Iq hini), and the Atna as ‘Copper Diggers’ ’Iq kAhaqwan. (See Boas, 1917, p. 155, ’e, ’copper’; p. 134, A-yÀ-hÀ, ’to dig.’)

All of these names for places in and near Eyak territory, as well as for tribes and peoples, should be compared with the Eyak versions recorded in Cordova in 1933 (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 543545). I am grateful for the corrections and explanations supplied by Dr. Michael E. Krauss (letter of December 20, 1966).

Through Alien Eyes: A History of Yakutat

18TH-CENTURY EXPLORATION

The First Explorers (1741–83)

The first Europeans to visit the Gulf Coast of Alaska were members of the Imperial Russian expedition under “Captain-Commander Vitus Bering, the Dane” (Golder, 1922–25). From our point of view the most important person aboard Bering's ship, the Sv Petr (St. Peter), was the German-born naturalist, Georg Wilhelm Steller, then attached to the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, to whom “we are indebted…for some of the most reliable information concerning the Russian discoveries on the American coast” (Bancroft, 1886, p. 54).

Bering sailed from Petropavlosk, Siberia, on June 4, 1741, accompanied by the Sv Pavel (St. Paul), under Capt. Alexei Chirikov, in order to discover and explore the reported American mainland to the eastward; but the two ships became separated on June 19, and Chirikov sailed toward the east, encountering the Tlingit on Chichagof Island, while Bering wandered to the northeast. Landfall was made by the Sv Petr on July 16, when Mount Saint Elias and its range were sighted. On July 20, the Sv Petr reached Cape Saint Elias, as Bering named the southern promentory of Kayak Island in Controller Bay, and anchored under its western shore. Steller landed at a cove (subsequently named for him) on the west side of Kayak Island, while Fleet Master Sofron Khitrov investigated nearby Wingham Island. A native hut was visited at each of these localities, although the inhabitants were absent or had run away, and since Bering refused to linger off Kayak Island even long enough to fill the water casks, only meager information was secured about the natives of Controller Bay (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 345–350).

Chirikov, meanwhile, had sighted land near what is now Dixon Entrance and followed the coast northward to latitude 57°50′ N., off the northern end of Chichagof Island. Here he sent a boat ashore, probably into the treacherous waters of Lisianski Strait, and, when it failed to return, dispatched the second. Neither was ever seen again, nor are we ever likely to know whether the crews were lost in the tidal currents or were captured by the Tlingit, who afterward came toward the ship in two canoes in what the Russians interpreted as a hostile manner. Having waited a week and being without small boats, the only means of landing on American soil, Chirikov could do nothing but set sail for Siberia. On his return voyage he, too, sighted the snowy crest of Mount Saint Elias. (Bering's expedition is fully documented in Golder, 1922–25.)

The direct effect of Bering's expedition upon the Gulf Coast natives could only have been slight, aside from the green cloth, iron kettle, iron knives, iron pipe and tobacco, and Chinese beads that were left in the hut on Kayak Island (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 350); but the ultimate indirect effects were incalculable. On the homeward voyage the Sv Petr was wrecked on one of the Commander Islands between Alaska and Kamchatka (named for Bering, who died there), and here the survivors found the sea otter. Not only did they eat the flesh, but preserved the skins, and when the castaways finally succeeded in returning to Kamchatka with their furs it was the high prices paid for sea otter pelts that led within a year to what Bancroft (1886, p. 99) has aptly called “the swarming of the Promyshleniki,” destined to overwhelm the newly discovered lands and their inhabitants.

Controller Bay was later known to have been contested by the Chugach Eskimo of Prince William Sound and the Eyak Indians, but it would appear that the semisubterranean hut visited by Steller on Kayak Island was a summer camp of the Chugach, although we can be less certain about the plank house on Wingham Island (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 341–352; Birket-Smith, 1953, pp. 8–9, 18–20; de Laguna, 1956, pp. 9–10). At this time the Eyak were presumably living at the mouth of the Copper River and probably along the Gulf Coast east of Cape Suckling. Perhaps they also lived on the mainland shores of Controller Bay, even though a branch of the Chugach also claimed the islands. Later in the 18th century, however, the Eskimo were driven from Controller Bay, and only Eyak were to be encountered from the eastern edge of Prince William Sound and the Copper River all the way to Yakutat, where the first Tlingit were met, apparently expanding westward. Nor should we forget that a branch of Atna Athabaskans had come as permanent settlers to the coast and that their relatives on the middle Copper River made annual trading trips to the Eyak and the Chugach.

The multiplicity of tribal groups and the complexities of population movements often make it difficult for us to identify the natives encountered by the various European explorers, especially since the Russians, who came to know them best, often lumped together all the tribes from the “Vancouver Sounds” (southeastern Alaska) to “Chugatz Bay” (Prince William Sound), and even the Athabaskans of the hinterland, under the one term “Kolosh,” although more careful authors recognized the linguistic differences between the Kaigan (northern Haida), Sitka Kolosh (Tlingit), Ougalentz (Eyak), Mednovtze (Atna), and so on (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, pp. 340–342). Thus, Tebenkov (1852, pp. 32, 33, 35; cf. Davidson, 1869, p. 56) asserts that the Ugalentz, numbering 1,300 (!), live between Chugatz Bay and Yakutat, while from Yakutat to latitude 52° N. lives a tribe who call themselves “Klinkit” or “people,” but who are known to the Russians as “Koloshi.” But even the local vocabularies or native place names recorded by early explorers may be no sure guide to tribal identity, for, according to Davidson (1901 b, p. 44), Tebenkov:

“says that every year the Tchugatz, (Prince William Sound) and the Yakootat Indians meet at the Copper River to barter; and that the Russians first learned of the shoal water between the mainland and Kayak Island, and off the delta of the Copper River from them. He further states that all places east to Yak-outat bay have each four names; given by the Tchugatz [Chugach Eskimo], the Oogalentz [Eyak], the Copper River Indians [Atna Athabaskans], and the Koloshes [Tlingit]; and that the name Kayak is Koloshian.”

Although Tebenkov was writing in the middle of the 19th century, much of his information was derived from earlier sources, and I have no doubt that his statement applies with equal validity to conditions in the 18th century.

But not all our difficulties of geographical and tribal identification are due to native movements, disputed territorial claims, or multiple designations for the same place. The European explorers were equally guilty of confusion, especially when they tried to claim the same territory for their respective sovereigns, name the same landmarks in honor of their own friends and patrons, or, when they thought they were following in another's track, carelessly applied formerly-used names to the wrong localities. Inaccuracies in latitude and longitude, compass bearings and distances, and too sketchy tracings of the coast line, even when a map is appended to a journal, often make it impossible for us to determine the position of a ship or to identify a landfall. Thus, according to Fleurieu, writing in 1798 (1801, vol. 1, p. lxxviii): “We see that, in 1779, the Spanish were still reduced to trust to the dead reckoning and already for ten years past, the French and the English determined the longitudes at sea, either with the help of astronomical clocks or time-keepers, or by the observation of the moon's distance from the sun and stars!” But even the chronometer, newly invented, was still not perfected in the 18th century.

Furthermore, we must not forget that in the Gulf of Alaska the compass variation is extreme, magnetic north ranging from 27° E. of true North well offshore to 31° E. in Yakutat Bay, with varying annual rates of change, necessitating the replotting of the compass roses for each new edition of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey charts. We simply do not know the magnetic readings used in the late 18th century, unless we can trust the figures given when astronomical observations were made on shore. Wagner (1937, vol. 1, frontispiece) published a map showing the range of magnetic variation by isogonic lines ranging from 15° E. on a great arc linking San Diego and Umnak Island, 20° E. between Cape Mendocino and Karluk Bay (Bristol Bay), 25° E. from the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the southeastern point of Cook Inlet, and 30° E. from Whale Bay (south of Sitka) to Cape Yakataga. It is stated that the “variation [is] increasing 1′ annually.” However, the chart is not dated, and this hardly agrees with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey chart No. 8402 (Cross Sound to Yakutat Bay) on which the variation is given as 29°15′ E. (as of 1950), with an annual decrease of 3′. According to Dall and Baker (1883, p. 210): “The variation of the compass [at Yakutat] in 1791 was 32°24′ easterly; it is now [1880?] believed to be about 30°16′.”

Nor must we forget that longitude was measured from different meridians (Greenwich, Paris, Madrid, Toledo, San Blas, Okhotsk, etc.), some of which were themselves inaccurately determined. (See the list in Wagner, 1937, vol. I, p. 10, in which some of these are reduced to the meridians of Greenwich and Toledo.) To further confuse us, the Spanish league measured 17 to a great circle degree, whereas the marine league of the French was 20 to a degree, and the Russian verst (about 0.66 of a statute mile) was 104.5 to a degree (Fleurieu, 1801, vol. 1, p. lxvii; Coxe, 1803, p. xiv). The marine league of the French, British, and Americans all equaled 3 nautical miles, of which there were 60 to a degree; but since the degrees taken as a measure themselves varied, so did the nautical miles differ by a few feet. A standard international nautical mile was not adopted until 1954! Moreover, the common or English statute mile is still shorter, there being between 69 and 69.5 to a “degree” of latitude; modern U.S. Coast Pilots furnish conversion tables for nautical and statute miles, since confusion between the two might lead to catastrophic error.

These discrepancies in measurement, however, would pose no serious problems for us except when trying to identify a locality poorly described, or perhaps a shore seen only indistinctly through Alaskan mists.

While Russian hunters were pushing eastward along the Aleutian Islands to Kodiak, the Spaniards came to take an interest in the lands north of their possessions in California. In 1774 an expedition under Pilot Juan Josef Pérez Hernández, in the Santiago or Nueva Galicia, with Estéban José Martinez as second pilot, was sent out from San Blas by Don Antonio Maria Bucareli y Ursua, Viceroy of New Spain, to explore and take possesion of the coast as far north as latitude 60°, in order to forestall Russian expansion.[27]

Fr. Crespí and Fr. Tomás de la Peña Savaria served as chaplains.[28]

Pérez probably did not reach even latitude 55° N., as he claimed, although he sighted Forester Island in Alaska (“Santa Christina”), and did a little trading with some Haida near Cape Knox on Graham Island, and with the Nootka near Nootka Sound.

The so-called Second Bucareli Expedition was dispatched the following year, under 1st Lt. Bruno de Hezeta, commanding the schooner Santiago, with Juan Pérez as second and Cristóval Reville as pilot. The Santiago was accompanied by the small schooner Sonora, under 2d Lt. Juan de Ayala, with Franscisco Antonio Mourelle (or Maurelle) as pilot. Second Lieutenant Juan Franscisco de la Bodega y Cuadra succeeded to the command of the Sonora, when de Ayala had to relieve the commanding officer of the supply ship, San Carlos, when the latter went insane. The San Carlos explored San Francisco Bay, while the Santiago did not go north of latitude 47°41′. The Sonora, however, visited and named Bucareli Bay on the west coast of Prince of Wales Island, and, more importantly, had contact with the Tlingit at or near Salisbury Sound (“Puerto de los Remedios”).[29] On this voyage, Mount Edgecumbe (“San Jacinto”) was sighted, as was Cape Edgecumbe (“Cabo del Engaño”), and the entrance to Sitka Sound (“Ensenada del Susto,” or Bay of Terrors). The ship also anchored in a small harbor just north of Cape Edgecumbe (“Puerto de Guadalupe”). The Sonora apparently reached latitude 58° N., just a few miles south of Cross Sound.

Fr. Benito de la Sierra and Fr. Miguel de Campa Cos were chaplains on board the Sonora. The journal of the former has been translated by A. J. Baker, and published with introduction and notes by Henry R. Wagner (Baker, 1930).

The journal kept by the pilot Maurelle (or Mourelle) was more important, since an English translation was published by Daines Barrington in 1781 and a year later in German by Pallas (1781–83, vol. 3, pp. 198–273). Barrington's version was reedited by T. C. Russell in 1920.

While these voyages of the Spanish give us our first information about the Indians of the northern Northwest Coast, the first explorer to visit the Gulf of Alaska after Bering was Capt. James Cook, with the Resolution and the Discovery, on his third and last voyage. In May 1778, he sailed up the coast after a visit in Nookta Sound, and saw and named Mount Edgecumbe and the “Bay of Isles,” Cross Sound, Cape Fairweather, and the two great giants of the range, Mount Fairweather and Mount Saint Elias. Although Cook gave different names to features which the Spanish had previously visited, and of course named differently, he seems to have known something about the Spanish explorations of 1774 and 1775 and their claims to the Northwest Coast, since he had orders not to investigate the shores between latitudes 45° and 65° N., but to concentrate on making discoveries north of this point. Nevertheless, he did begin his discoveries at Nootka or “King George's Sound,” where he traded with natives. Unfortunately, from here northward he seems to have kept well out to sea. Thus he passed the mouth of Yakutat Bay some distance from shore and did not approach it. A few days later, however, he came to and named Cape Suckling and “Comptroller Bay,” and also landed on the south point of Kayak Island, which he named “Kaye's Island” for the King's chaplain. Here he deposited a bottle containing a notice of his discovery and a few coins. He noted the island (Wingham) north of Kayak Island.

It is regrettable that this excellent observer encountered no natives along the coast of Alaska until he entered Prince William Sound and still later the great inlet which today carries his name. Captain Cook was certainly unaware that he had actually landed at Bering's Cape Saint Elias, and he mistakenly gave the name “Beering's Bay” either to Yakutat Bay or to some (apparent?) opening near it, thereby initiating a series of confusions in geographical nomenclature. Even the Russians had no idea where Bering had touched the American coast and carelessly applied the term “Bering's Cape St. Elias” to Cape Clear (the southwestern point of Montague Island in Prince William Sound), to Cape Suckling, or even to a nonexistent point between Icy Bay and Yakutat Bay, vaguely confusing Mount Saint Elias with the cape. (See Coxe, 1803, p. 304 note; Alaskan Boundary Tribunal Atlas, 1904.)

Bancroft (1886, p. 204) believes that Cook's “Beering's” or “Behring's Bay” was Yakutat Bay. Davidson (1901 b, p. 43) at first concurred, but later (1904, pp. 53–54) argued that although Cook had seen the entrance to Yakutat Bay, he did not name it, and that he was actually southeast of Yakutat Bay (i.e. off Dangerous River) when he thought he saw the bay where Bering had anchored, mistaking the gap in the mountains flanking Yakutat Glacier for the opening of a bay, since he was too far off the coast to see the low foreshore. Dall (Dall and Baker 1883, p. 207 note, p. 205 note) denies that Cook saw Yakutat Bay at all and believes that it was Dry Bay with its rocky knob [“Bear Island”] that Cook named “Beering's Bay.” If Cook's latitudes were accurate, as Wagner (1937, vol. 1, p. 186) believes, then this must have been the bay that Cook named, although Wagner himself thinks it was Yakutat Bay. The subsequent namings and renamings of Yakutat Bay and Dry Bay are indicated in due course.

The following year, 1779, the Spanish, ignorant of Cook's discoveries, sent their Third Bucareli Expedition northward from San Blas.[30] This expedition had been planned in 1776, with the hope of preceding Cook, but was so delayed that it did not reach the Northwest Coast until after the latter's death in Hawaii. It consisted of the frigate Nuestra Señora del Rosario, commonly known as La Princessa, under Lt. Ignacio Arteaga, accompanied by the frigate Virgen (or Nuestra Señora) de los Remedios, better known as La Favorita, under Lt. Francisco de la Bodega y Cuadra. An account of the voyage, written in Spanish by Ensign Antoine Maurelle (Francisco Antonio Mourelle), second captain on La Favorita, was obtained by La Pérouse in Manila, 1787, and an extract from it was published in the latter's own report (1798, vol. 1, pp. 345–364; 1799, vol. 1, pp. 242–255 of the English translation). According to T. C. Russell (1920, p. ix) this excerpt and Maurelle's journal of 1775 as published by Barrington are both “filled with errors.”

This Spanish expedition spent from May 3 to July 1 in exploring Bucareli Bay, trying to avoid trouble with the natives, and trading with them. From the Tlingit there (Henya), they purchased three little boys and two little girls, and then sailed northward, closely following the shore. We cannot be sure whether they saw Mount Saint Elias, but “on the 17th of July arrived at Cape San Elias, sailed around Kayak Island, found the shelter which it afforded and declared that this gulf (seno) was manifestly the exact locality which had been seen by Captain Bering” (Davidson, 1901 b, p. 43, from a Spanish MS. in his possession). Wagner (1937, vol. 1, p. 193) states that their “Cabo St. Elias” was actually Cape Suckling. Kayak Island was named “Cármen,” and “Cuadra, in his journal, expressed the conviction that a large river must enter the sea between Cármen Island and the harbor of Santiago [probably Port Etches on Hinchinbrook Island in Prince William Sound], thus correctly locating Copper River, which both Cook and Vancouver failed to observe” (Bancroft, 1886, p. 219). While exploring the southern part of Kayak Island, the Spaniards encountered some natives who appeared friendly and generous, but whom their Tlingit “interpreters” (the children bought at Bucareli Bay) could not understand. These natives appear to have been Chugach, for it is they who persuaded the Spaniards to enter the port of “Santiago.”

Among the most disputed discoveries of this voyage was the “Pamplona Bank,” a shoal reported to be about half a league in circumference and about 12 leagues from the coast, located, as nearly as dead reckoning could fix it, south of Cape Yakataga, where indeed a submerged ridge does exist. Could this have been above the surface in the 18th century? (see pp. 99–100).

The expedition sailed as far as the entrance to Cook Inlet, but failed to encounter the Russian sloup Kliment, which was then off Kodiak Island. While Maurelle gives us good descriptions of the southern Tlingit and of the Chugacb, there is unfortunately nothing on the natives of Controller Bay.

The importance of these explorations, and of those made by the Russians at this time, was not simply the extension of geographical knowledge, although the general trend of the whole coast from California to Icy Cape in Bering Sea and from Attu to Turnagain Arm was thereby established, and some areas (Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, the west coast of Chichagof Island, Bucareli and Nootka Sounds) were fairly well explored. This is because the Spanish charts were not made public at that time, and the Russians established on Unalaska Island had no wish to exchange geographical information. Rather, it was the prompt publication of Cook's third and last voyage, despite Admiralty efforts to keep the Spanish in ignorance by withholding publication, which made known to the world the rich sea otter herds encountered along the American mainland. (See Wickersham, 1927, pp. 343–349, for the many editions of Cook's voyages, including unauthorized private journals, official reports and translations, beginning with an anonymous publication in 1781. The last was attributed to both John Ledyard and John Rickman, but neither ascription seems likely to Wagner (1937, vol. 1, p. 189)). Furthermore, the actual wealth in furs brought home by these explorers stimulated further voyages by the Spanish, French, and British Governments, as well as private trading ventures in which the “Boston Men,” newly freed from British restrictions, were to take part. The Russians, and especially the company founded by Grigor Ivanovich Shelikhov and Ivan Golikov in 1783, hastened to extend their operations from Kodiak to the the mainland. The inevitable consequence of this was to be conflict between the Russians and the Kolosh or Tlingit, who could not be enslaved as readily as could the Aleut, or even the Koniag and Chugach. In 1784, Shelikhov established a post on Three Saints Bay, Kodiak, from which expeditions were dispatched to hunt and trade for furs, and to exact them from the natives as “tribute.”

Zaikov and Other Russian Expeditions to the Mainland (1783–88)

Russian expansion, 1783–88, brought the Russians and their Aleut hunters into direct contact with the Chugach, Eyak, and Tlingit. According to Bancroft (1886, pp. 238–239): “the fierce Thlinkeets of Comptroller Bay, Yakutat, and Ltua [Lituya]” so terrified the “docile Aleut hunters” that they were rendered “unfit even to follow their peaceful pursuits without an escort of four or five armed Russians to several hundred hunters.”

Of the earlier Russian expeditions, one of the most important was that of several private traders under the leadership of Potap Zaikov in 1783.[31] This is because Zaikov gives us information on the Chugach and because his subordinate, Nagaiev, discovered the mouth of the Copper River.

This expedition to the mainland was directly inspired by the information which Zaikov had obtained from Captain Cook about Prince William Sound. The Russians went in three ships, the Sv Alexeï under Eustrate Delarov (the Greek merchant in charge of Shelikhov's post on Kodiak), the Sv Mikhaïl under Dimitri Polutov (who was to commit outrages upon the Chugach), and the Alexandr Nevski under Zaikov himself. On July 27, the ships entered a small cove on the north end of “Kaye's Island” which the Russians later learned, from natives they captured, was called “Kayak.” These captives were apparently Chugach who came here to hunt but had no permanent homes on the island (Bancroft, 1886, p. 187 and note 27). Among the items reported by Zaikov was that the Chugach appeared to have fragments of green bottle glass; “in their huts we also found earthen vessels dried in the fire, similar to common crockery made in the country of clay”; and that the Chugach also possessed “a blanket made of white wool, similar to sheep's wool, plaited and fringed…[and] ornamented with yellow and coffee color” (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Supplement, pp. 2, 5, 6).

Nagaiev explored the delta of the Copper River, which was called “I-oullit” by the Chugach, who apparently used to ascend it for a journey of 20 days in their baidars (large skin boats), until they came to a place where many people lived and where they obtained native copper in trade or sometimes found pieces of it for themselves (ibid., p. 6).

The Russians found no habitations on the mainland except one small settlement on the coast, discovered by Nagaiev, from which the occupants had fled. Nagaiev also met and traded with a large body of Indians, apparently Chugach from Nuchek, from whom he obtained many garments of sea otter fur. Although the natives “attacked” him, he was able to return with the four women and two children whom he had captured. It is probably safe to assume that the Russians had been the aggressors.

[Meanwhile] “the Americans [Chugach] on the ship said that the Shugatch were engaged in a quarre or war, but that they traded with five tribes o Americans. 1st the Kaniags, i.e. the inhabitants of Kadiak Island, 2nd the Kinayans, living in the bays and coves situated between Kadiak Island and Shugatch Bay [Kenai Peninsula Eskimo, and Tanaina Athabaskans?], 3rd the I-oulits, living on the river described above, 4th with the people living east of Kadiak, on the American coast, called Lakhamites, 5th with the Kolosh tribes living east of them, who all go out with them and undertake large parties at various times of the year, in large bidars.” [Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Supplement, p. 7.]

Bancroft (1886, p. 191, note 32), who had access to Zaikov‘s MS. journal in the Sitka Archives, refers to the fourth group as “a tribe living on the coast of the mainland from Kyak Island eastward, called Lakhamit (the Aglegmutes)….” These are almost certainly Eyak-speakers, but although the name given above seems to be a corruption of Tłaa (Yakutat Bay) with the Eskimo ending -miut (people of). Nor can we be sure whether the “Kolosh” were Tlingit already settled at Dry Bay or Yakutat, or were perhaps trading and raiding parties from farther away. According to Bancroft (ibid.), “Nagaief also correctly stated that the Yullits, or Copper River natives, lived only on the upper river, but traded copper and land-furs with the coast people for seal-skins, dried fish, and oil.”

From Controller Bay the Russians returned to Prince William Sound, where they wandered about, pillaging and raping, until the Chugach, reinforced by the Tanaina from Cook Inlet and Koniag Eskimo from Kodiak, succeeded in killing Polutov and his party but spared Zaikov and his men. The rest of the Russians spent the winter in Zaikof Harbor on Montague Island, where nearly half of them died of scurvy.

It is important to emphasize that although Zaikov's own journal, according to Bancroft (ibid.), accurately describes the country and its people, it is also said to furnish “proof positive that his visit to Prince William Sound in 1783 was the first made by him or any other Russian in a sea-going vessel.” However, from Cook, and perhaps from the Spanish, the Chugach had obtained beads and other things. We should also remember that Cook himself found that the Chugach and Cook Inlet natives already in 1778 possessed blue glass beads and iron, and there is no reason to suppose that such articles, which could have been derived from Russian sources through intertribal trade, had not also passed to the Yakutat before any Europeans themselves reached that remote bay (de Laguna, 1956, pp. 60–61). Already, too, “an old bayonet and pieces of other iron implements” had been seen in the hands of the Queen Charlotte Islanders by Juan Pérez in 1774, “which the pilot conjectured must have belonged to the boats’ crews lost from Chirikof's vessel somewhere in these latitudes in 1741” (Bancroft, 1886, p. 196). Chirikov's boats had actually been lost so much farther north that this explanation is unlikely. Moreover, the friar Juan Crespí who was with Pérez noted that the Haida women wore bracelets and rings of iron as well as copper (cf. Rickard, 1939, pp. 25–26). The Sitka Tlingit of Puerto de los Remedios in 1775 seem to have had only “long and large lances pointed with flint” (Maurelle, 1920, p. 45), but at Bucareli Bay in 1799 the Tlingit not only received “glass beads, bits of old iron, etc.” from the Spaniards in return for furs (Maurelle in LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, p. 245), but already were armed with “lances, four yards long, headed with iron; knives of the same metal, longer than an European bayonet, but not common among them” although they still used stone adzes (ibid., p. 247). Bodega here also saw bracelets of copper and iron. Rickard (1939) has discussed at length such iron and copper objects among the Indians of the Northwest Coast, arguing that because they had already found and used iron in driftwood, they were acquainted with its usefulness and hence eager to obtain it in trade. I have also interpreted as drift iron the iron found at the site on Knight Island in Yakutat Bay, especially in view of native traditions about finding and shaping such iron (see pp. 233, 256; de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 88–90).

Of greater ethnological interest to us than the explorations of Zaikov and Nagaiev in 1783–84 was the expedition to Yakutat and Lituya Bays of Ismailov and Bocharov in 1788, although they had been preceded by LaPérouse (1786), Dixon (1787), and Colnett (1788). Davidson (1904, p. 48) makes the statement that: “We may reasonably assume that the Russian fur hunters had been in Yakutat even before Cook's time,” (i.e. 1778), yet I can find no evidence to support this assumption, nor even that they had come “…certainly before the advent of La Pérouse.” The presence of iron and glass beads in the hands of the natives of Lituya Bay in 1786 (LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, pp. 369–370), and of iron at Yakutat Bay in 1787 (Beresford, 1789, p. 168), may mean no more than that these were articles of Russian origin handled in that intertribal trade which we know existed along the coast, as indeed LaPérouse himself concluded (cf. also Bancroft, 1886, pp. 239–240). Beresford (1789, p. 240), who visited Yakutat Bay, Sitka Sound and other places on the Northwest Coast as Dixon's supercargo in 1787, observed with respect to beads:

“These ornaments were undoubtedly introduced here [Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound] by the Russians, who have constantly traded with these people for many years past, and beads have been generally used in barter, so that if we make this a rule for judging how far the Russians have had a direct intercourse on the coast, it will appear that they have not been to the Eastward of Cape Hinchinbrook: and I think this conjecture far from improbable.”

Although Beresford was not aware that beads had been seen in Lituya Bay, his estimate of Russian travel seems reasonable.

Dall and Baker (1883, p. 202), however, state unequivocally: “The bay [Lituya] had been visited by Russian hunting parties before LaPérouse, who found the frame of one of their baidars there (although he did not recognize the fact)…. ” This is probably based upon Tebenkov (1852; quoted by Davidson, 1904, p. 58), for he had written: “The bay had been visited by the Russian American ships before LaPérouse; but the entrance was too dangerous for their vessels, and no sea otter visited the bay. Moreover, it is destitute of fish, except for the halibut in spring and summer.”

Although this is hardly an accurate description of Lituya Bay (pp. 93–95), and the Russian American Company was not founded until 1799, it is, of course, quite possible that a Russian ship did stand outside the entrance to the bay, as stated in Yakutat native tradition (pp. 258–259). Yet it is more reasonable to agree with Bancroft (1886, p. 258 note 5) that “We have no evidence of the advance of Ismailof's boats to the point [Lituya Bay] previous to the arrival of the French frigates [of LaPérouse]. The sealskin covering of a large canoe or bidar discovered here would point to visits of Aglegmutes [Eyak] or Chugatsches.” Or, we might add, “of Yakutat natives,” since they also claim to have had skin boats.

In fact, we simply do not know whether the various Russian traders and hunters were active between 1784 and 1788 along the Gulf of Alaska, even though there are certain suggestive passages in Shelikhov's report of his travels, 1783–87,[32] which are worth consideration.

Thus Shelikhov himself wrote, under the date of March 7, 1786:

“As I was now disposing all things for my departure [from Kodiak to Siberia], for the further prosecution of the discoveries which were not completed the foregoing year, I sent five Russians to build a fortress at Cape St. Elias, with a view as well to assist them in this undertaking as to conciliate the inhabitants of the districts stretching from that point to the 47th degree of latitude, I dispatched with them a thousand men, consisting of Konaghi natives of Kuktak [Kodiak], and other islands, together with seventy inhabitants of the Fox Islands [Aleutians], to raise crosses on the coasts, and to bury in the earth pot-sherd, the bark of birchtree, and coals [i.e., to take possession of the land].” [Coxe, 1803, pp. 288–289.]

On May 19, Shelikhov learned that “those who had sailed to Cape St. Elias began their work, and left a party to finish the fort, which I ordered to be constructed in that place” (ibid., pp. 289–290).

During this period, the Russians were chiefly concerned with establishing or consolidating positions on Afognak and Shuyak Islands in the Kodiak group, and on Cook Inlet (“Bay of Kinaigisk”), against active native opposition, and while Shelikhov certainly wanted explorations to be made “from the 60th to the 40th degree of north latitude” (ibid., p. 291), because he left orders to that effect, it is highly improbable that the “Cape St. Elias” to which he refers was as far away as Kayak Island. In fact, as Coxe (ibid., p. 304 note) points out, Shelikhov referred to the south point of Suklia (Montague Island in Prince William Sound) as Bering's “Cape St. Elias.”

LaPérouse (1786)

In 1785 the French government dispatched Commodore Jean François de Galaup, Comte de LaPérouse on a scientific voyage around the world in the frigate L’Astrolabe, accompanied by La Boussole under Viscomte de Langle.[33] Chinard (1937, p. XI, my translation) observes that “…one can boldly affirm that no other scientific expedition of the eighteenth century had been prepared with more care and with a more scrupulous method: the instructions given to LaPérouse could and should be the object of a separate study.” Louis XVI was, for example, particularly concerned that relations with any natives encountered should be friendly and peaceful. Questionnaires prepared by various specialists and by the scientific academies included anthropological and ethnological topics, as well as those pertaining to other branches of natural history and science. These questionnaires and instructions (1784–85) not only indicate clearly the extent of knowledge and the scientific problems that predominated on the eve of the French Revolution, but indicate that this voyage “deserves to mark a date in the annals of geography and science” (Chinard, 1937, p. XII, my translation). These documents also seem to be precursors to those which President Jefferson was to give about 30 years later to Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. In addition, LaPérouse's expedition included some 17 engineers, scientists, and artists. All of these circumstances make his reports of much value to us, and they were fortunately sent back to France before the tragic disappearance of the expedition in the South Pacific in 1788.

Early in the morning of June 23, 1786, LaPérouse's ships were approaching the American shore, and “As the mist cleared away, a long chain of mountains covered with snow burst at once upon our sight…. We distinguished in these the Mount St. Elias of Behring, with it's summit rising above the clouds.” (LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, p. 358.) Below was apparently the outwash plain near Icy Bay or the moraine-covered end of the Malaspina Glacier. The ships seem to have made landfall somewhere between Icy Bay and Yakutat Bay, at “Pointe de La Boussole,”[34] and anchored off the mouth of Yakutat Bay on the 27th. A boat from each ship was sent in to look for an anchorage, but found none; nor were any natives encountered. Apparently it was the northwestern shore of the bay near Cape Manby which was explored, for this was found exposed to winds from the southsouthwest to eastsoutheast, and a landing was made with difficulty. LaPérouse named Yakutat Bay “Baie de Monti” after the officer who commanded the landing party. Following the usage of Galiano (1802), the name is now applied to the sheltered arm leading in on the southeastern part of the bay, which unfortunately de Monti did not discover.

The ships again followed the coast toward the southeast, and after attempting to determine the exact position and height of Mount Saint Elias, came to the mouth of Dry Bay, which LaPérouse (1799, vol. 1, p. 362) at first believed was “the bay to which captain Cook gave the name of Behring.” It was evident, however, that they were off the mouth of a river of considerable size, the two large entrances to which were obstructed by sandbars “on which the sea broke with such violence, that it was impossible for our boats to get near. Mr de Clonard spent five or six hours to no purpose in search of an entrance; but he saw smoke, a proof that the country is inhabited” (ibid., p. 363). A large basin or lagoon was seen inside, but no native huts or canoes. LaPérouse thought that this might have been the place where Bering [sic; read Chirikov] tried to land and lost his boats in the rough water, and so named the Alsek River “Rivière de Béring,” confident that no “Bering‘s Bay” existed.

On July 1 and 2, Cape Fairweather and Mount Fairweather (“Beautemps”) were passed and the ships came to “what appeared to be a very fine bay” (ibid., p. 364), that is, Lituya Bay, to which LaPérouse gave the name “Port des Français.” Three small boats, sent to explore the bay, entered and left in safety, but when the ships tried to follow, the ebb tide was so strong that they could make no headway against it. The following morning, July 3, the ships shot into the bay on the end of the flood tide, but as LaPérouse observed: “During the thirty years that I have followed the sea I never saw two vessels so near being lost” (ibid., p. 367). A good anchorage was eventually found on the western shore, farther from the dangerous entrance, and later the ships moved behind the island in the middle of the bay.

From July 3 to 30, when the vessels sailed for Nootka Sound and California, explorations were made of Lituya Bay and the neighborhood, and, as is well known, on July 13 LaPérouse had the misfortunate to lose the two pinnaces of his frigates, with their whole complement of 21 officers and men, in the terrible tidal currents at the mouth of the bay. The second pinnace had gone to attempt the rescue of the first; the jollyboat, which had also been swept through by the ebb, escaped the breakers and was able to reenter the bay when the tide turned. In memory of this loss, LaPérouse erected a wooden monument on the south point of the island in the bay, which he named in consequence “Isle du Cénotaphe,” and buried an account of the tragedy in a bottle at the foot of the monument.

Of chief interest to us are the observations made by LaPérouse on the Indians of Lituya Bay; his account should be compared with the Indian tradition of his visit as recorded by Emmons (1911) near Juneau in 1886. What may be a very abbreviated version of the same story was heard at Yakutat in 1949 (pp. 258–259).

We may anticipate by stating that the Indians of Lituya Bay were Tlingit. Certainly the words for numbers are Tlingit, as are those for ‘labret’ kentaga (enaa); ‘face’ kaaga (qà yá, ‘someone's face’); ‘seal's tooth’ or ‘teeth,’ without distinction between singular and plural, kaourré (qà ‘uxu, ‘someone's tooth,’ not “seal's tooth”); ’chief’ (not “friend”) alcaou (’ànqáwu; for n is often pronounced like 1); ’hair of the head’ khlrleies (Í, ‘snarls’). Yet ‘sea otter’ skecter is certainly not very similar to the Tlingit yUxt or yÁxwt (LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, pp. 409–411). However, there is nothing in the customs or objects of material culture observed which was not Tlingit. Moreover, according to Emmon's informant, LaPérouse's arrival was witnessed by a party of Hoonah Tł’UknaAdi from Grouse Fort in Icy Straits, and parties from Hoonah and Chilkat used to stop at Lituya Bay on their way to Yakutat to trade for copper (Emmons, 1911, p. 297).

The first dealings with the Indians seem to have been most amicable, for while still outside the mouth of the bay:

“We soon perceived some savages, who made signs of friendship, by displaying and waving white mantles, and different skins. Several canoes of these Indians were fishing in the bay, where the water was as smooth as in a basin…. [LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, p. 365.]

“During our forced stay at the entrance of the bay [before the anchorage was shifted to Cenotaph Island, July 4], we had been continually surrounded with the canoes of the savages, who offered us fish, skins of otters and other animals, and different little articles of their dress, in exchange for our iron. To our great surprise they appeared well accustomed to traffic, and bargained with as much skill as any tradesman of Europe. Of all our articles of trade, they appeared to have no great desire for any thing but iron: they accepted indeed a few beads [rassades]; but these served rather to conclude a bargain, than to form the basis of it. We at length prevailed on them to take pewter pots and plates: yet these had only a transient success, iron prevailing over every thing. They were not unacquainted with this metal. Every one had a dagger of it suspended from the neck, not unlike the criss of the Malays, except that the handle was different, being nothing more than an elongation of the blade, rounded, and without any edge. This weapon had a sheath of tanned leather, and appeared to be their most valuable moveable. As we examined these daggers very attentively, they informed us by signs, that they made use of them only against the bears and other wild beasts. [Evidently the Indians were trying to assure the French that their intentions were friendly.] Some were of copper, but they did not appear to give a preference to these. This metal is pretty common among them: they use it chiefly for collars, bracelets, and various other ornaments; and they also point their arrows with it.” [Ibid., p. 369.]

LaPérouse speculates correctly that the Indians might have obtained and shaped native copper, but that it was highly unlikely they had access to virgin iron, and they certainly could not smelt iron ore. He believed that they could forge it, and observed that their iron was “as soft and as easy to cut as lead” (ibid., p. 370). He also points out that “the day of our arrival we saw necklaces of beads, and some little articles of brass…” which the Indians could not have made (ibid.). After considering the possibility that the iron, copper, and brass might have come from American traders, Hudson's Bay Company agents, or from the Spanish, LaPérouse concludes that they were most probably of Russian origin. It does not occur to him that the iron might have come from drift logs or wreckage.

“Gold is not an object of more eager desire in Europe, than iron is in this part of America, which is another proof of it's scarcity. Every man, it is true, has a little in his possession; but they are so covetous of it, that they leave no means untried to obtain it.” [Ibid., p. 370.]

The behavior of the natives, especially at first, might give some indication as to whether they were familiar with Whites.

“On the day of our arrival, we were visited by the chief of the principal village” (ibid.). This was probably the village with cemetery or “morai” on the southeast shore of the bay, between Harbor Point and the hills called The Paps. LaPérouse‘s chart indicates another village on the opposite shore, just inside La Chausée Spit, where a trail (“Chemain de la Pêche et du Morai”) ran northwestward just behind the rocky beach to the lagoon at the mouth of Huagin River (“Rivière aux Salmons”), where there was another settlement. Farther up the northwestern side of the bay, just beyond the first hill, was a fourth village at the mouth of a stream.

The chief seems to have come aboard with the usual ceremony.

“Before he came on board, he appeared to address a prayer to the sun. He then made a long harangue, which was concluded by a kind of song, by no means disagreeable, and greatly resembling the plain chaunt [plein-chant] of our churches. The Indians in his canoe accompanied him, repeating the same air in chorus. After this ceremony, they almost all came on board, and danced for an hour to the music of their own voices, in which they are very exact. [This seems to have been the usual Tlingit method of greeting strangers, or at least Europeans, with whom they wished to trade (pp. 141, 142, 347).] I gave the chief several presents, which made him so very troublesome, that he daily spent five or six hours on board; and I was obliged to repeat them very frequently, or he would go away discontented, and with an air of threat, which however was not very formidable.” [Ibid.]

One wonders whether it was not the usual expectation that when one chief visited another he should not be permitted to return home without a gift, as at a potlatch.

We can see that neither the French nor the Indians appeared to be afraid of each other and that no demand was made on either side for the exchange of hostages. In this connection we should note that the Spanish in Bucareli Bay in 1779 did not find it necessary to exchange hostages in order to trade, although they did keep their arms by them, and shut their eyes to petty thefts. However, when some valuable objects were taken, they would temporarily seize “either some canoe or some person of distinction until the stolen object was returned” (Maurelle in LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, p. 250). In 1787 Dixon was able to trade at Yakutat and Sitka without exchanging hostages; nor did Colnett have to resort to this device at Yakutat the following year.

The exchange of hostages is a matter of some interest, since Bancroft (1886, p. 236) argues that—

“The custom of interchanging hostages while engaged in traffic was carried eastward by the Russians and forced upon the English, Americans, and Spaniards long after the entire submission of Aleuts, Kenaï, and Chugatsches had obviated the necessity of such a course in the west. Portlock was compelled to conform to the custom at various places before he could obtain any trade, but as a rule four or five natives were demanded for one of two sailors from the ship.”

Yet when Portlock (1789, pp. 261, 266, 269, 284–286) in August 1787 had to yield to the requests of the Tlingit at Portlock Harbor (Chichagof Island) and Sitka to send a man ashore, this seems to have been largely so that the Indians, often including the chief himself, and as many volunteers as Portlock would accept, could spend the night on board ship, where they were well entertained. Nevertheless, Portlock found that on a few occasions when he refused to exchange hostages the natives became alarmed and would not approach the ships. Still, the pleasure with which they received the sailor, usually Joseph Woodcock, the fondness which they seemed to have for him, and their consideration of his wants do not suggest the kidnap-blackmail tactics of the Russians. However, the Tlingit of Portlock Harbor had already been to Prince William Sound, where they had fought the Chugach (ibid., p. 260), and may have learned to exchange hostages there. If the exchange of hostages had indeed been adopted by the Tlingit from the Russians or from the Chugach, this must have been because it resembled the Tlingits’ own aboriginal custom of exchanging hostage-ambassadors in peace-making ceremonies between Tlingit sibs (see p. 150), and there is no reason to suppose that this did not antedate Russian influence. Indeed, Woodcock was evidently called ‘deer’ (“cow-aka-na—hostage or friendship” [kuwakan], ibid., p. 293), treated with the ceremonious behavior accorded to such officials, and also expected to observe their special taboos (i.e., against whistling), although Portlock thought that his hosts were afraid that his whistling was a signal for his friends to take him away (ibid., p. 285).

Although Tlingit behavior toward the first European navigators seems to have varied between patterns suggestive of ceremonious trade and those based upon peace making, all evidence would tend to confirm LaPérouse's statement that: “The port was never seen by any navigator” (1799, vol. 1, p. 366), or at least the conclusion that no European vessel had previously entered it.

As soon as the French ships were anchored by Cenotaph Island they were visited by all the natives in the bay. Here the French had set up their observatory for checking their position and the two chronometers (which, incidentally, had been used by Captain Cook and had been presented by the British Government). Here also, the sailmakers, smith, and coopers were working. These activities, as well as the tools and equipment spread about, must have drawn the Indians like flies to honey. They came with canoe loads of sea otter furs, which were traded for hatchets, adzes, and bars of iron. (These skins were later sold in Macao, China, and the entire proceeds distributed among the enlisted men on the two frigates, as we learn from a letter of LaPérouse, quoted by Fleurieu, 1801, p. CXIII note, p. CIX.) Salmon were first traded for pieces of old iron hoops, but soon the natives “would not part with this fish unless for nails, or small implements of iron” (LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, p. 371).

Unfortunately, the observatory and tents on the island were not safe from pillage.

“As all the Indian villages were on the main-land, we flattered ourselves, that we should be in security on the island, but we were soon convinced of our mistake. Experience had already taught us, that the Indians were great thieves; but we did not suspect them of sufficient activity and perseverance, to carry into execution difficult and tedious schemes. In a short time we learned to know them better. They spent the night in watching for favourable opportunities to rob us: but we kept a strict watch on board our vessels, and they were seldom able to get the better of our vigilance. I had established also the Spartan law: the person robbed was punished; and if the thief received no applause, at least we reclaimed nothing, to avoid all occasion of quarrel, which might have led to fatal consequences. That this extreme mildness rendered them insolent I will not disavow: but I endeavoured to convince them of the superiority of our arms; for which purpose I fired a cannon, to show them, that I could reach them at a distance, and pierced with a musket-ball, in presence of a great number of Indians, several doubles of a cuirass [wooden armor] they had sold us, after they had informed us by signs that it was impenetrable to arrows or poignards. Our fowlers, too, who were good marksmen, killed birds over their heads. I am well assured, that they never thought of inspiring us with fear; but their conduct convinced me, that they believed our forbearance inexhaustible. In a very little time they obliged me to remove the establishment on the island. They landed upon it in the night, on the side next the offing; crossed a very thick wood, which it was impossible for us to penetrate in the day; and creeping on their bellies like snakes, almost without stirring a leaf, they contrived to steal some of our effects, in spite of our sentries. [This is obviously deduction, since the maneuvers of the natives were not observed.] They even had the address to enter by night into the tent where Messrs de Lauriston and Darbaud, who were on guard at the observatory, slept; and took away a silver-mounted musket, and the clothes of the two officers, which they had taken the precaution to place under their pillow, without being perceived by a guard of twelve men, or even awakening the officers. This theft would have given us little uneasiness[!], but for the loss of the original paper, containing all our astronomical observations since our arrival at Port des Français.

MAP 18.—Lituya Bay as seen by LaPerouse. “Part of the Plan du Port des Francais (Lituya Bay); engraved map 19 in the LaPerouse atlas, Paris, 1797.” Figure 5 in Donald J. Orth's “Dictionary of Alaska Place Names,” Geological Survey Professional Paper No. 567 dated 1967. In his bibliography, Orth refers both to the English 2-volume edition of 1799 and atlas folio, and to the French edition of 4 volumes with atlas folio. This detail was evidently from the French atlas.

“These circumstances were no impediment to our taking in wood and water. All our officers were continually on duty with the boats, at the head of the different working parties, which we were obliged to send ashore. Their presence, and the order they maintained, were checks upon the savages.” [Ibid., pp. 372–373.]

As can be seen from the above, although the Indians seemed to feel free to pilfer, they were as careful as the French to avoid any open aggression. Why then did they steal? Was it simply the uncontrollable reaction to the sight of undreamed of riches, or was it perhaps an attempt to get restitution for something of which they felt they had been legally deprived? Or, was it a combination of motives? The next passage suggests an answer.

“The day after this excursion [to the head of the bay], the chief came on board better attended, and more ornamented, than usual. After many songs and dances, he offered to sell me the island, on which our observatory was erected; tacitly reserving, no doubt, to himself and the other Indians, the right of robbing us upon it. It was more than questionable, whether this chief were proprietor of a single foot of land: the government of these people is of such a nature, that the country must belong to the whole society; yet, as many of the savages were witnesses to the bargain, I had a right to suppose that it was sanctioned by their assent; and accordingly I accepted the offer of the chief, sufficiently aware, however, that many tribunals would find a flaw in the contract, if ever the nation should think proper to litigate our title, for we could bring no proof, that the witnesses were it's representatives, or the chief the actual proprietor of the soil. Be this as it might, I gave him several yards of red cloth, hatchets, adzes, bar iron, and nails, and made presents to all his attendants. The bargain being thus concluded, and the purchase money paid, I sent to take possession of the island with the usual formalities, and buried at the foot of a rock several bronze metals, which had been struck before our departure from France, with a bottle containing an inscription recording our claim.” [Ibid., p. 375.]

While LaPérouse doubts the legality of this transaction and hesitates to believe that the Tlingit were sophisticated enough to treat real estate as an alienable commodity, we now know that land belonged to sibs (or their segments) for whom the chief acted as administrator; that with the consent of the group he could give away territorial rights, as at Angoon (Garfield, 1947, p. 441; de Laguna, 1960, pp. 133–134) and on the Gulf of Alaska (see p. 254), or sell them. Indeed, it was through purchase that the Kwacqwan and the Drum House Teqwedi acquired their lands in the Yakutat area (see also the version recorded by Swanton, 1909, Tale 105, p. 356; and pp. 232, 252). “Land” for the Tlingit included, of course, not simply the actual land, but offshore waters, and the rights to gather wild products (cf. Niblack, 1890, p. 335).

What is significant about the Angoon and Yakutat transactions is that these transfers of territorial rights were made in order to resolve conflicts. This is particularly clear in the purchases of Knight Island and Humpback Creek in Yakutat Bay, which were undertaken expressly to prevent further trouble between the owners and the Kwacqwan who had been picking strawberries and catching fish in places where they were tresspassing without invitation. According to the Tlingit, rights to exclusive use extended over many resources that the European would consider free: fresh water, driftwood, marine mammals and fish, land game, and wild plants, all of which LaPérouse's men were taking (LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, pp. 371, 376, 394–395). We should also note how the Sitka Tlingit of “Puerto de los Remedios” bitterly resented the Spanish helping themselves to fresh water, wood, and fish; at first insisting on payment for this, then retiring when they could not frighten the Spaniards (Maurelle, 1920, pp. 45–46).

I suggest, therefore, that the chief who sold Cenotaph Island to LaPérouse was acting for the Tł’uknaAdi (or DAdentan, or akA’ayi—however the sib that owned Lituya Bay was then called), and that this was an attempt to regularize and settle peacefully an unpleasant and potentially dangerous situation. The sale would also serve as payment for what the French had already taken illegally. Of course, it is practically certain that not all the Indian men in Lituya Bay belonged to the same sib (see the list of resident sibs on pp. 20, 218). Others, therefore, may have felt that they had rights which also had been invaded, and for which due compensation had not been made. Or, some individuals may have felt, anyway, that to rob the French was fair sport. Of course, to get the better of the foreignor (unana) in sharp trade was simply ordinary Tlingit business practice, and was a somewhat different matter. There is no doubt that the Indians regarded the French as “suckers.”

The Tlingit methods of trading with the Dry Bay people are illustrated in a myth recorded by Swanton (1909, Tale 32, p. 160). In this, the Tł’uknaAdi simply took an Athabaskan and announced that he was to be a friend and trade partner. “They would take away a person's goods and then give him just what they wanted to. The Athabascans were foolish enough to allow it.” This high-handed procedure should also be considered in connection with pilfering from the French.

The day after the sale of the island, the two boats were lost at the entrance to the bay.

“Some canoes of the savages came now to inform us of the fatal accident. These rude unpolished men expressed by signs, that they had seen both our boats sink, and that to render them assistance was utterly impossible. We loaded them with presents; and endeavoured to make them understand, that all our wealth would not have been too ample a compensation for him who had saved a single man.

“Nothing could be more powerful in awakening their humanity. They hastened to the sea-shore, and spread themselves over both sides of the bay.”

Yet when LaPérouse sent his own parties also to search the shores, he still felt it necessary to retain on board “a sufficient number of men to have nothing to fear from the savages, against whom prudence required us to be constantly on our guard.” (LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, p. 380.)

According to M. Boutin (the officer whose jollyboat was caught by the tide but escaped), as his craft was approaching the eastern side of the entrance, looking for survivors, he saw some men on shore “making signals by waving their cloaks” (ibid., p. 383). It is not clear whether these Indians were warning the boat away from the still dangerous tidal currents or were trying to explain that the other boats were lost without survivors. At any event, when the jollyboat was able to reenter Lituya Bay at slack tide, the Indians “made signs, that they had seen two boats overset…” (ibid., p. 384).

In order to make sure that no survivors were left behind, although all hope had been abandoned, LaPérouse moved the ships to an anchorage closer to the entrance, on the western side of the bay, apparently opposite the inner of the two villages on that side. Here they remained for about 2 weeks before sailing on July 30.

“Our stay at the entrance of the bay procured us much information respecting the manners and customs of the savages, which it would have been impossible for us to have acquired at the other anchorage. Our vessels were moored near their villages, we visited them several times a day, and every day we had reason to complain of them, though our conduct towards them continued uniformly the same, and we never ceased to give them proofs of gentleness and good-will.” [Ibid., p. 388.]

It should be remembered that LaPérouse had paid nothing for rights in this part of the bay.

On July 22, the Indians brought fragments of one of the lost boats which they had found on the eastern shore, “and informed us by signs, that they had interred the body of one of our unfortunate companions on the strand, where it had been thrown up by the waves” (ibid.). LaPérouse almost certainly misunderstood. The Tlingit would never have buried a corpse, and would probably not even have cremated it unless ceremoniously requested to do so. Since such funeral services for their own dead were performed by members of the opposite moiety from the deceased, it is hard to see how the Indians in the 18th century could have worked out such a fictitious relationship with the French.

However, three French officers set off for the supposed grave with the Indians “whom we had loaded with presents.” They walked for 7 or 8 miles over stones, probably along the boulder-strewn shore southeast of the bay, “while every half hour the guides demanded a fresh payment, or refused to proceed; and at length they stole into the wood, and made their escape. The officers discovered too late, that their report was a mere trick, framed to obtain presents” (ibid., p. 389).

So concludes LaPérouse. But while there is no question but that the Indians were exploiting the situation to their own advantage, how did they view it, and what was their justification?

In the first place, according to LaPérouse himself, the natives of Lituya Bay wore no moccasins. “Though they go barefoot the soles of their feet are not callous, and they cannot walk over stones” (ibid., p. 400). It is no wonder that they kept demanding extra compensation during a walk of 7 or 8 miles over rough boulders. Their feet must have been very painful when they finally slipped into the forest with its soft mossy carpet.

It is also probable that the Indians had been fearful of touching the body, had left it on the beach, and then had run away when they discovered that the tide had claimed it. It must be remembered that the Tlingit believe that those who drown turn into the dread Land Otter Men, monsters that lurk to kidnap those lost in the woods or in peril on the water, in order to transform them into animals like themselves (p. 744).

In addition, such disasters as shipwreck, especially of the magnitude as that suffered by the French, are attributed by the Tlingit to supernatural causes. The Tlingit themselves have also lost canoes at Lituya Bay (pp. 273–276), and Emmons, as we have seen (p. 94), reports that such wrecks are believed due to the malevolence of the Spirit of Lituya Bay, Qa łI-tu’a (Man of Lituya) who lives in its depths and resents trespass. All so drowned are supposed to become his slaves, assuming the form of bears. To the fear of the Land Otter Men, should we not add a healthy awe of the Lituya Bay Spirit and his slaves, and an understandable reluctance to interfere with one of his victims?

But LaPérouse, by now embittered by the tragedy, is in no mood to forgive. “We were not surprised at the account they gave us of the stratagem of the savages, who in knavery and theft were unparalleled” (La Pérouse, 1799, vol. 1, p. 389).

It was while searching the beach for wreckage that the French discovered the fishing village at the salmon stream (Huagin River), and also the cemetery or “morai,” for which the Polynesian term was used, “because it is more suitable than tomb [tombeau] to convey the idea of an exposure to the open air” (ibid., p. 389 note). The French investigated the contents (see p. 539), but

“replaced everything with scrupulous exactness, adding presents or iron instruments and beads. The savages, who witnessed this visit, showed a little uneasiness; but they did not fail to take away the presents left by our travellers without delay. Some others of us, going to the place the next day out of curiosity, found only the ashes and the head. They placed there some fresh presents, which experienced the same fate as those of the preceding day. I am convinced that the Indians would have been pleased, had we repeated our visits several times a day.”

But LaPérouse in the next sentence states that “they allowed us, though with a little repugnance, to visit their tombs,” so these investigations evidently were not welcome (ibid., p. 390). The behavior of the French in putting something with the remains of the dead, though done openly, was in fact exactly what Tlingit witches are supposed to do in secret (see pp. 730–732), so that the reason why the natives removed the presents is not as obvious as LaPérouse assumed.

The Indians, however, would not let the French approach their huts, “till they had sent away their wives, who are the most disgusting beings in the universe” (ibid.).

“These women, the most disgusting in the world, covered with stinking hides, often not even tanned, were still capable of exciting desire in the breasts of some persons, not of the most delicate taste. At first they raised difficulties, and declared, by signs, that they should hazard the loss of their lives: but when they were overcome by presents, they wished the sun to be witness of their actions, and refused to retire into the woods” (ibid., pp. 403–404).

One wonders whether it was only slave women who had intercourse with the French, as was the case with Malaspina's men at Yakutat (see p. 145).

LaPérouse continues to give a severe and unfavorable account of the natives at Lituya Bay. As the first French editor, Milet-Mureau observes (1799, vol. 1, p. 399 n.): “In the lines of this picture the reader will trace the painful impression of the recent loss, which was related in the preceding chapter.” And Chinard, his modern editor (1937, p. 41, n. 4, my translation), also complains, after consulting anthropological authorities on the Tlingit: “On the whole, Lapérouse agrees with other voyagers. It seems, however, that he has pushed his painting far towards the black.” Indeed, he pictures the Indians as predators, like the wolf and the tiger, “at war with every animal,” and inhabiting the land “only to extirpate every thing that lives and moves upon it” (1799, vol. 1, p. 396). They are not at all as the fireside philosopher had pictured man close to the state of nature—who retains his natural goodness. Rather, they are “savage, deceitful, and malicious,” as LaPérouse has learned from “melancholy experience.” Yet he has refrained from using force “to repell the injustice of these savages, and teach them, that there is a law of nations, which is never to be violated with impunity” (ibid., p. 398).

Then follows a catalog of their shortcomings:

“Some of the Indians were continually about our ships in their canoes, and spent three or four hours before they began to barter a little fish, or two or three otter-skins, taking every opportunity to rob us, catching at every bit of iron that could easily be carried off, and examining particularly in what way they could deceive our vigilance during the night. I made the principal persons come on board my vessel, and loaded them with presents; yet these very men, whom I so particularly distinguished, never disdained to steal a nail or an old pair of breeches. Whenever they assumed a smiling and cheerful air, I was sure they had stolen something, though I very often pretended not to see it.

“I had particularly recommended caressing the children, and gratifying them with little presents. The parents were insensible to this mark of kindness, which I thought must be felt in every country: the only reflection it excited in their minds was, that, by asking us to accompany their children, they would have an opportunity of robbing us; and for my own information I several times procured myself the pleasure of seeing the father avail himself of the moment when our attention appeared most engaged by his child, to hide under his garment of skin whatever was within his reach.

“I sometimes assumed an appearance of wishing for trifles of little value belonging to Indians whom I had just loaded with presents; but I always made this trial of their generosity in vain.” [Ibid., p. 398.]

“We never landed except in force, and armed. They greatly dreaded our muskets, and eight or ten Europeans together were sufficient to awe a whole village. Our two surgeons being so imprudent as to go a shooting alone were attacked. The Indians endeavoured to snatch their fowling-pieces from them, but could not succeeed: two men being sufficiently formidable to them, to make them retire. The same thing happened to Mr de Lesseps, the young Russian interpreter; but fortunately the crew of one of our boats came to his assistance. These acts of hostility appeared to them so natural, that they did not desist from coming on board, and never suspected the possibility of our making reprisals.” [Ibid., p. 399.]

[Nor are the natives more amiable in their dealings with each other:]

“Their arts are considerably advanced, and their civilization in this respect has made great progress; but in every thing that polishes and softens the ferocity of manners, they are yet in their infancy. The manner in which they live, excluding every kind of subordination, renders them continually agitated by vengeance or fear. Choleric and prompt to take offence, I have seen them continually with the poignard unsheathed against each other. Exposed to perish with hunger in the winter, when the chace cannot be very productive, they live in the summer in the greatest abundance, as they can catch more fish in an hour than is sufficient for their family. The rest of the day they remain idle, spending it in gaming, of which they are as passionately fond as some of the inhabitants of our large cities. This is the grand source of their quarrels: and I do not hesitate to pronounce, that this tribe would be completely exterminated, if the use of any intoxicating liquor were added to these destructive vices.” [Ibid., p. 397.]

“I will admit, if you please, that it is impossible for a society to exist without some virtues; but I am forced to confess, that here I could not perceive any. Always quarreling among themselves, indifferent to their children, absolute tyrants to their wives, who are incessantly condemned to the most laborious occupations, I observed nothing among these people to mellow the tints of the picture.” [Ibid., pp. 398–399.]

Although LaPérouse found “no trace of anthropophagy,” he is quite ready to believe that the Indians would be cannibals when they took a prisoner in time of war (ibid., p. 411).

Dr. M. Rollin of the Boussole also found that these people “are audacious thieves, extremely irascible, and most of all to be dreaded by strangers” (LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 2, p. 360).

Despite his obvious display of prejudice or of natural provocation, LaPérouse gives us a most interesting and full description of Indian summer camp life and occupations, the details of which are discussed in the appropriate ethnographic chapters. He deduces correctly that each household of 18 to 20 persons was under the leadership of its own head or chief, and was independent of the others in the village with respect to its activities. Futhermore, he believes that the bay was “a station for trade, inhabited only in the fishing season” (ibid., vol.1, p. 407). This is because he has seen whole villages coming and going (see passage quoted on p. 93), because of the skin boats that had come to the bay (see p. 123), the quantity of skins which the Indians had to trade, and their possession of iron and other objects of European origin.

“I think I may venture to affirm, that this place is inhabited only in the summer, and that the Indians never pass the winter here. I did not see a single hut, that afforded shelter from the rain; and though there were never three hundred Indians collected in the bay at one time, we were visited by seven or eight hundred others…. [Ibid., pp. 399–400.] It is probable, that we saw but a very small part of these people, who in all likelihood occupy a considerable space along the sea-shore; visiting in summer the different bays in search of food like the seals, and in winter retiring farther within the land, to hunt beavers and other animals of which they brought us the spoils.” [Ibid. p. 400.]

Anthropometric measurements and other observations were made by M. Rollin, M.D., the chief medical officer of the Boussole (1799, vol. 2, p. 356–372). These are summarized by LaPérouse as follows:

“The stature of these Indians is much the same as ours. [The men averaged 5 feet 3 inches, according to Dr. Rollin, (ibid., p. 371)]. Their features vary considerably, and exhibit no peculiar characteristic marks except in the expression of their eyes, to which gentleness is an utter stranger. The colour of their skin is very brown, because it is incessantly exposed to the air: but their children are born as fair as ours. They have, it is true, less beard than Europeans [but LaPérouse knows from his own observations that no American Indians are naturally beardless; those who lack beards have eradicated the hair.] The frame of their body is slight. The weakest of our seamen would have thrown the strongest of the Indians in wrestling. I saw some whose swelled legs seemed to indicate the scurvy, though their gums were sound. I suspect that they never arrive at any very old age; I saw but one woman that appeared to be sixty; and she enjoyed no privileges, but was obliged, like the rest, to submit to the various labours imposed on her sex.” [LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, pp. 404–405.]

LaPérouse concludes that the inhabitants of Lituya Bay are not Eskimo, but Indians, “having evidently one common origin with all the inhabitants of the interior part of Canada and North America” (ibid., p. 405). As compared with the Eskimo, they are “much taller, thin, and not at all robust” (ibid., p. 406).

As compared to the California Indians who were later seen, Dr. Rollin (LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 2, pp. 356–357) finds that those of Lituya Bay

“are taller, stronger made, of a more agreeable figure, and are capable of much greater vivacity of expression. They are superior to them also both in courage and in intellect. They have rather a low forehead, but more than that of the southern Americans, black and lively eyes, much thicker eye-brows, nose of the usual size and well formed, only a little widened at the extremity, thin lips, moderately large mouth, fine and very even teeth, the chin and ears perfectly regular.

“The women also have the same advantage over those of the southern tribes before mentioned, having greater mildness in their features, as well as more grace in the form of their limbs.

“Their faces indeed would be tolerably agreeable, [if it were not for their large labrets.] This whimsical ornament not only disfigures the look, but causes an involuntary flow of sailva, as inconvenient as it is disgusting.

“In general the complexion of these people is olive, with their nails, which they wear long, of a lighter shade; but in different individuals, and in different parts of the same individual, the tint of the skin varies, according as it is more or less exposed to the sun and the influence of the atmosphere.

“Their hair is neither so coarse nor so black as that of the southern Americans, chestnut coloured hair being very common among them. They have also more beard, and the arm-pits and parts of sex are less scantily provided.” [Ibid., pp. 358–359.]

Their teeth are naturally even and sound. While the natives “are extremely filthy in their manner of living; yet, among these people, instances of the itch, or even traces of this disorder are rarely to be met with.” [Ibid., p. 370.]

There is thus no evidence yet of the European diseases which were to visit these people, although Portlock (1789, pp. 270–273) discovered that the Spanish in 1775 had spread smallpox among the Sitka Tlingit that had apparently wiped out whole families.

One of the most interesting discoveries made in Lituya Bay was the frame of a large boat like an umiak with a skin cover, not a dugout like the canoes of the local Indians.

“In the course of our inquiries respecting this custom [praying while going through the entrance to the bay, quoted on p. 93], we learned, that seven very large canoes had lately been lost in this passage, while an eighth escaped. This the Indians who were saved consecrated to their god, or to the memory of their comrades. We saw it by the side of a morai, which no doubt contained the ashes of some who were shipwrecked. [LaPérouse, vol. 1, p. 390.] [It was this umiak, the skin covering of which] was reposited in the morai, by the side of the coffers of ashes; and the frame of the canoe remained naked near it, raised upon stocks.” [Ibid., p. 391.]

LaPérouse was tempted to take the skin cover, and believed that this could have been done without the knowledge of the Indians, since this part of the bay was not inhabited. “Besides, I am well persuaded, that the persons shipwrecked were strangers” (ibid.), probably “Esquimaux” from the neighborhood of the Shumagin Islands and “the peninsula explored by Cook” (ibid., p. 407).

The strangers may have been Chugach from Prince William Sound, but if so, it is not very likely, although not impossible, that they would have cremated their dead, unless, as I have already speculated, this was a special custom reserved for those who had died by drowning (Birket-Smith, 1953, pp. 89–91; de Laguna, 1956, pp. 88–89). The Yakutat people, however, lived much closer to Lituya Bay and were accustomed to visit it. Both the large skin-covered canoe (pp. 330–331) and the repository for ashes or “morai” (pp. 539–542) were at home in their culture in the 18th century.

The Lituya Bay natives described by LaPérouse may be taken as typical of the northern Tlingit who were pressing northwestward along the Gulf of Alaska to trade with the Athabaskans and Eyak-speakers, or to acquire new territories in which to settle. Although Lituya Bay in 1786 seems not to have been a permanent place of residence, it evidently received a more established settlement later, for the Denver Art Museum acquired the painted rear partition of a house, believed to have been at Lituya Bay. This screen, dating from about 1825, depicts the story of how Raven taught the people to catch and preserve fish (Malin and Feder, 1962, figs. 2, a, b). Such a screen could have come only from a permanent “named” lineage house. Perhaps some of those who once lived in this house are today represented by descendants at Yakutat.

Dixon (1787)

The first known exploration of Yakutat Bay was made in 1787 by Capt. George Dixon, commanding the Queen Charlotte, in the course of a voyage around the world with Capt. Nathaniel Portlock of the King George, in 1785–88.[35] Both Dixon and Portlock had served under Captain Cook, 1776–80. The expedition of 1785–88 was a commercial venture undertaken for the King George's Sound Company, formed in London by Richard Cadman Etches and other merchants for developing trade between the Northwest Coast, China, and Great Britain. Portlock and Dixon sailed from England in 1785, spent the following summer trading on Cook Inlet and fighting contrary winds along the Northwest Coast that prevented landing, and then wintered in the Hawaiian Islands. The following year, 1787, both vessels returned to Prince William Sound. Portlock in the King George remained for some time at Port Etches, sending his longboat on fur-trading expeditions as far as Cook Inlet, and then sailed down the coast, where, as already indicated, he met the Tlingit at Portlock Harbor on the west coast of Chichagof Island and also at Sitka Sound. He had not, however, sighted either the opening to Yakutat Bay or Cross Sound, and in late August left the Alaskan coast.

MAP 19.—Chart of Port Mulgrave as surveyed by Capt. George Dixon in 1787. (Beresford, 1789, opp. p. 70.)

Meanwhile, Dixon in the Queen Charlotte had preceded Portlock across the Gulf of Alaska, sighting “Kaye's Island” on May 15, and Mount Saint Elias on May 18. On May 22 he discovered an inlet which he determined to explore in the hope of finding natives with whom to trade. This was Yakutat Bay, which he entered the afternoon of the following day, after sending the whaleboat under the second mate, Mr. Turner, to find a suitable harbor. While the ship waited offshore they saw a single native fishing in a canoe at the mouth of the bay, and Mr. Turner reported not only a good harbor but “a multitude of inhabitants” (Dixon, 1789, p. 85). The wind failing, the ship was towed into the entrance of Monti Bay, where she anchored for the night in 65 fathoms of water over a muddy bottom, less than a mile from shore, apparently between the mouth of Ankau Creek and Point Turner on Khantaak Island.

“During the time we were warping into the bay, several canoes came along-side us, [writes Beresford, the supercargo on the Queen Charlotte]. We accosted the people with some of the words in use amongst the natives of Prince William's Sound, but they had not the least idea of their meaning: indeed it was pretty evident at first sight, that these people were a different nation, from the construction of their canoes, which were altogether of wood, neatly finished, and in shape not very much unlike our whaleboats.” [Beresford, 1789, p. 167.]

[Early next morning, May 24] “we saw a number of the natives on the beach, near the entrance of this creek [Ankau], making signals for us to come on shore: a smoke was also seen, which proceeded from behind some pines, at a small distance round the point.”

Mr. Turner was sent in the whaleboat to see whether this would be a convenient anchorage. “He found a number of inhabitants, and two or three temporary huts” (ibid., p. 167). According to Dixon's shorter version, edited by “C.L.” who seems to have been overfond of superlatives, there were “a great many Indians” urging the Europeans to come ashore, and at the village (on the northwest side of Ankau Creek, farther upstream than the present ANB Cemetery), “there were a great number of inhabitants, and some temporary huts” (Dixon, 1789, p. 85).

This settlement, as well as two on Khantaak Island, are clearly shown on Dixon's sketch map of “Port Mulgrave” (Beresford, 1789, opp. p. 170). Dixon, however, applied this name to the whole of what we now call Monti Bay and the sheltered waters behind Khantaak Island, whereas on modern charts “Port Mulgrave” is reserved for the small harbor on the island, between Point Turner and Pyramid Point and opposite the present site of the “Old Village” of Yakutat. It was here that the Queen Charlotte dropped anchor when Ankau Creek was found too small to accommodate her. Although Dixon adopted “Port Mulgrave” as the official name, he seems to have first used the expression “Foggy Harbour,” at least in reporting his discovery to Captain Colnett later that summer. Dixon gave the name “Admiralty Bay” to Yakutat Bay as a whole, and “Cape Phipps” to what we now call Phipps Peninsula, thereby honoring again Constantine John Phipps, Baron Mulgrave. A point on Khantaak Island honors his second mate, James Turner. Dixon also named Point Carew, the northernmost point of Phipps Peninsula.

The new anchorage in Port Mulgrave was “within pistol shot of the shore, and very near two large Indian huts” (Beresford, 1789, p. 168). These stood between the fresh water pond and the harbor beach, exactly where the village (S’ukA) was located in the 19th century, and where the old graveyard is now.

Trade promptly began with the inhabitants.

“The people seemed very well pleased at our arrival, and a number of them presently came alongside us. They soon understood what we wanted, and an old man brought us eight or ten excellent sea otter skins. This circumstance, together with our having as yet seen no beads, or other ornaments, or any iron implements, gave us reason to conclude, that no trading party had ever been here, and consequently that we should reap a plentiful harvest; but our conjectures on this head were built on a sandy foundation; for on a further acquaintance with our neighbours, they shewed us plenty of beads, and the same kind of knives and spears we had seen in Prince William's Sound; and as a melancholy proof that we only gleaned after more fortunate traders, what furs they brought to sell, exclusive of the small quantity just mentioned, were of a very inferior kind.” [Beresford, 1789, p. 168.]

The trade goods seen in Prince William Sound had been blue glass beads and Russian iron knives and weapons (ibid., p. 147).

Before we assume from this that the Russians or some other Europeans had already been to Yakutat Bay, we should consider the evidence offered by Portlock of intertribal trade between Prince William Sound and some region, or people, whom the Chugach called “Wallamute.” These were probably Eyak-speakers, who lived “considerably beyond Comptroller's Bay to the Eastward.” It was from the latter that had come garments of sea otter fur, not whole pelts such as the Chugach themselves marked specially for trade. Portlock was purchasing these garments in Prince William Sound from the Chugach at the same time that Dixon was discovering that the natives in Yakutat Bay had practically no furs to offer.

While we cannot know with certainty who the “Wallamute” were (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 357 and citations), it is intriguing to speculate that Portlock and Dixon may have been competing with each other for furs from the same source. Prince William Sound had become a center for trade; since the previous year it had been visited by Shelikhov's party on Montague Island, Lowry in the Captain Cook with Guise in the Experiment, Tipping in the Sea Otter, and Meares in the Nootka (the last wintered miserably in the sound), all eagerly seeking furs (Bancroft, 1886, pp. 259–262; de Laguna, 1956, p. 10). It must have been clear to the astute Eskimo, if they had not already learned from Cook in 1778, from the Spanish in 1779, and from the Russians in 1779, 1783–85, that there was an active demand for furs. These were sought by the Chugach in intertribal trade. We may assume, therefore, that European goods were moving eastward along the Gulf of Alaska to be bartered like slaves and native copper. I suggest that it was native middlemen who had anticipated Dixon. Moreover, the demeanor of the Yakutat natives did not suggest previous direct contact with Europeans, and Dixon himself believed that “we were the first discoverers of this harbour” (Beresford, 1789, p. 170).

While Dixon remained at Port Mulgrave, the ship was visited frequently by people from the village on Ankau Creek, “but they belonged to the same tribe with our neighbours, and possessed very few furs of any consequence” (Beresford, 1789, p. 168). Hoping to meet with more Indians, Dixon went out with the longboat to explore the nearby harbors, on July 1, the first day that the weather cleared, “taking with him one of the Indians who had frequently been on board, and who was a tolerably intelligent fellow, as a guide” (ibid., p. 169).

To judge by the chart, this exploration was confined to the sheltered waters behind Khantaak Island, up through Johnstone Passage, perhaps as far as Krutoi Island, a distance of about 10 nautical miles from the anchorage. On this short excursion, which lasted only from 10 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon, Dixon “found several huts scattered here and there, in various parts of the sound, but they were mostly inhabited by people whom we had already seen; and there was not a single skin of any value amongst them…” (ibid., p. 169). One of the settlements, according to the sketch chart, was on the west side of Johnstone Passage, about 3 nautical miles northeast of the village at Port Mulgrave; that is, it was on the eastern side of Khantaak Island, or rather on the unnamed island just to the east, which is separated from it only at high water. This may be what our informants called QadAk.

“The number of inhabitants contained in the whole sound, as near as I could calculate, amounted to about seventy, including women and children” (Beresford, 1789, p. 171), or “did not, perhaps, exceed seventy or eighty” (Dixon, 1789, p. 87), and their dwellings were judged to be merely temporary structures, the planks of which could be taken away in a canoe and erected in a different spot. In this, Dixon's observations coincide with those of LaPérouse in Lituya Bay. (For a description of the houses, see p. 311.)

Not far from Ankau Creek, and about 1 miles from the vessel (probably somewhere near Ankau Point and the modern cemetery), Dixon discovered a cemetery, apparently similar to the type of “morai” seen by LaPérouse. (The descriptions are quoted on p. 539.)

Dixon often went ashore to shoot wild ducks and geese, “which not only proved an excellent treat for us, but at the same time gave the Indians such an idea of fire-arms, that their behaviour was perfectly quiet and inoffensive, and they never attempted to molest us” (Beresford, 1789, p. 171).

On one occasion the whaleboat was sent with seven hands to fish for halibut just outside Point Carew, where the natives were then fishing and where they still fish today. The Englishmen found that “their success was greatly inferior to that of two Indians, who were fishing at the same time, which is rather extraordinary, if we consider the apparent inferiority of their tackle to our‘s.” Beresford then goes on to describe the Tlingit halibut hook and method of fishing (quoted on p. 391), concluding: “Thus were we fairly beat at our own weapons, and the natives constantly bringing us plenty of fish, our boat was never sent on this business afterwards” (ibid., pp 174–175). Halibut was bought from the natives for “beads and small toes” (ibid., p. 173).

“Toes” were iron adzes (cf. Krause, 1959, p. 19, note 36). “Toes were the article of trade held in the first estimation here, and next to these, pewter basons were best liked.”

“Beads served to purchase pieces of skins that were of little value; but the deep blue, and small green, were the only sorts that would be taken in barter” (Beresford, 1789, pp. 176–177). It was found that to offer any great variety of articles only confused the natives and made the transactions even slower than usual.

Dixon was disappointed in securing only “about sixteen good sea otter skins, two fine cloaks of the earless marmot, a few racoons, and a parcel of very inferior pieces and slips of beaver” (ibid., p. 169). Beresford hazards that the “marmot cloaks were procured by these people from some neighbouring tribe” (ibid., p. 176). It took, however, about 10 days, or until June 3, before

“we found the natives scanty stock of furs not only exhausted, but that they had stripped themselves almost naked, to spin out their trade as far as possible. This tedious delay was occasioned by the slow, deliberate manner in which these people conduct their traffic. Four or six people come alongside in a canoe, and wait perhaps an hour before they give the least intimation of having any thing to sell; they then, by significant shrugs and gestures, hint at having brought something valuable to dispose of, and wish to see what will be given in exchange, even before their commodity is exposed to view, for they are particularly careful in concealing every thing they bring to sell. Should this manoeuvre not succeed, after much deliberation, their cargo is produced, and generally consists of a few trifling pieces of old sea otter skins, and even then, a considerable time is taken up before the bargain is concluded; so that a whole day would frequently be spent in picking up a few trifles. Such, however, was our present situation, in regard to trade, that we patiently submitted to the tantalizing method of these people, in hopes that something better might possibly be brought us; but finding they were stripped almost naked, and not the most distant probability of any better success, Captain Dixon determined to leave this place the first opportunity.” [Ibid., pp. 169–170.] [He sailed the next day.]

These delaying tactics, which irritated the English, were of advantage to the natives because they served to keep in port the interesting strangers who constituted a market for halibut. These were not only good bargaining tactics, but were enjoyed by the natives, since the Yakutat find pleasurable the actual handling of wealth. Moreover, holding back items and stealthy peeking at goods to be offered in trade were characteristic of the Southern Tutchone Athabaskans with whom the Chilkat Tlingit traded (Olson, 1936, p. 213), and we might assume that this behavior would be equally characteristic of the Tlingit themselves, or of the Tlingitized Yakutat, if the situation were reversed and wealthy strangers came to visit them. However, we should note the contrast in speed of trading displayed by the Tlingit of Sitka (“Norfolk”) Sound, whom the Queen Charlotte visited later in June (Beresford, 1789, p. 182).

The information in Beresford's report is insufficient to show whether the natives in Yakutat Bay were Tlingit in 1787, although it is clear that much of their culture was Tlingit. They understood neither the words of Tanaina a Athabaskan nor of Chugach Eskimo, which the English had picked up in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound, but seem to have replied in a different language, about which we are told nothing except that “it appears barbarous, uncouth, and difficult to pronounce: they frequently used the word Amcou, which signifies a Friend, or Chief [’ànqáwu, ‘chief, rich man,’ evidently used flatteringly], and their numerals reckon to ten; but I was not able to procure any farther specimen of their language, as they are very close and uncommunicative in their dispositions” (ibid., p. 172). In referring to the language heard at Sitka Sound, Beresford observes that “I have some reason to think it is nearly the same with that at Port Mulgrave” (ibid., p. 191), but unfortunately we are not offered a comparative vocabulary.

In comparing the Yakutat natives with the Tlingit of Sitka, Beresford found that the latter “seemed far more lively and alert than those we had left at Port Mulgrave” (ibid., p. 181). Although at first civil enough, they soon showed themselves ready to pick pockets and to steal, and “indeed they could scarcely be restrained from these proceedings without violence” (ibid., p. 184). This was not a charge made against the natives of Yakutat. “These people [Sitka Tlingit] in their make, shape, and features, are pretty much the same with those we saw in Port Mulgrave;” and in many particulars had the same customs (ibid., p. 186). Yet, “The manners and disposition of the people here, approach nearer to those in Cook's River, and Prince William's Sound, than our friends in Port Mulgrave; but this may, perhaps, in some measure, be accounted for from their enlarged society, and their constant intercourse with each other” (ibid., p. 187). We should add that the Sitkan method of trading was as ceremoniously carried out as at Lituya Bay, and that each chief managed or controlled all the transactions of his people, taking “infinite pains to dispose of their furs advantageously” (ibid.). This type of organized trade had not been noted at Yakutat, although Malaspina was to experience something of it (see p. 143).

My impression is that the Yakutat Indians described by Beresford were already largely Tlingit, but not completely so. Their behavior suggests more the subdued and amiable Athabaskans than the self-confident Tlingit. They had not yet been completely “organized” to trade, an innovation ascribed by my informants to the great atgawet, a wealthy shaman of Tongass extraction (see p. 245). That the Yakutat could speak Tlingit but were rather reluctant to give a vocabulary, suggests a little linguistic insecurity, and reminds us of the reactions of Dr. McClellan's Southern Tutchone, who knew that their old Athabaskan words were no longer “correct,” but who were also acutely aware that their Tlingit was faulty. However, we should not attempt to make too much of this last point, since Beresford was notoriously unsuccessful in learning any Haida, his efforts to pronounce words in that language being greeted with a “sarcastic laugh” or “silent contempt” by the Queen Charlotte Islanders. Although he describes the latter as “never of a communicative disposition” (ibid., p. 227), Beresford himself may have been particularly gauche or antagonizing.

In addition to giving some ethnological details about the Yakutat Indians, Beresford describes their appearance as follows:

“…they in general are about the middle size, their limbs straight and well shaped, but like the rest of the inhabitants we have seen on the coast, are particularly fond of painting their faces with a variety of colours, so that it is no easy matter to discover their real complexion; however, we prevailed on one woman, by persuasion, and a trifling present, to wash her face and hands, and the alteration it made in her appearance absolutely surprised us; her countenance had all the chearful glow of an English milkmaid; and the healthy red which flushed her cheek, was even beautifully contrasted with the whiteness of her neck; her eyes were black and sparkling; her eye-brows the same colour, and most beautifully arched; her forehead so remarkably clear, that the translucent veins were seen meandering even in their minutest branches—in short, she was what would be reckoned handsome even in England: but this symmetry of features is entirely destroyed by a custom extremely singular, and what we had never met with before, neither do I recollect having seen it mentioned by any Voyagers whatever.” [Ibid., pp. 171–172.]

Alas, the lovely lady wore a large labret! (For a description, see p. 434.)

This woman's lip ornament is distinctively Tlingit, rather than Eyak or Athabaskan. As far as archeological evidence would indicate, it was absent from Yakutat in late prehistoric times (de Laguna et al, 1964, pp. 163–164). Abercrombie (1900, p. 394) in 1884 recognized the labret as alien to Yakutat, although he erred in stating that it was never worn. It is probably significant that Beresford noted that this ornament was not worn by all the women at Port Mulgrave, “but only those who appeared in a superior station to the rest” (Beresford, 1789, p. 172). Is this evidence that would confirm Yakutat traditions that their chiefs sought brides of suitably high rank among the Tlingit? (see p. 233).

After leaving Yakutat on June 4, Dixon sailed straight out into the Gulf, then turned almost due east to strike the coast at what he called “Norfolk Sound” (Sitka Sound). After trading here he sailed again June 23, and reached “Queen Charlotte's Islands” before the end of the month, naming these islands after his ship, and the channel north of them after himself. After successful trading at various points on the west coast, he rounded their southern end and explored Hecate Strait as far as “Cape Darymple” on Banks Island. Then he turned toward Nootka Sound, off which, as we shall see, he met Capt. James Colnett, the next explorer of Yakutat Bay.

Colnett (1788)

In the summer of 1788, three separate expeditions were to come to the Yakutat Bay area, the first two following each other closely into the bay, but failing to meet. The third stopped briefly only on the coast near Dry Bay.

The first of these voyagers was Capt. James Colnett, in the ship Prince of Wales, acting for the King George's Sound Company.[36] Colnett had been a midshipman on Cook's second voyage, and a lieutenant on his third. As he himself wrote in 1798 (pp. I–II), he had been “engaged in various commercial undertakings on the North-West Coast of America, during a period of seven years…” and had “…searched the coast from 36° to 60° North, the inland part of which was before little known to European navigators.” His expedition in 1789 to found a colony in Nootka Sound is the most famous, for there he and his ship were seized by the Spanish, who claimed this important center of the sea otter fur trade for the crown of Spain. Colnett and his men were held prisoners for 13 months, and he was not able to return to England until 1792. It was this high-handed action of the Spanish that precipitated the so-called “Nootka Controversy” between Spain and Great Britain, which, as we know, resulted in the abandonment of all Spanish claims to the Northwest Coast (Bancroft, 1884, vol. 1, pp. 204–283; Wagner, 1937, vol. 1, pp. 210, 216).

Colnett's voyage of October 16, 1786, to November 7, 1888, is far less well known, largely because his journal has never been published. Excerpts from the Crown-copyright manuscript in the Public Record Office, London, are quoted below by the kind permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.

On this expedition, Captain Colnett in the Prince of Wales had been accompanied from England by Captain Duncan in the sloop Princess Royal. Both vessels were owned by the same company that had dispatched Portlock and Dixon the previous year. Among the important persons on board the Prince of Wales was Lieut. James Johnstone, Colnett's first officer, and Archibald Menzies, the Scottish botanist, acting as medical officer. Both of them were later to sail with Captain Vancouver to the Northwest Coast in 1790–95, revisiting many of the localities they had explored with Colnett. The supercargo of the Prince of Wales was John Etches, brother of the owner.

As Dixon neared Nootka Sound in late August 1787, he met the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal leaving this port, and as Beresford (1789, p. 230) writes: “We learned, to our great joy, that they were from London, and fitted out by our Owners.”

The ships exchanged information about the coasts they had visited and their varying successes in the fur trade at different places. John Etches told Beresford (ibid., p. 231) “that they had been near a month in King George's [Nootka] Sound, but had done very little business, having found a ship there called the Imperial Eagle, commanded by a Captain Berkley,” who had apparently arrived just in time to spoil their trade, for this captain boasted of all the furs he had obtained. Nootka was at that time the center for sea otter, and already was being stripped of these animals. (Cf. Wagner, 1937, vol. 1, pp. 206 f., for all the traders there, 1785–86).

“Our meeting with these vessels was very fortunate, both on their account and our own, What we learnt from them rendered it entirely useless for us to make King George's Sound, and Prince William's Sound being their next destination, we not only could inform them that nothing could be expected from that quarter,” but urged “our new brothers in trade” to “make the N.E. side of Queen Charlotte's Islands, and the opposite land, which we judged to be the main” (Beresford, 1789, pp. 233–234).

After Colnett and Duncan had spent all night aboard the Queen Charlotte, “procuring a chart of the coast” (ibid., p. 234) on which Dixon had marked all his discoveries, the latter sailed directly for the Hawaian Islands, where he was to meet Portlock. Apparently the Prince of Wales and Princess Royal took his advice and went to the east coast of the Queen Charlotte's and the mainland opposite. I do not know what other localities they may have visited, since the summaries I have consulted differed, and I have not read that part of Colnett's journal. Duncan explored this area the following summer so there is confusion between the discoveries of the two seasons.

At any event, after presumably wintering in the Hawaiian Islands, the two ships returned to the Northwest Coast, Duncan in the Princess Royal to trade in British Columbia waters as far south as the Strait of Juan de Fuca. He rejoined Colnett in the Hawaiian Islands, and both ships proceeded to China. From here, Duncan with his ship, and the Prince of Wales with Menzies, under the command of Lieutenant Johnstone, sailed for England, where they arrived in July 1789. Captain Colnett, however, remained in China to organize the expedition to Nootka Sound which ended so disastrously for him.

After parting with Duncan in the spring of 1788, Colnett had sailed into Prince William Sound, where he remained from April 26 to May 24, trading with the natives in various localities, including the Green Islands and Port Etches. From the latter place the supercargo tried twice to go to Controller Bay, but succeeded only in circumnavigating Hinchinbrook Island. While at Port Etches, John Etches and a John Hutchins carved their names and the date, May 9, 1788, on a tree where it was seen shortly afterward by Captain Douglas in the Iphigenia (Meares, 1790, p. 316). About May 22, Colnett moved the Prince of Wales to Captain Cook's Snug Corner Cove, farther up the sound, where he traded with a number of natives, including one who called himself “Portlock.”

Colnett's manuscript, especially the portion dealing with Prince William Sound and the neighborhood, contains some excellent descriptions of places and people, and some neat sketches, although the latter are unfortunately in faint pencil. Some of his sketch maps are fairly good, but on others the distances are exaggerated, or important features, the Copper River, for example, are omitted. He furthermore often neglects to note the latitude and longitude of his position. A minor difficulty in understanding his manuscript is due to his use of commas instead of periods, and to his failure to capitalize the first letter of a new sentence. These I have in some cases supplied, and to make reading easier I have also broken the almost continuous text into paragraphs.

On May 24, Captain Colnett sailed for “Foggy Harbour,” as he called Yakutat Bay. “Portlock,” the Indian, at his request was taken for a short distance down the coast, being put off in his boat somewhere off the Copper River. The supercargo went in a boat into Controller Bay from the west, while the Prince of Wales stood into the eastern entrance to pick him up. The weather was bad and the ship had to seek shelter behind Cape Suckling. There is no mention of natives here, and Colnett did not like the place. “I might have anchored off Cape Suckling,” he writes, “& searched for a port but as circumstances were at present no time on my side was to be lost to prevent the Natives of Foggy Harbour disposing of their skins to the Russians as I was informed they had the year before.” Information about Yakutat Bay had been obtained from Dixon.

By May 31, Colnett was off the entrance to “Foggy Harbour” where he waited until June 3, until the longboat returned. The latter had been all the way to Cape Fairweather but had failed to find the harbor marked on their chart. The only one resembling it was the harbor on the east side of “Beering's [Yakutat] Bay,” where they now anchored. According to Colnett's sketch chart and description of the place, his anchorage was just inside the northeast point (Strawberry Point) of Khantaak Island, opposite the channel between Otmeloi and Kriwoi Islands, not at Dixon's anchorage. “Foggy Harbour” was so called by Dixon, Colnett reports, but is not as far east as Dixon put it. It is situated among many islands, the “Foggy Isles,” on the east side of a deep bay that runs in toward the northeast, with Mount Saint Elias to the west. “Should suppose it is Bearing's Bay.” Colnett's map and description of Khantaak Island and of the shelter behind it are a little more complete and accurate than Dixon's although Colnett remained in Yakutat Bay only until June 9.

Colnett was disappointed in trading.

“Several Indians came on board with nothing but old skins. Several signified that they had had two ships lately among them & purchased all they had, & that the Crews and Commanders wore large caps & were remarkably stout. Some canoes that the long boat fell in with to the westward gave them the same information.”

What were these ships? Do the reports refer to Dixon's Queen Charlotte the year before and, if so, what was the second ship? We have no records of any other visits to Yakutat. Colnett assumes that the ships had called there, but might not the Yakutat natives have encountered them in Prince William Sound?

Colnett determined to leave, even though the Indians seemed to promise that much would soon be forthcoming in the way of trade, for he felt that he had already been in “Foggy Harbour” long enough for them to have brought out any skins they might have. Colnett seems to have been rather tolerant of their pilfering, contrasting them with the Chugach whom he had already described as “much addicted to thieving & very artful in their dealing [,] seldom selling their Furs till they had found means to steal something.”

[As to the Yakutat natives:] “Their wishing one to remain might be only a decoy to give them an opportunity to thieve[.] They did not seem so great adepts at it, as our former acquaintances on this coast [Chugach], but we soon grew familiar to them, & they could not divest themselves of the natural failing of all Indians to take what ever they fancied & opportunity offered.

“[No para.] This was the case of an Indian that stole the sailmaker's fishing line & he too rashly caught up a musket & shot the man, but it was done with a degree of cruelty, for he fired twice [.] I was not on deck myself or would have endeavoured to prevent it, & those whose business it was in my absence, looked on with greatest unconcern; a few canoes remained along side some time afterwards but next morning only one was seen…

“…Before leaving the Port the leading man of the canoe that remained with us had a helmet Cap given him.”

[Some of Colnett's observations about Yakutat are shrewd and illuminating:]

“If I might Judge of the inhabitants from the number I saw there were not above 200; I think their residence is farther to the Southward and Eastward and [they are] only here at certain seasons of the year to hunt, fish, and trade. We learnt of the natives here & at Prince William Sound that they traded with each other, each remarking & with a degree of contempt, the Cut lips of the men to the North [where Chugach men wore labrets] & the large Mouth pieces of the Women to the South [presumably at Yakutat]. All the European articles I saw was a file with Hunsberg [?] on, & a pair of Russian or Dutch scissors. They shewed us very little Iron, but from the familiar method of receiving us, should suppose European visitors were common.

“[No para.] At this place appears to commence a different nation from those reside to the North. Besides the difference of the sex in wearing the lip pieces, their Canoes are all of wood & of an opposite Built, & three or four kinds of them; & I believe belong to different tribes, as there was a variation also in their languages, several counting numbers not with the same name & when ask’d where resided pointed different ways.”

[Unfortunately no vocabularies are given. Although these observations suggest the mingling of Tlingit and Eyak-speakers, the multiplicity of canoe types is characteristic of Yakutat (see p. 330):]

“…one kind of their canoes resembled a neat built ship, Galley fashion thus—[sketch] and may hold three or four men, the most seen in them there. Others resembled a half Moses dug out of a Log. The two larger kind [:] one Charlotte Isles built [,] the other like a Butchers tray cut out of a solid piece of timber carrying from 20 to 30 people [.] Their Baggage [,] women and children are transported in those [,] I suppose in inland navigation for they seem’d greatly alarm’d at the gentlest breeze when any dist. from the shore. [Cf. fig. 25, p. 335.]

“[No para.] The Women and men in persons & Customs resemble those of the Charlotte Isles but their language had not the least similarity. Habitations I saw none, but the remains of some Huts on several parts of the Shore [:] temporary dwellings & summer residence.”

Colnett seems to have liked Yakutat, for he writes of it:

“On the whole the pleasantest place I had met with on the coast. The shores in every part were full of Currants, Gooseberries, Strawberries, Rasberries, apple Trees, & wild peas all in bloom, & the natives till the man was shot, brought salmon & Halibut. I saw no fresh water, but have not the least doubt there was plenty on the High land to the North.”

He appends sketches of the lowland at the entrance to “Foggy Harbour” and of Mount Saint Elias as seen from the anchorage.

The Prince of Wales sailed from “Foggy Harbour” on June 9. That day, when about 9 leagues (27 nautical miles) offshore,[37]

“the Officer of the Watch informed me a Boat was coming off with a Flag. For a long time took it for a Russian launch, but on drawing near prov’d to be a Canoe with three sticks up as masts[;] on two of them were tails of large birds hanging by a string & on the middle stick a strip of skin.”

The hoisting of a tuft of white feathers on the end of a long pole, which looked like a white flag at a distance, seems to have been a Tlingit “emblem of peace and friendship,” an invitation to trade, which Beresford (1789, p. 180) had described at Sitka Sound the previous year.

Colnett continues:

“Some few skins and pieces were bought off them, & another soon joined us; in both were 30 men[,] women & children; one of the men had his dress trim’d with Chinese money, & also shewed a piece of new striped Flannel. At midnight they left us.”

This encounter presumably took place somewhere off the shore between Ocean Cape and Situk River.

The next morning, June 10, the breeze freshened from the west,

“but a large smoak being observ’d on a beach, shortened sail & hauled in for it, at the same time a Canoe was observ’d pulling after us with a piece of skin on a staff, hove too; two Canoes Join’d & some skins & pieces were purchased…. ”

This second encounter was probably somewhere offshore between Situk and Ahrnklin Rivers, since his observations at noon would put him off the mouth of Ahrnklin River or Dangerous River, from which position he sketched what appears to be Yakutat Glacier, as seen above the lagoon at the mouth of the river.

However, we cannot be sure, for he makes an obscure reference to the bluff at Cape Suckling. Colnett seems to have tacked about, apparently at one time sailing toward Icy Bay, for he notes that Mount Saint Elias towers to a great height and looks conical. In any case, he must have resumed his voyage toward the southeast, for on the night of June 11, he found an anchorage in latitude 58°30′, 4 or 5 leagues (12 or 13 nautical miles) from Cape Fairweather. This position is impossible, for Cape Fairweather is in latitude 58°48′, which means that Colnett had either miscalculated his position by 3′ or had underestimated the distance. However, as Dall (Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 202) has warned, Harbor Point, the southeast entrance to Lituya Bay, when seen from the south or southeast, “is very likely to be mistaken for Cape Fairweather.” If Colnett did make this mistake, a distance of 12 nautical miles southeast along the coast from Harbor Point would bring him to a possible anchorage at about the correct latitude.

As the ship was procceding southeastward down the coast, a little after noon the next day,

“a Canoe was observ’d pulling after us…with a skin on a pole. Brought too. On their Joining us had not the least Inclination to trade requesting us to return back to the westward. At this time a point to the Eastwrd making like an inlet & some smoak on it, hoisted the Boat out & the 2nd mate went to examine it. At 8 the Boat returned reporting the place to be a small Bay of 3 fs [fathoms] of water but unsafe to stop in, so much Ice coming down from a run of water above it. At this place was a house & garden neatly fenced in, & European plants growing [!], but only saw 8 women, a lad & a boy. A skin & a piece was procured from them. This Bay is six or 7 leagues from Cape Fairweather.”

Where was this place? A distance of 7 leagues or 21 nautical miles from Harbor Point at Lituya Bay would be about a mile from Icy Point, behind or east of which lies Palma Bay with several sheltered coves. We know from Goldschmidt and Haas (1946, p. 95) that, in later days, the DAdentan from Hoonah used to have a place called Ganexa, east of Icy Point, perhaps at the Kaknau Creek of modern charts.

More puzzling than the locality visited, is the mention of the fenced garden and European plants. Fencing might be an aborginal trait, since the cemetery near Ankau Point was described by Beresford (1789, p. 175) as marked by “a number of white rails,” constructed with order and regularity, a description which might apply to a fence. However, Malaspina, Suría, and LaPérouse make no mention of fences at the cemeteries on Yakutat and Lituya Bays, and Suría does not include them in his paintings of the cemetery at Ankau Point. But the “European plants” defy interpretation, and unfortunately there is no indication that Menzies saw them. Could Colnett's mate have seen native tobacco? This seems to have been cultivated by the Tlingit, and was noted at Yakutat by Dixon. It is hardly credible that the Tlingit should already have acquired other domesticated plants, since the Russians had not yet attempted to introduce them into Alaska.

When the ship's boat returned from this mysterious bay, it was found that “nothing would entice the canoe along side to trade. After detaining us 8 Hours took from them two Skins & some strips & paid them double what we gave in fair Barter & they left us perfectly satisfied.”

The ship stood along the shore until “Cape Fairweather” or Harbor Point was judged to be some 7 to 10 leagues distant, and later, that night(?), a fire was seen a little to the west of the bay in which the boat had landed.

Early the following morning a canoe again came off, from which another skin and one or two garments were purchased. The ship was estimated to be in latitude 58°20′ N., with the little bay bearing N22W, 8 miles distant, with Mount Fairweather on the same bearing. If these observations are accurate, the little bay with the fenced garden would have been on the north or northwest shore of Palma Bay.

By June 13, Colnett came in sight of Cross Sound; he saw a smoke and was joined by three canoes, which, however, had only three poor skins to trade. Portlock and Dixon had warned him that he would get little here. From another canoe he obtained two or three more furs. Then he sailed on to Sitka Sound, observing:

“The Natives also very friendly. Not a canoe came along side but invited us in to their dwelling promising plenty to eat, & that our canoe would be sheltered from wind & sea. Not that we understood a syllable of their language, but we had now so long been conversing by signs & tokens that after gaining a little knowledge of their language found we had seldom been mistaken.”

It is a pity that Captain Colnett with his apparent liking for the country and the natives did not leave us a fuller description of what he saw.

Ismailov and Bocharov (1788)

About 2 weeks after Colnett had left Port Etches in May 1788, the Russian galliot Trekh Sviatiteli (Three Saints) entered it, and was to follow close behind the Prince of Wales to Yakutat and beyond.

It will be remembered that Shelikhov had been anxious to establish posts in Prince William Sound, Cook Inlet, and on other parts of the Alaskan mainland, including the Gulf Coast. Although Shelikhov had returned to Siberia, Eustrate Delarov had been left behind at Kodiak to carry out the former's plans. Furthermore, Gov. I. Yakoby of Irkutsk had sent secret instructions on June 21, 1787, to Shelikhov, Samoilov, and Delarov, that the agents of the company should bury tablets claiming the land for Russia, especially at places where prior European vessels had obtained rich hauls of fur. “These tablets were supposed to be buried so ’that not only were the native inhabitants not to see them, but they were also to be hidden from every one of our Russian workers, so that, by keeping this secret, the inhabitants might be prevented from guessing that the tablets were placed there in the present time’” (Okun, 1951, pp. 14–15, from Tikhmenev, 1863, Suppl.). Accordingly the naval pilots Ismailov and Bocharov were sent from Kodiak in May 1788, to explore the coasts of Alaska and to claim such areas for the Tsarina's crown. In addition to these two naval officers, the expedition consisted of 40 Russians and at least 6 Koniag interpreters. The report of their explorations was included in Shelikhov's account of his own voyage to America.[38]

In Prince William Sound the Russians learned through their interpreters that the Chugach “enter into alliances with the Kinaizi [Tanaina Athabaskans of Cook Inlet], to the west, and on the east with the Ugalak mutes” (Coxe, 1803, p. 312). After a brush with the Chugach on Middleton Island, where the Russians lost one of the men whom they had captured in Prince William Sound but seized another, the Russians sailed for Kayak Island, where they anchored on June 2 [Julian calendar], again only a few days behind Colnett. “We were informed by the islander [Chugach] who accompained us that it was not inhabited [according to Shelikhov in Coxe, 1803, pp. 316–317]; but was occasionally frequented by the Tchugatski, and Ugalak mutes, for the purpose of hunting sea-others.” Apparently the ship rounded the southern point of the island and came up toward Cape Suckling, where their captive “pointed out a small rivulet, which is frequented by the Ugalak mutes, [but] it had no protection from the sea.” (Ibid., pp. 317–318.)

From the third to the seventh, the Russians with their interpreters in skin baidars explored the marshy coast, finding two small rivers and a larger one. This river is described as flowing with moderate descent from the northeast, with a higher ridge of mountains to the right; it is 200 fathoms wide at the mouth, with small wooded islands to the right, and a rocky neck of land on the left. Since the river was blocked by ice that was just beginning to thaw, the Russians walked up the bank about 3 versts (about 2 miles), “observed a hut covered with the bark of trees, and the marks of human feet; but no inhabitants. Near this river dwell the Ugalak mutes, who are at enmity with the neighbouring Koliuski” (ibid., p. 320). Is this Bering River in Controller Bay, or possibly Kaliakh or Duktoth River near Cape Yakataga? The second and larger of the two small streams had two mouths and a depth of only one-half of a fathom at low tide. The Russians rowed up it for a distance of 2 versts (about 1 miles), where they “observed recent marks of human feet, and others which resembled those of a dog.” On the shore of the bay they also saw footprints (ibid., p. 319). Since the Eyak inhabitants of this area were evidently avoiding the Russians, information about them and about their relationship with the Tlingit(?) of Yakutat Bay(?) could only have come from the Chugach hostage.

After leaving this river, the ship sailed southeast along the shore, sighting the mouth of Yakutat Bay on June 10, but was prevented from entering by adverse winds. The following morning, two Russians and six Koniags went in four baidarkas to explore the bay, while the galliot stood in toward land with a light breeze. The baidarkas returned before noon, shortly followed by two large wooden canoes; in the middle of each canoe was stood a pole to which sea otter skins were fastened. The description of these canoes, with their high, perforated prows (pp. 333–334), matches those sketched by LaPérouse's expedition in Lituya Bay.

“Each baidar [i.e., dugout] contained fifteen men, some of whom were clad in the skins of sea-otters, sables, martens, marmots, and gluttons [wolverines]. Some were dressed in European cloths and linens, particularly a thin green kind of serge, and variegated printed linens. On approaching the ship, they pointed to the bay which lay close to the little islands. As no one could understand their language, it was conjectured they advised us to enter the bay; a rope was accordingly thrown out, which they eagerly laid hold of, and began to tow to the vessel. For the purpose of assisting them, we hoisted out a baidar, taking the precaution to furnish the sailors with arms; in about an hour some natives came from the shore in two other baidars, and joined in towing. [Ibid., pp. 322–323.]

[So the ship was brought into the bay and then into a little harbor on the east side, where she anchored in 10 fathoms close to the shore, and opposite some native habitations. But since this anchorage (in Monti Bay?) was not considered safe enough,] “we towed the ship into an adjacent harbour smaller, but more secure, called in the language of the country Yakutat; on the 12th at four in the morning, we anchored in twelve fathom on a muddy bottom [in Port Mulgrave?].

“During our stay in these parts we carried on a friendly traffic with the natives.” [Ibid., p. 323.]

[The Russians found that:] “The greater part of the inhabitants had quitted their winter huts, and for the purpose of procuring provisions, were gone out in canoes and boats, which resemble those used at Kamtchatka [i.e., dugouts]. These people bear the name of Koliuski [Kolosh], and fix their dwellings on the banks of the different rivers.” [Ibid., p. 324.] [Presumably this refers to the Ankau and to other streams southeast of Yakutat Bay where the winter villages were located.]

In order to secure good water, the ship was moved farther to the northeast, “between the islands and the continent” where a suitable brook was found nearby (ibid., p. 325).

Yakutat Bay is described as “frozen later than the end of July,” which must surely refer to reports of Disenchantment Bay, or perhaps of visits to it by baidarka; for it is later stated that: “In every part of this bay of Yakutat, the air in fine weather is warm, and it is much sheltered by the forests.” The many fur-bearing animals, as well as all kinds of marine animals, land and sea birds, and “abundance of salmon,” are noted (ibid., p. 325).

In addition to brief descriptions of houses, boats, weapons, and native dress, we are told that: “The native Koliuski are in stature not short; they are in general like the Konaghi [Koniag] of a brown complexion; a few only are fair” (ibid.).

The extent of trade with Yakutat was also judged:

“In time of peace they traffic to the east with the Tschitskanies, [[39]] and to the west with the Ugalak mutes [Eyak], and the Tschugatski [Chugach], and since 1786, with European navigators. [[40]] They eagerly purchase different sorts of clothing, iron, kettles, and stills [Destillierblasen, Pallas, 1793, vol. 6, p. 231]. But they are not so eager for beads and the like. They daily flocked to the ship in large and small baidars with their wives and children, and offered for sale the skins and tails of sea-otters and beavers, garments made of different skins, [[41]] woolen clothes of their own manufacture [Chilkat-blanket type garments], and purses made of grass and the filaments of roots. They required in return for their own garments, different sorts of nankeen, linen and other shirts, and stills; for the other skins and articles, ear-rings of blue and red coral, and blue beads. As there were no settled rules for trade, they were extremely covetous in bartering, and peremptorily insisted on an additional present in every exchange. We saw in their possession several hatchets, which from their shape, we supposed to be procured from some European ship; and the natives said that in the spring of the year 1788, a three-masted vessel had anchored near the island, not far from the bay, and that one of the natives who visited the ship had been shot with a pistol.” [Coxe, 1803, p. 328.]

The distilling apparatus was presumably desired for its metal, probably its copper tubing; manufacture of liquor was not to be attempted by the Tlingit for almost one hundred years!

The natives were, of course, telling about the shooting of an Indian by one of Colnett's men. It will be remembered that Colnett has quitted Yakutat Bay on June 9 (Gregorian calendar), about 2 weeks before the Russians entered, thinking that the natives had no more skins to trade. The latter were probably not deceiving him when they indicated that they would soon have something fine to offer, either from new hunts or from more distant villages, unless the Russians exaggerated what they were able to obtain.

The Russians also noted that some of the Indians were wearing “caps, like those of the grenadiers, with brass ornaments which they procure from Europeans,” and also reported some amulets of iron, “resembling the heads of crows, with copper eyes” (Coxe, 1803, pp. 326, 327).

At Yakutat the Russians purchased two 12-year old slave boys. One was a Koniag who had been captured at Kodiak by the Cook Inlet Tanaina, sold to the Chugach, who in turn had sold him to the Eyak, and the last to the Yakutat. His name was “Noyak-Köin” (“Nojak-Koin,” Pallas, 1793, vol. 6, p. 232), and he became valuable to the Russians because he spoke both Kodiak Eskimo and “Koliuski” (Yakutat). “The price of his purchase was four pounds and a quarter of iron, a large coral, and three strings of beads, and he was employed as an interpreter” (Coxe, 1803, p. 329).

The other boy was “Nachu-Seynatzk” (probably Nausenats, although I cannot identify the name), “a native Tschitskan [who] understood the Tschitskan [Sitkan] and Koliuski languages…. ” By this it is implied that the “Koliuski” of Yakutat was either a non-Tlingit language, or a dialect of Tlingit, different from that spoken at Sitka. This boy “was extremely useful in pointing out many rivers on the American coast, and particularly the Bay Ltoua [Lituya].” He was exchanged for the Russian's Chugach hostage, who had been so prostrated with seasickness that he willingly left the ship (ibid.).

“In addition to his purchases he [Ismailov] obtained a large number of skins from his Kadiak hunters, who in their bidarkas could go far out to sea, where the open wooden canoes of the Thlinkeets did not dare to follow. In order to draw attention from this rivalry ceremonious visits and exchange of presents were kept up.” [Bancroft, 1886, p. 269.]

This last refers to the meeting of the Russians with an important Chilkat chief who had come to Yakutat to trade. Perhaps the wealth of furs secured by the Russians had been gathered in anticipation of this chief's visit. The Russians supposed the latter to be the paramount chief of the Yakutat area. As they had gathered from the local natives:

“Besides an inferior Toion [chief], they are all subject to a superior Toion, who is called Ilchak. We were informed by the natives that this Toion, with one hundred and fifty of his subjects, exclusive of children, visited this place in baidars [presumably dugouts]. He has two sons, whose names are Nekchut and Chink, and his principal residence is on the coast to the south east, much farther than the great river Tschitskat.[[42]] It borders on the frontiers of the people called Tschitskanes, who, like the Koliuski, are at enmity among themselves, and often assault each other. This Toion rules over all the Koliuski, who inhabit the coast, as far as the bay of Yakutat, which is the last place in his dominions.” [Coxe, 1803, pp. 324–325.]

“Ilchak,” whom the Russians erroneously supposed to be the ruler of Yakutat, was actually Yełak, the leading chief of the Raven anAtedi sib at the Chilkat town, Klukwan. In a Sitka version of the QakewtE story (Swanton, 1909, Tale 32, pp. 161–165), Yełak and his sib become embroiled with the Raven Tł’UknaAdi sib of the Yakutat-Dry Bay and Cross Sound areas. The latter sent a war party to Klukwan, where Yełak lost his life in the fighting. Emmons (1916, p. 15) translates the name “Ilk-hak or Yehlh-kok” as “Raven fragrance or smell,” and states that this is an ancient and honorable appelation among the anAtedi. In 1885 a man of this name seems to have been chief of the famous Whale House at Klukwan. One of our informants, who was a very small child in the 1880′s, remembers that her Teqwedi grandfather at Yakutat used to trade with this chief. Swanton in 1904 recorded at Sitka an account of a potlatch given at Klukwan by Yełak and another chief, to which the Sitka Kagwantan were invited (Swanton, 1908, pp. 438–443).

The Chilkat chief in the QakewtE story, who may well be the actual “Ilchak” whom the Russians met, was the son-in-law of an important Tł’UknaAdi shaman, Yeł-tłen, “Big Raven.” According to my Yakutat informants, who also know the story (p. 274) but who are inclined to connect the war party with the swamping of canoes in Lituya Bay, Yeł-tłen was a shaman who lived at Gue on the Akwe River. His daughter, who married Yełak, was probably a Teqewdi woman, for her sons, “Nekchut” (Neut) and “Chink” (En), had Teqwedi names that are well known at Yakutat. The first was the honorable name of William Milton (1888–1950), and the second that of a man who died between 1910 and 1920.

The great chief, Yełak, whom the Russians met, only seemed to rule at Yakutat because of the tremendous prestige accorded any chief of the powerful and aristocratic anAtedi sib and because of the domineering superiority which the skillful Chilkat traders were able to attain over the less sophisticated Athabaskan, Eyak, and Interior Tlingit, with whom they traded. Even Swanton's storyteller at Wrangell, Katishan, chief of the Kasaguedi sib, reports that Yeł-tłen, on receiving a gift of tobacco from his Chilkat son-in-law, said: “’Chilkat is a respectable place. A lot of respectable people live there. They are so good that they give food even to the people that were going to fight them’” (Swanton, 1909, p. 162). This surely indicates something of their reputation. The same impression of Chilkat wealth and prestige is conveyed in a story told by a Sitka Kagwantan man in which a man on the way to Klukwan is warned: “’It is a notable town. A man has to be careful what he does there or he will suffer a great shame’”; and in the same story, a visitor from Chilkat to the Hoonah town of Grouse Fort is said to be so wealthy that people were afraid of him (Swanton, 1909, Tale 28, p. 71).

On June 15, then, this great chief, Yełak, came to the Russian ship, acompanied by a native artist. He was entertained in the cabin, and insisted upon being told all about the royal portraits hanging there. “Although we had already given the Toion and his subjects an account of these august personages, we again gratified his wishes” (Coxe, 1803, p. 330). The Russians, by their own account, certainly lost no opportunity to emphasize the benevolence and might of the Imperial rule, and gave the chief one of the copper coats-of-arms with which the expedition had been provided, in order to claim land for Russia. The chief “was requested to wear it upon the fore-part of his garment, and it would serve as a mark of fidelity, and protect his subjects against all foreign ships” (ibid. p. 331). The chief is reported to have listened to the discourse on Russian rule “with veneration and astonishment,” and “received the coat of arms with extreme joy” (ibid., pp. 330, 331). The next day he returned with two elders, proudly wearing the emblem on his robe of sea otter, this time to request one of the portraits. On the engraving of the Grand Duke Paul, which was given to the chief, the Russians wrote the following message:

“In June, 1788, the Factor of the company of Golokof and Schelekof, the pilots Gerassim Ismaelof, and Dmitri Betscharof, of the galliot the Holy Fathers, with forty men, being in the bay of Yakutat, carried on a considerable traffic with the Toion Ilchack and his subjects the Koliuski, and finally received them under the protection of the Russian Empire. As a memorial of these events, we gave the said Toion a Russian coat of arms, on copper, and this engraving of his Imperial Highness the successor to the Russian throne. Orders are hereby given to all Russian and foreign ships sailing to this place to treat this Toion with cordiality and friendship, without omitting the necessary precautions: the said pilots who anchored here in the galliot from the 11th to the 21st of June, experienced from the Toion and his people, the most friendly behaviour.” [Coxe, 1803, pp. 331–332.]

It is not clear, however, how the date of their departure from Yakutat could have been written on a picture given away on June 16!

To make doubly sure of Russian claims over the area, a copper plate (Number 9) was buried on June 18 near the mouth of the bay, apparently close to Ankau Creek. According to Bancroft (1886, p. 269, n. 30): “Two years later not a trace could be found of the portraits, medal, or copper plates…. ”

Although the chief had received the portrait “with extreme satisfaction, and as customary, with an extatic shriek,” giving in return, “an iron image of a crow's head, which he considered as sacred; a bag woven from grass, and striped with various colours; six sea-otter shirts, also a leathern and [a] wooden table [tablets; zwey Tafeln, Pallas, 1793, vol. 6, p. 236] which were painted with diverse colours, and inlaid with stones,” it is very doubtful that the worthy chief made these gifts “as proof of his subjection to Russia [!]” (Coxe, 1803, p. 332).

The Russians sailed on June 21, apparently driven by the wind back toward the west, but hoping to be able to secure some fresh fish from the river which 18 days before had been choked with ice. However, since they found no secure anchorage here they turned eastward again, passing Yakutat Bay on June 28. Natives came out in three canoes, evidently mistaking the Russian ship for another vessel, for when they discovered her identity, they returned to shore.

The Russians sailed on along the low, sandy coast, passing the Antlin (Ahrnklin) River, and anchoring the next night to explore the Ralcho or Kalkhu (Italio), where they saw footsteps but no inhabitants, The next morning they passed the Alzec or Altsekh (Alsek River), “with a little island on the east side [Bear Island], and sand-banks at the mouth” (Coxe, 1803, p. 336). An onshore wind prevented them from entering Dry Bay, although they were confident that it was frequented by the “Koliuski.” Later that morning they passed the Rakan-in or Kakan In (K’ágÀn hini?, which “flows under the northeast side of a cape, and is also frequented by the Koliuski.” Beyond this, “the coast was no longer flat or sandy” (ibid.), and since it was about 17 miles northeast of Lituya Bay, I suspect the stream was that just north of Cape Fairweather, where Waterfall House was built, or else the stream northwest of that (see p. 91).

On July 1, the Tlingit slave boy pointed out the mouth of Lituya Bay, “which he informed us contained many fish, and in which a large ship had not long ago anchored” (ibid.). After some Koniags in baidars lashed together, and later Ismailov and 15 men in a large baidar had explored the opening, the ship finally entered the bay on July 5.

At first the Russians anchored, as LaPérouse had done, on a rocky bottom too close to the mouth, then “towed the ship farther into the bay towards a little island, where two years before, according to the information of the Koliuski boy, a foreign ship had anchored.” Some 5 hours later they were visited by the Tlingit, who came in “three baidars, and other small boats” (ibid., p. 338).

The chief was “Taiknuck Tachtuiack,” or “Taik-nuch-Tachtujach” (Pallas, 1793, vol. 6, p. 243), who came accompanied by two elders. He asked, through the interpreter, whence the strangers had come, and was given the same kind of speeches and Russian coat-of-arms that had been given to Yełak. It is reported that this chief, too,

“in the most solemn manner, expressed his full reliance on the protection of the Russians, and his resolution of perservering in his friendly behaviour…. From these circumstances he conceived such an exalted idea of the Russian power, that he not only received the gift with the highest degree of veneration; but presented nine sea-otter skins, and six seaotter mantles, and requested that they might be forwarded to the all-powerful Empress, as proof of his gratitude and zeal.

“We then traded with the natives, and exchanged for their skins and furs [beaver, sea otter, wolverine, and “sable,” (Pallas, 1793, vol. 6, p. 244)], iron-kettles, clothes, and beads. In the afternoon they returned in their baidars to their dwelling-place, which was situated about a verst and a half [1 mile] from the ship. These habitations were temporary summer huts, while they were employed in procuring fish and other provisions. Their winter habitations were situated on the banks of a small river which falls into the sea, at the distance of about five versts and a half. [Here the] dwellings were much larger than the summer huts.” [The mouth of the stream, the Huagin River?, was so blocked by rocks that even the baidarkas had difficulty in entering (Coxe, 1803, pp. 339–340).]

The Russians learned through their Sitkan slave boy that the previous summer a large ship and been in the bay but had lost her anchor, which the natives had hauled out at low water. The chief, “Taiknuck,” had the anchor brought to the Russians, who found that it weighed 780 pounds although the ring and flukes were broken off. The identity of the ship is unknown, although Coxe (1803, p. 340 n.) erroneously supposed it to have been Portlock's!

Again, as at Yakutat, the Russians buried another copper coat-of-arms on the shore of the bay, near Cenotaph Island, and the next day, July 6, after anchoring nearer the mouth of the bay, erected a wooden cross on the cliff above the eastern shore. Because of the bad weather, the galliot had to put out two small anchors, one of which, weighing 144 pounds, the natives stole during the night. As a gesture toward regaining it, the Russians sent some men in a baidar toward the shore; but the latter prudently did not attempt to land until morning, and then searched only along the beach and in the woods, where, of course, the anchor was not to be found. “…and as we did not chuse to complain either of the Toion or his subjects, no further search was made” (Coxe, 1803, p. 342).

It had been observed or concluded that although the natives of Lituya Bay had their own chiefs, they were believed to be all subject to Yełak, and it was noted that their manners and customs were similar to those of the Yakutat natives.

Since scurvy had begun to appear, the Russians sailed on July 9, reaching Kodiak on July 15.

Bancroft (1886, pp. 269, 270, note 31) has stressed that Ismailov's journal has not a word about Dixon's previous visit to Yakutat, although he must have heard of it (as he had evidently heard about Colnett‘s), and that Ismailov also fails to mention the monument left by LaPérouse at Lituya Bay, which indeed, he may actually have destroyed. At Lituya Bay, “many tools and implements [were] marked with the royal fleur de lis. A small anchor similarly marked was secured.” Bancroft suggests that these omissions probably reflect the secret instructions which Ismailov had received, “…for even business letters from the [A]eutian] islands to Siberia were in those days frequently tampered with by the authorities of Okhotsk and Kamchatka, and it was to the interest of Shelikof and his partners to have English claims to prior occupation ignored.”

The official reports sent to the Empress by Ivan A. Phil (or Pil), Governor-General of Irkutsk, on February 13 and 14,1790, about the explorations of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, are of interest in this connection. The discoveries of Ismailov and Bocharov are thus listed:

“Yakutat Bay. This is inhabited by the Koloshes who border the Chitskanes. In view of the fact that they have been induced to assume a peaceable attitude towards the Russians, a board was left there, which is designated on the map by the letter ‘F,’ also one emblem and, for special reasons, one portrait. The toyon of the place, in token of his submission to Russia, brought over a few articles. Considerable trade was carried on here, and in [1]788 a three-masted foreign vessel was anchored in the harbor. In the coastland opposite there are the following rivers: the Antlin, Kalkhu, Altsekh, and Kakan In.

“Litua Bay. It is inhabited by the Koloshes who have been brought under domination. One emblem and one board, number 19, were left there. The toyon, as a token of his loyalty, made a gift of one sea-otter. All these islands and bays, as well as those not enumerated here but mentioned in the first memorandum abound in timber and other resources. As for the inhabitants, they have already become more attached to the Russian traders than to the foreigners who used to visit them.” [Andreyev, 1952, p. 117.]

[These same documents stress the friendliness of the natives and their devotion to the Russian crown:]

“The Koloshes and Chitskanes, who inhabit these parts [Yakutat and Lituya Bays], have been conquored by no one and, in their ignorance, have not been aroused to oppose your subjects. In spite of everything, even of opposition to their savagery, they all with one mind, as a result of the affable attitide towards them on the part of the Company, came not only to understand the grandure of Your Empire but to give themselves up into complete obedience to it.

“In conclusion it may also be mentioned that the two emblems with the proper inducements and inscriptions which the authorities had given them stimulated in them a sincere spirit of submissiveness and a readiness to accept anything proposed to them on the part of Your subjects…. Their frankness and their peaceable disposition exceed, it seems to me, the very bounds of probability, inasmuch as, without fear to speak out plainly, they regarded it as their direct obligation to satisfy Your subjects as to their condition and the contacts and trade relations they had had with other foreign vessels that had visited them.” [Ibid., pp. 99–100.]

We can be certain that none of the Indians or their chiefs believed that they were pledging submission to the Tsarina or to the Shelikhov-Golikov Company. The Tlingit had no conception resembling that of the Russians concerning the relationship between “rulers” and “subjects.” They were familiar with that between owner and slave, but no free man became a slave unless he were captured in war, or might be forced through starvation to surrender his freedom in return for food. Certainly Yełak of the Chilkat and “Taiknuck” at Lituya Bay were doing nothing of the kind. From their point of view they were conducting a profitable trade with due ceremonial procedure. Conceivably, they thought of the Tsarina and Tsarovich as new trade partners! One also wonders whether the copper coats-of-arms so carefully buried by the Russians and evidently later dug up by the natives were considered by the latter to be some kind of “copper,” like those given and received at potlatches. One might even speculate that these medals and emblems might have furnished a prototype for the native ’tInná.’

While it is clear that the Russian reports do not accurately reflect their dealings with the natives, it is not so obvious that these accounts are throughout consciously warped to deceive the Imperial authorities, as Bancroft suggests. The documents are certainly worded to create as favorable an impression as possible, since Shelikhov was then working hard, through his friend, Governor-General Phil, to secure an Imperial trade monopoly. However, there is additional, subconscious double-talk here, a statement of what the Company would like to believe was the truth, and perhaps did come to believe: that the natives had voluntarily submitted to Russian rule. For if this were true, then any resistence in the future would be not only ingratitude, but rebellion and treason, justifying any suppressive measures that might be expedient. This view of the situation, as characteristic of Russian official thinking today as it was in the 18th century, must be kept in mind in considerating the activities of the Russian American Company and the fate of its colony at Yakutat.

We have no further direct reports of Russian expeditions to the Gulf of Alaska and Yakutat Bay until Lieutenant Puget met Purtov with a baidarka fleet there in June 1794. Nevertheless, it is clear from the account of this meeting, as reported by Vancouver, as well as from reports of Baranov and Purtov, published by Tikhmenev, that the Shelikhov-Golikov Company had dispatched at least one expedition to Yakutat in 1793, and possibly the rival Lebedev Company, which had a post at Nuchek in Prince William Sound, may also have gone into the Gulf of Alaska. We cannot, however, trust the statements about voyages and posts which either of these Russian companies made to each other or to foreigners, for their agents did not hesitate to lie to outsiders about the extent of their operations in order to frighten off or discourage competition. This policy is made clear by the misleading reports of Delarov to the Spanish explorers, Martinez and Haro, in 1788 (Bancroft, 1886, pp. 271–273). Purtov also claimed to Captain James from Boston, whom he met in Prince William Sound in 1793, that “our stations extended from Kadiak to Ltua Bay” (letter of Baranov to Shelikhov, July 24, 1793, in Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 44). The next summer Purtov himself was to discover that the Lebedev agent had apparently exaggerated to him the extent of that company's operations (see Purtov's letter, August 9, 1794, in Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 61). Thus we do not know what faith to put in Purtov's statement to Lieutenant Puget in 1794 that hunters of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company had been taking sea otters on the “Pamplona Shoal,” somewhere off the coast near Cape Yakataga.

Douglas (1788)

The Trekh Sviatiteli had barely returned to Kodiak Island, when Capt. William Douglas, in the Iphigenia Nubiana, sighted Mount Saint Elias on August 2, 1788 (Meares, 1790, pp. 287 ff.; Wagner, 1937, vol. 1, p. 210; Bancroft, 1886,p.267). Douglas, like Capt. John Meares in the Felice Adventurer, had sailed from China in January of that year on a fur-trading venture for the “Merchant Proprietors,” an association of British businessmen in India and Canton. They sailed under the Portuguese flag in order to circumvent the monopolies of the East India and South Sea Companies. (The following year their company was to merge with the King George's Sound Company in the undertaking which involved Colnett in trouble at Nootka.)

In the summer of 1788, before joining Meares at Nootka, Douglas had visited Prince William Sound, where he had seen the inscription left by Colnett's supercargo at Port Etches. From here he sailed southeastward to visit the Yakutat Bay area, August 2 to 5. According to Russell (1891 b, p. 62), he actually anchored inside Yakutat Bay, but I can find no evidence that he saw Yakutat Bay at all. The weather on August 2 was cloudy; Mount Saint Elias and the shore were not uncovered until the ship had already passed the mouth of the bay and seems to have been about 23 nautical miles south of Ocean Cape (Meares, 1790, p. 321).

[The next morning, August 3], “the jollyboat was dispatched, with orders to proceed within a mile of the shore, to examine if there was any appearance of inhabitants; and about noon she returned, in company with a large canoe, containing about thirty Indians. [The ship now anchored in 27 fathoms], and purchased of the natives several cotsacks or dresses of sea otter skins, and a pair of gloves of the same. The extremities of land, when at anchor, bore from West North West, to East by South half South distant four or five miles. The observed latitude was 59°10′ North, and the longitude 221°27′ East [i.e. 138°46′ west of Greenwich]. [Meares, 1790, pp. 321–322.] [This suggests a position off the coast between the mouth of the Ustay-Akwe River and Dry Bay.]

“Early next morning the people returned, as the sailors observed, with all their old cloaths, as the cotsacks they now offered for sale had been much worn: these articles, however, were purchased, with a quantity of salmon; and at nine o’clock they weighed anchor and proceeded along the shore [by noon reaching a position south of Dry Bay]. The place where the ship lay was called Tianna's Bay, in honour of the chief [a Polynesian from Hawaii]; he was indeed much dissatisfied with the present climate, against the cold of which he could not protect himself, though he had as much cloathing on him as he could well carry, and was become very impatient to return to Owhyhee.” [Meares, 1790, p. 322.]

According to Dall and Baker, (1883, p. 206 and accompanying chart; cf. also Davidson, 1869, p. 136), “Tianna Road,” later changed to “Diana Roads,” is the shoal water off the mouth of the Ahrnklin and Dangerous Rivers.

From this place, Douglas had no further encounters with the natives until he reached Cape Cross on Yacobi Island, south of Cross Sound, where he records how a spirited Tlingit woman, apparently of high rank, beat into submission a male chief (of lesser rank?) who interfered with her trading activities. In fact, she supervised all the transactions of the natives.

It will have been noted that a number of visitors to Yakutat and Lituya Bays have understood the natives to report the calls of vessels of which we have no record. As Fleurieu wrote in 1797 (1801, vol. 1, p. cxlvii):

“It is probable that the ship-owners of the UNITED STATES, excited and encouraged by their government, have multiplied their expeditions to the NORTH-WEST coast of AMERICA; but no printed account has been made known to EUROPE the voyages that they have undertaken. Hitherto, the Americans act more than they write; let us wish, for the tranquility of the world and the happiness of the human race, that the faculty of communicating our thoughts from pole to pole may ever be in their hands only a means of uniting and enlightening mankind, and that they may, at no time, abuse it for the purpose of agitating passions and overthrowing empires.”

Malaspina (1791)

Although the Spanish had dispatched a number of exploratory expeditions to the Northwest Coast between 1780 and 1790, for the purpose of claiming lands before the British could do so, none of these touched at Yakutat, even though several went to southeastern Alaska or to Prince William Sound (Wagner, 1937, vol. 1, pp. 202–205, 215–222).

However, the Spanish government, since 1783, had been undertaking a program of scientific exploration to improve their hydrographic charts, and in 1788, Alejandro Malaspina, an Italian, and José Bustamente y Guerra, both commanders in the Spanish Navy, proposed an elaborate plan for a voyage around the world which was to include a scientific investigation of the Northwest Coast.[43] Among the objectives were to be the collection of “curiosities,” i.e., geological, biological, and ethnological specimens for the Royal Cabinet, and these scientific investigations were to be carried out by naturalists, map makers, and artists. These plans, which remind us of the orders given to LaPérouse, were approved and two new corvettes built. The best chronometers were secured for determining longitude, and Malaspina collected all available reports of earlier explorers, although he apparently did not get the best maps. Among those on board whose work is of most interest to us was Tadeo Haenke, a noted German botanist, and Tomás de Suría, the artist, whose pictures and journal give us so much information about Yakutat.

Malaspina was also enjoined to investigate the claims made by Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado that he had discovered the Northwest Passage in 1588, claims which Philippe Buache had resurrected and supported in an address to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, November 1790 (Navarrete and Navarrete, 1849, esp. pp. 228–250). It was these instructions which led Malaspina to investigate Yakutat Bay.

Malaspina was ordered also to make a study of the social, political, and economic conditions of the Spanish colonies to be visited on his voyage. According to Wagner (1937, vol. 1, p. 226), Malaspina was “imbued with the doctrines of Rousseau,” and although these were popular in Europe, Malaspina was far too ready “to reform everything and everybody,” so that “to turn him loose in such closed possessions as the Spanish colonies was to invite disaster.” It is no surprise, therefore, that on his return to Spain he became involved in a court intrigue and incurred the enmity of Minister Godoy. As a result, he was thrown into prison, where he remained for 6 years, until Napoleon secured his release; moreover, all those who were writing reports of the scientific results of his expedition were ordered to abandon their work, and all of this material remained unpublished for many years. A summary of his voyage in which only the names of the vessels, not of their captains, were mentioned appeared in 1802, together with three of his charts (Navarrete in Galiano, 1802, and Atlas). A great deal of material relative to this voyage (journals, notes, drawings, maps) still remains unpublished in the Museo Naval at Madrid. I am indebted to Prof. Luis Pericot Garcia of the University of Barcelona, as well as to the authorities of the Museo Naval, for copies of many of the pictures drawn at Yakutat by Tomás de Suría; the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, has also furnished me with copies of some.[44]

The two corvettes, Descubierta (Discovery) under Malaspina and the Atrevida (Daring) commanded by Bustamente, finally sailed from Acapulco May 1, 1791, and on June 23 sighted Cape Edgecumbe, but did not stop here. Next day the Spaniards were gazing in admiration at the beauties of Mount Fairweather and the adjacent Gulf Coast. By noon of June 26, they were off what Cook had designated as Bering's Bay (i.e., Dry Bay), and approached the shore where several lights could be seen among the trees. The following day, June 27, they sailed to within 2 miles of the beach, from which position they saw the mountains back of “Bering's Bay,” which proved that there could be no Northwest Passage here, and also noted the isolated little mountain or hill, which from a distance could be mistaken for an island (Bear Island in Dry Bay).

MAP 20.—Route of Malaspina's explorations, 1791. (Russell, 1891, pl. 5.)

From here they followed the low land to the northwestward, rounding Point Carew into Yakutat Bay, still early in the morning of June 27. They examined carefully the entrance to Port Mulgrave, but the opening in the mountains at the head of the bay suggested the Northwest Passage as Maldonado had described it, so they steered for it, carefully sounding all the way. Malaspina named Point Munoz on Khantaak Island, and noted the lowlands on both sides of the bay and the foul ground off Khantaak Island. However, when barely off Knight Island, about 9 nautical miles below Point Latouche, where Maldonado's passage seemed to begin, they turned back to secure a safe anchorage. It was already apparent from the weak tides that there could be no Northwest Passage here; nevertheless, Malaspina decided to stay in Port Mulgrave to take on wood and water, while the longboats explored the head of Yakutat Bay.

The ships apparently rounded the north end of Khantaak Island, discovering a small bay blocked by many islands (Colnett's anchorage?), and began to tack down the outer coast of Khantaak Island in order to enter Monti Bay. Here they encountered the natives.

“In a little while we saw coming towards us at great speed two canoes of Indians which shortly arrived alongside. The first view, when they were near, was one of great astonishment, both for the Indians and for us; for the Indians because they did not cease looking at the ships, although they advised us and we soon verified it, that these were not the first that they had seen; for us, because such strange and marvelous subjects presented themselves to our sight. [And Suría goes on to describe the wild appearance of the skin-clad, painted men (see pp. 434–435).] As soon as they were close to the ladder all except the steersman stood up, and at the sound of a stentorian and frightful voice which the ugliest one, who was in the center, uttered, they all extended their hands together in the form of a cross…” [and began to sing what was evidently a song of peace and friendship (Wagner, 1936, pp. 247–248)].

[According to Malaspina, the ships were approached by two large canoes and a small one, which was evidently a two-hole baidarka.] “Almost at the same time that we had determined to tack and steer for anchor, both large canoes immediately came alongside the corvettes, but not without some show of fear. They followed entirely the orders or advice of a venerable old man who, in the small canoe, ranged now to the one, now to the other side, and who gave every indication of being the chief of the little tribe.” [Malaspina, 1885, p. 155.]

[After an exchange of friendly signs, the natives were invited on board, but the chief posted one of his sons in each canoe before he boarded the Atrevida (ibid., p. 346).] “We received them kindly at first with sea biscuits, salt pork, and tallow, and later acceeded to their insistance that as many of our men descend to the canoes as hostages as the number of them who came on board. In this fashion they were soon convinced of the safety of our peaceful intent, and since we did not neglect at the same time to give some trinkets to those who had first come aboard, after half an hour hostages were no longer necessary, nor was there need to urge them on our part, the more so, since one could see in almost all of them a great propensity to slip below decks, no doubt with a mind to steal some or other of the trinkets which were on hand.

“They continued on board until afternoon; in all their actions they manifested a lively and happy spirit. Since our troups and seamen did not hesitate to give away a good part of their rations and clothing, much importuning was necessary to get them into their canoe and get it away from the side of our ship,” [since it was likely to be damaged when the ship tacked.] [Malaspina, 1885, pp. 155–146.]

Apparently the canoes followed the ships all afternoon, the occupants “always singing songs which, although harsh on account of the pronunciation, were not very disagreeable,” while the chief in his baidarka acted as song leader (Wagner, 1936, p. 248).

Finally, the corvettes beat their way around Point Turner and anchored in 12 fathoms, mud bottom, in front of “an islet rancheria,” not more than a cable‘s length or pistol shot from shore. This was evidently in Port Mulgrave, in front of the same native settlement that Dixon had visited. Suría found the bay “very beautiful, all surrounded with various rocky islands, covered with big pine forests which present a very beautiful view” (ibid., p. 248). Even while the vessels were coming into the harbor, “ many canoes came out to meet us, repeating several times the hymn of peace, at other times a general harmonious call apparently of invitation or admiration, and offering for trade more salmon and wooden artifacts than sea otter [“nutria”] pelts which could yield a considerable value. Silently and not without fear, they admired our lowering of the smaller boats, particularly the launch, into the water” (Malaspina, 1885, p. 156). Now, at 9 p.m., the natives and Spaniards took leave of each other with further signs of friendship.

MAP 21.—Port Mulgrave as surveyed by Malaspina in 1791. (Galiano, 1802, map 8. Courtesy Bancroft Library, Univ. California, Berkeley.)

The welcome of the corvettes in Port Mulgrave by the native canoes is depicted by Suría in a hitherto unpublished sketch in the Museo Naval (pl. 40).

Malaspina was delighted with the anchorage, not only for the sake of his ships, but because:

“the natives were near at hand and numerous enough to study their customs without suspicion or molestation, and water, wood, ballast, fish, and vegetation, everything we needed, was so close at hand that to bring them on board could hardly be called a bother. [Malaspina, 1885, p. 156.]

“The village [on Khantaak Island] west of the anchorage consisted of six or seven hovels, carelessly constructed of a few props covered with boards so poorly arranged that wind and water were admitted to the interior. But at the same time that, we remarked this slovenliness in the construction of the huts, we noted the care with which their canoes were made and the trouble they suffered from the rain and cold, which made us believe that they possessed other habitations more sheltered from the winter.” [Malaspina, 1849, p. 248.]

The settlement seemed to be inhabited by about 80 persons, the rest of the tribe being scattered about on the surrounding islands.

The next morning Malaspina went on shore with an escort of officers, soldiers and armed sailors, and was received with the sign for peace and loud songs. The chief pointed out a source of fresh water, and an Indian, “one of the agreeable ones who had been on board since early morning,” served as a guide, going first to a nearby place which proved to be short on water (the pond on Khantaak Island?), then to the beach opposite, to the southeast (head of Monti Bay), where plentiful springs were found. Near here, the officers of the watering party also visited a hut which the guide indicated was his own. Here, “natural curiosity and admiration paid tribute to the nudity, filth and intimacy in which lived two wives and a number of children, as well as to the ornaments, clothes, foods, and utensils found there” (Malaspina, 1885, p. 157). The officers seem to have taken every opportunity of winning the friendship of the natives, learning the most useful words, and becoming acquainted with their customs.

Since early morning many natives had been on board the corvettes, offering some skins, many fresh salmon, and several wooden utensils, in exchange for clothing and iron.

“These were the only things they seemed really to yearn for, but they would accept all kinds of buttons, nails, and miscellaneous pieces of hardware. [Although Malaspina tried to curb the familiarity between the natives and the crew, this proved impossible once trading had started.] As we judged from the eagerness of the participants, it might be inferred that our sailors could no more live without grabbing everything that they saw, than the natives without the cloth and iron for which they panted with so much reason.

“The tricks used by the natives in their trading or bargaining have been very well described by Captain Dixon: They not only keep hidden the goods which they intend to trade, but also never act with greater indifference than at these times. After a delay, often of over an hour, in which they remain calm in the sight of the many objects presented to them, they finally uncover a strip of skin, or a doll, or a spoon, or some other bagatelle, offering to trade it for everything they see. If they cannot appeal to the quality of the object, they appeal to its size and symmetry. Even after trade is agreed upon, the bargain may be rescinded. Finally, if there is some really fine skin among the things they bring, they will show it with so much mystery, put it back again right away, and show it again later, that they excite in the most indifferent mind a singular mixture of vexation and fancy, difficult to subordinate to the expression of interest alone.

“One does not observe among them the least rivalry, either in buying or selling. Rather, all interests are united with admirable unanimity; they either consult among themselves to confirm the trade, or if they arrive at confirmation, they applaud it with one, two, or three unanimous exclamations, depending on whether they think the exchange has been more or less advantageous.” [Malaspina, 1885, pp. 156–157.]

An individual would cheer when he had made a profitable bargain, and the whole group would shout “Wo!” which was believed to legalize the transaction.

The Spaniards acquired for the Royal Cabinet a complete collection of native manufactures, including arms, hunting and fishing gear, domestic utensils, and some examples of weaving. This list included: figurines, wooden spoons, boxes, gaming sticks, waterproof cooking baskets, well-balanced stone hatchets and hammers, daggers, bows and arrows, wooden armor, and a blanket woven of “pine” (cedar) bark and trimmed with sea otter fur.[45] As soon as they discovered the market for such articles, the Indian men and women began to make them for trade. They were particularly anxious to acquire warm clothing, in contrast to articles of adornment, while axes were the most desired of iron tools. The rate of one nail per salmon was established and maintained as long as the corvettes remained at Yakutat. This was not so much because nails were desired as because salmon were plentiful, Malaspina believed, for he reports that at first “the older son of the Ankau responded to this proposition by seizing a handful of nails and flinging them to the ground” (Malaspina, 1885, p. 348).

On June 29, the observatory for checking the ships’ position was put ashore.

“The Indians continued to be very sociable and in return for clothes buttons, which they hang as pendants from their ears, gave us some rich, fresh salmon, at the rate of one for a button. The fish in the north is the most delicate thing which can be imagined. We could never satisfy ourselves with it notwithstanding that we ate an abundance of it. [This trading continued until July 2, with little to disturb it, but skins could be obtained only at great cost,] as there were some of the crew who for a third of one skin dressed an Indian from head to foot.” [Wagner, 1936, p. 249.]

Even beginning with the first day of their arrival, the Indians hospitably pressed upon the Spaniards the use of some women. At first the Europeans were uncertain that they had correctly interpreted the meaning of the signs, and decided to investigate.

“Consequently, when directed by two youths who were repeating with a mysterious air the now familiar cry of ‘Shoüt’ [càwÁt ’woman’], we approached some trees near the huts. Then any doubts were easily dispelled, for immediately four or five women appeared at the foot of the tree, partially covered with sea wolf [fur seal] skins, and at once obedient to the wishes of practically the whole tribe who seemed unanimously intent on prostituting them…[The women] certainly had a horrible appearance, and the considerable amount of grease and filth with which they were covered gave off an indescribably awful stench.” [Malaspina, 1885, p. 157.]

These women seemed terrorized and oppressed, and Malaspina concluded that they were slaves.

Despite these friendly suggestions, Malaspina ordered armed vigilance at all hours, and the use of passwords at night to prevent a surprise attack. To avoid provoking any unfortunate incident, he prohibited any contact between the enlisted men and the women and children in the huts, while generous gifts were continually made to the Indians. On their part, the latter were unwilling to let one of their numbers accompany the Spaniards unless the Europeans left a, man with the Indians until the party returned (Malaspina, 1849, pp. 280–281; 1885, p. 157).

The ordinary natives at Yakutat are described by Suría as:

“of medium stature but robust and strong. Their physiognomy has some resemblance to that of all Indians, except that their eyes are very far apart and are long and full. The face is more round than long, although from the cheeks, which are very bulging, to the chin it is somewhat more pointed. Their eyes are sparkling and alive, although always manifesting a wild and untamed air, a consequence of the methods by which they are brought up. They have little beard although there is no general rule about this as I have seen some wdth a very full one. This and the hair of their head is so very thick that it looks like the mane of a horse. The women have the same facial characteristics and if it was not for the red ochre and black soot which they put on some of them would not be very ugly although in general I would not venture to say that they were good looking.

“All of them, men and women, generally speaking, have something of Chinese features.” [Wagner, 1936, p. 253.]

The Spaniards were particularly impressed with the local chief, or “Ankau,” whose title Malaspina used in naming Ankau Creek. His name is rendered as “Juné,” “Junué,” or “Junuelo,” and the Spaniards ascribed to him greater powers than he actually possessed and also a wider dominion, since they called the tribe “Tejunés,” or “Tejunué,” which is equivelent to “Juné's People” (Navarrete in Galiano, 1802, pp. cxvi, cxvii; Malaspina, 1849, p. 285; 1885, pp. 345, 350).

The chief's name, which might be rendered as Hune or Xune, reminds us of the name of a Tł’UknaAdi chief, one (“Q!on’”), of Gue on the Akwe River.[46] He appears in the Sitka story of the war between the Tł’UknaAdi and the Chilkat anAtedi, in which Ismailov's Yełak was killed (Swanton, 1909, Tale 32, pp. 160–165). In this version, the Kagwantan of Grouse Fort on Icy Strait had been entertained at a potlatch by the anAtedi of Klukwan. Some of Tł’UknaAdi who had accompanied their Kagwantan brothers-in-law to Klukwan made a Raven Hat of their own, on which the figure of a Raven, with copper beak, wings, and tail, pecked at a copper plate. one wore this Raven Hat to a feast at Grouse Fort, where he and his clansmen spoke very disparagingly of the anAtedi, and to prove their own superiority, gave to their Kagwantan hosts the copper wings and plate from the Raven Hat. It was news of this insult which led to war between the rival Raven sibs. Yełak is said to have been killed by a Tł’UknaAdi man whose spear points were made of drift iron, and who wore a helmet representing the Monster Rat that lives under “the mountain Was!ī’c,” i.e., Mount Saint Elias. This episode is given in some detail, because Malaspina's chief seems to have been involved in a war.

The “Ankau” had first been entertained on the Atrevida, then requested permission to come aboard the Descubierta, where he was understood to offer lasting friendship to Malaspina. Suría has given us his portrait (pls. 44, 45), which Malaspina pronounced an excellent likeness, and also the following description:

“The chief was an old, venerable and ferocious looking man with a very long gray beard, in pyramidal form, his hair flaccid and loose on his shoulders. False hair over it in various locks, without any order or arrangement, made him look like a monster. A large lion skin [Alaskan brown bear, according to Wagner] for a cape was gathered in at the waist and left entirely bare his breast, arms, thighs, and endowments, very muscular and strong. All gave him a somewhat majestic air, which he manifested by speaking but little, measuredly, and with a sound which at times seemed to be the bellow of a bull. At other times it was softer and in speaking to his sons it was sweeter than in conversation. [Wagner, 1936, p. 249.] [Malaspina found his presence worthy of respect, because of his age, stature, and vigor (Malaspina, 1885, p. 157).]

[The chief was accompanied on board by two men, whom the Spaniards assumed were his sons. The elder was] “very ferocious and gigantic…[and] more than two yards tall, equally stout and muscular. He had his hair loose which, on account of its thickness, seemed like a horse's mane. It was very black like that of his beard. He was dressed in a black bear skin and very hairy, also in the form of a cloak which he fastened with some ornament, leaving bare at times all his nakedness, and passing to and fro over the quarterdeck, very proud and straight, his look full of ire, arrogant, and condescending.” [Wagner, 1936, p. 249.]

It is this man whom his father left in charge of the trading, and who preferred European clothing to anything else (Malaspina, 1885, p. 157). Suría also sketched him (pls. 46–48).

The chief and his son explained by gestures that they had been visited by other ships. But what was puzzling was the chief's attempts to tell the story of some recent war. Malaspina understood him to mean that their enemies had been armed with six muskets, and that after some had been killed on both sides, the others had asked for peace. What caused the greatest confusion, however, was the impression that the enemy had a man on horseback. To demonstrate this, the chief called his son and put him in a quadrupedal position, to show that the enemy was mounted. Such was Malaspina's interpretation (ibid., pp. 157, 345–346). Suría gives a briefer but more convincing account that:

“What we could draw from all their signs was that a short time before they had fought some other cacique who had killed the son of their chief. They showed us his helmet which was of a figure, and an extraordinary construction of wood, copper, and of straw cloth, and with a mask in front which appeared to be a wolf” (Wagner, 1936, p. 249). It is further described as having three rings on top made of thin copperplate (Malaspina, 1885, p. 158). The “straw cloth” is, of course, spruce root basketry.

The chief had been so pleased with his own portrait that he requested that Suría make a picture of this helmet also, since it had been taken from the enemy chief. Although credited to Josef Cardero, who was never at Yakutat, the Museo Naval has what must be this picture (pl. 58). It is a helmet, or crest hat,[47] surmounted by three basketry and three copper(?) rings, decorated with what appear to be copper winglike plates at the sides, and with tufts of hair, even at the top, where the Tlingit hat of this kind usually flaunts a panache of ermine skins. It is impossible to tell what crest is represented by the carved and painted design: a Wolf, as Suría's description suggests, or possibly a Monster Rat or even a Raven, to fit Swanton's legend.

Since we can be sure that no horse was on the coast of Alaska at this time, the Yakutat chief's demonstration may have been simply to indicate the quadruped (Wolf?) that was the crest either of his enemy or of his own son. It is, of course, tempting to link Malaspina's chief of Port Mulgrave with the Tł‘UknaAdi chief from Dry Bay who fought the Chilkat.

While Suría believed that it was the son of the “Ankau Juné” who had been killed in this war, Malaspina's reports make it clear that it was the father who was slain, and that his ashes were in the box held in the paws of an enormous Bear post in the nearby cemetery (Malaspina, 1849, p. 289; 1885, pp. 345–346). If “Juné” belonged to the Raven moiety, as his name suggests, his father, who had also been a chief, would have belonged to the opposite moiety and might well claim the Wolf or Bear as his crest. The same would be true of “Juné's” son. If I were following my own informants’ traditions of the past, I would consider “Juné” or one to have been Kwacqwan, not Tł’UknaAdi—names did shift from one sib to another within a moiety, or were shared by them—and his father and his sons would have been TłaayIk-Teqwedi. Perhaps one was actually the chief Yaodaqet, and at the same time the wearer of the helmet symbolizing the Monster Rat of Mount Saint Elias.

If, however, the helmet or hat had been taken from an enemy chief, it is obvious that it portrayed the crest of its former owner, not that of the Yakutat “Ankau” or of his relatives. Moreover, Malaspina understood that the battle in which it had been secured had taken place at Port Mulgrave. Near the spot where the Spaniards established their observatory was the grave of a man who had been killed in these last fights. It was marked by a stick planted in the grass, and covered by a rush mat weighted down with stones. The natives showed considerable reluctance to approach the spot, and evidently did not want the Spaniards to do so, indicating by signs and silence that they were afraid of disturbing the dead (Malaspina, 1885, p. 159). (This grave must have been near the cemetery used until the earthquake of 1889.)

What seems most likely is that the Yakutat chief was trying to tell by signs about a series of episodes, which the Spaniards naturally confused. The muskets, and the dead man, buried not cremated, may have nothing to do with a fight with other natives. The corpse may have been that of the man killed by one of Colnett‘s sailors some 3 years before.

Certainly the Yakutat natives were familiar with Europeans, for Malaspina noted hatchets, cooking pots, silver spoons, some articles of clothing, and even three books, which he interpreted as relics of Dixon's visit, as he did the natives’ insistence in offering the women. In fact, on one occasion the old chief had to be reprimanded for bringing a woman to the observatory, and the crews again had to be ordered not to go near the native huts. The younger Indians sang sea chanties, or repeated a few English words, as did three young women who came in a canoe under the stern of the Descubierto, where they not only called out in English but sang a native melody, which Dr. Haenke recorded.

Eventually, of course, pilfering began. At first an iron padlock was taken, but was returned because the culprit was detained despite his threats with a dagger, and the chief was induced to make him restore it. On another day, when two marlin spikes were taken, the chief could apparently do nothing, although he attempted to placate the Spaniards, and explained that the thieves belonged to “a distant family,” that is, were not members of his own sib or lineage (ibid., p. 158). In consequence, all natives were barred from the ships, and trading was limited to the open beach in front of the corvettes which could be covered by their guns. This was the treeless area, near Point Turner, some distance from any of the huts, and also the site selected for the observatory.

The natives crowded about the observatory tent continually, wanting to look through the telescope and to examine all the instruments, so that everything, tent and all, had to be brought onboard each night.

Despite these inconveniences, for Malaspina the Indians

“could not have presented a more endearing aspect. We were familiar with the most necessary words of their idiom; we visited them openly in their huts. Don Tomás Suría could draw some of the women and represent the almost unbelievable quantity of domestic utensils. Trading had warmed up on both sides, and we had already been given permission to provide ourselves with the necessary wood in the vicinity of the houses without any preliminary agreement, to which, nevertheless, we would have immediately acceeded.” [Ibid., pp. 158–159.]

Early in the morning of June 30,[48] the old chief and a dignitary came to the Spaniards at the observatory to announce, with apparent anxiety, that two canoes were coming, and were already only a mile or two away. Since it was not known whether they were friendly or hostile, the chief wanted the Spaniards to go to the front beach and fire a volley, which would force them to declare their intentions. Meanwhile, the tribe took up arms, launched two canoes, and the women retired. The Spanish, accordingly, went to the beach (on the western side of Khantaak Island?), where they could be seen, and fired a gun. At this signal, all the paddlers in the canoes, about 40, burst into a hymn of peace which they continued to sing as they approached the shore. Finally they drew up on the inner beach, while the old chief continued to shout to them to be careful, because the Spaniards were his allies.

By now almost all fear of attack seemed to be dissipated, and although the Yakutat natives still kept their arms, they waded out to the boats to carry the leaders of the visitors ashore. The latter were at once presented to the Spaniards by the “Ankau”. General peace making followed, the two parties embraced each other, and the visitors were led with joyful oratory to the huts. Except for the places where the women prepared skins or did the cooking, the two groups were now intermingled as if they formed one tribe (ibid., pp. 159–160).

What the Spaniards had witnessed and taken part in, was not, as they had supposed, a narrowly averted hostile encounter, but the ceremonial reception of foreign guests, as at a potlatch. On such occasions, (McClellan, 1954: Swanton, 1908, pp. 434–443, 449; and see pp. 613–615), there are always two rival groups of guests, one local, one invited from a distance, between whom competition is symbolized as warfare followed by peace making. A common feature is the brandishing of weapons and firing of guns, either by the hosts or by the local guests, in welcoming the visitors; the latter may also fire volleys. It is the duty of the host chief to prevent, if he can, the rivalry between his guests from leading to actual fighting. As McClellan has pointed out (1954, p. 96), the emphasis on symbolic warfare in the accounts of potlatches that appear in Swanton's Tlingit Myths and Texts (1909), as well as in the actual conduct of potlatches, including the hostility between guest sibs, the use by hosts and guests of ‘sib brothers-in-law’ as go-betweens who are called ‘deer,’ like peace hostages, the similarity between crest hats and war helmets, and so forth, “all suggest an intriguing relationship between the potlatch, the peace ceremony, and warfare, which should be more fully explored.”

While it would appear that the visitors greeted by Malaspina in Port Mulgrave had probably not come to a potlatch, much of the same formality was characteristic of Tlingit intertribal trade, which also involved some of the ceremonial of war and peace. It is quite probable that the visitors of June 30 had come because they had learned of the presence of the frigates. The newcomers had brought some good sea otter skins which they offered to the Spaniards that same afternoon, each seller accompanied by a member of the local group. There was the same enthusiasm for acquiring European clothing, and apparently some of the seamen gave away garments that were worth more than the current market value of skins at Canton.

“Still, it was a singular and curious sight to see at the same time a good half of the old tribe and some of the new, dressed so strangely in the old uniforms of the soldiers, and in the sailors’ jackets, caps, pants, underwear, shirts, etc.,” which might give the impression that the natives had assassinated the crew of a Spanish vessel (Malaspina, 1885, p. 161).

The Spaniards took advantage of the many spectators to demonstrate the power of their guns. Apparently one of the Indians believed that he could make his clothing bulletproof by soaking it, but when one of the officers shot a hole through it, he became bitterly angry.

Meanwhile the scientific observations could be carried out in peace, because the natives were busy elsewhere. Everything was also proceeding calmly at the watering area at the head of Monti Bay. One of the officers here made friends with a native family, observed various domestic customs, and also acquired a few items of women‘s dress and ornaments, which are, unfortunately, not specifically described.

This officer also located the cemetery on Ankau Creek which Dixon had visited. The next day, July 1, a party of officers and the painter Suría went to the cemetery, near which they met five natives who were picking strawberries. The latter were judged to be members of the lower class and probably ignorant of local traditions, but therefore unlikely to interfere with the Spaniards, especially since the latter loaded them with gifts. Suría meanwhile sketched the framework of what seemed to be an old winter house, and two grave monuments, one old and the other new. One of the boxes with calcined bones from the older monument was taken for the Royal Cabinet, apparently without native objections. (The description of this cemetery is given on pages 540–542.)

While the Spaniards were interested that the Yakutat people seemed to have one male and four or five female slaves, assumed to be captives from another tribe,[49] the Indians, on their part, were convinced that a native Filipino sailor on the Atrevida was also a slave. “From the first day they visited the corvette, the inhabitants had taken him for one of their own, had tediously examined his hair, his skin, the features of his face, and his body members, and then asked him to stay in the tribe. And they inquired how he came to be among us, and whether he had been sold or captured” (ibid., p. 161).

On July 2, Malaspina set off with two longboats to explore the head of Yakutat Bay, leaving Bustamente in charge of the anchored corvettes. As will be seen, trouble with the Indians at Port Mulgrave broke out almost immediately.

The two boats, rowing up the bay and sailing when they could, noted floating ice along the western shore, and smoke rising from one of two places on the eastern flatlands where the natives lived. When near what I believe was the sealing camp at Tłaata, below Point Latouche, a canoe came out to meet them with a single Indian. This was the son of the Port Mulgrave chief, who had been on board the ships many times. He was now dressed in trousers, shirt, and cap, and to Malaspina appeared much more humanized and curiously gentle. He came on board the longboat of the Descubierta and explained that he was the chief of a nearby settlement, where his women and children lived, naming them with great tenderness. He agreed to accompany the boats in return for some trinkets and a good meal.

MAP 22.—Disenchantment Bay as surveyed by Malaspina in 1791. The line indicates the limit of the ice. (Galiano, 1802, map 9. Courtesy Bancroft Library, Univ. California, Berkeley.)

Although it was evident from what the young chief said and from the feeble tidal currents that the channel had almost ended, the boats continued around Point Latouche (“Punta de la Esperanza”), and were guided to an anchorage close to what our informants called Qegótłéyà’ (see p. 67). Except for green spots at the mouths of the streams (see Malaspina's chart in Galiano, 1802, Chart 9), all around there was nothing but rocks and ice; many bergs floated near by, and avalanches thundered in the mountains. The opposite point “Pta de la Bancas” (Bancas Point) was named for the glaciers. Despite the cold rain, the men ate, the geographer, Felipe Bausa, began to make a map, one of the officers went hunting, and others collected natural history specimens for Dr. Tadeo Haenke. Although Suría had not gone with the boats, someone must have furnished him with a sketch on which he based his watercolor of the scene. Meanwhile, the young chief insisted on returning to his hut to sleep, promising to return the next day with some fresh salmon.

From 9 till 1:30 p.m., the boats tried to row northward through the floating ice, but were blocked by a line of firm ice (de hielo constante), which prevented them from reaching the little island which Malaspina named for the naturalist Haenke. As the geographer told Suría on their return: “They saw from the middle of this great bay, which was as far as they could reach, that the other half was entirely frozen so that one could pass up to the wall of the mountains with dry feet if it were not for the risk that he would be crushed, as they had seen happen with some pieces which had been so crushed when they fell into the water” (Wagner, 1936, p. 251). From this ice barrier they turned back to the anchorage just above Point Latouche.

The next day, fortified by a night's rest, by the fresh salmon brought by several canoes from the mouth of the bay, and with clearing weather, the Spaniards were able to correct their observations. Malaspina took possession of the bay in the name of the king. In witness thereof, he buried a coin and a bottle containing a record of this discovery in a deep hole under a stone. One wonders whether it is still there, or whether the natives found it. The cove was named “Puerto del Desengaño” (Disenchantment Bay), the whole bay was called “Bahia de las Bancas,” and the outer bay or entrance was named for Ferrer (Maldonado).

The party was just ready to leave, when one of the sailors was discovered missing. They searched for him, apparently all afternoon, shouting and firing guns, and ready to believe that he was dead or badly injured, perhaps attacked by the bears which the natives had indicated were numerous here. Finally he appeared, was picked up by the launch near Haenke Island, and explained that he had gone on foot in an attempt to reach Maldonado's Passage, keeping his venture secret because he did not wish to share the glory of such a discovery. Suría, in reporting the episode, writes that the sailor “actually reached the farthest point [of the “Frozen Bay”] and saw that it ended in a copious river which ran between those mountains and was lost to view, winding about like a snake” (Wagner, 1936, p. 251). Malaspina's chart shows the head of the bay surrounded by rocky slopes and glaciers but, of course, from his position on or near the eastern shore, below Haenke Island, he could not possibly have seen the mouth of Russell Fiord, no matter what the condition of the ice.

It would appear that the sailor had walked for 6 hours over unimaginably rough rocks and over the ice (solid ice, or floating pack), until he could look up into Russell Fiord, where he saw an open lead of water. How far this extended is not clear, and Suria's version may not be accurate.

On the return trip, late that night, the boats stopped briefly at the native settlement (Tłaata) to which the Indian canoes had already returned. The young chief was as affable as he had been the day before, and brought his two young sons out in a canoe to see the boats, showing them great affection. The longboats anchored for the night in the channel between Knight Island and the mainland, from which further observations were made of Mount Saint Elias. The view must have been much the same as that which I photographed in 1952 (de Laguna et al., 1964, pl. 1, a).

On the trip back to the corvettes the next day, July 4, the islands and channels along the eastern shore were investigated. What I take to be Knight Island was described as heavily wooded, in places rich with shellfish, “and besides on the south shore were sepulchres in every respect similar to those we had visited near the port [at Ankau Creek]. There was cultivated ground [tobacco patches], either on the islands, or on the adjacent mainland, very few rancherias of the natives, and to judge by the 30 to 40 salmon that were sold to the boats by only two canoes, these channels must be rich in fish, and in consequence provide an easy existence for the inhabitants” (Malaspina, 1885, pp. 164–165).

At Port Mulgrave, Malaspina found that relations with the natives had deteriorated during the 3 days that he had been absent, and the situation was now very delicate. The day that the boats had started for Disenchantment Bay, July 2, some Indians had stolen a few things while trading. The chief, when informed, was upset and managed to get them back, but soon after that, according to Suría, the Indians began to go about with knives, spears, bows and arrows. When a native deftly made off with a sailor‘s jacket at the watering place, Captain Bustamente demanded of the chief that it be returned and the thief punished. According to Suría, the chief himself was threatened, which naturally irritated the Indians. Furthermore, they became alarmed when a tree was inadvertently felled too close to one of them. Bustamente was inclined to believe that the chief was in league with the man who had stolen the jacket, despite his appearance of friendship for the Spaniards. It is much more likely, however, that the thief belonged to another sib over which, of course, the chief would have no control.

Suría, himself, had an unpleasant experience, for he had been left alone in the house of a chief to make sketches. It is not clear whether this was the house of the old “Akau,” which I assume was on Khantaak Island, or was, perhaps, the house of some lesser chief near where the sailors were getting wood.

“I had scarcely commenced to work when with a great cry the cacique spoke to me in his language in an imperious tone and a threat that I should suspend my work. Engrossed in my work I paid little attention to him when the third time there was a grand chorus of shrieks by all the Indians. I came to myself and suspended my work which was well started. They caught hold of me and pushed me. I began to shout for my own people, but when I turned my face I did not see a single one. They formed a circle around me and danced around me knives in hand singing a frightful song, which seemed like the bellowing of bulls. In such circumstances I resolved to carry out their mood and I began to dance with them. They let out a shout and made me sit down, and by force made me sing their songs which according to the gestures which they made I understood as ridiculing me. In such a situation I feigned ignorance and shouted louder making the same contortions and gestures. They were very much pleased at this and I was able with my industry to gain their good will with a figure which I sketched for them with a coat, etc., and dressed like ourselves. They marveled very much at this and began pointing at it with a finger exclaiming ‘Ankau!’ ‘Ankau!’ which is to say ‘señor,’ and as they call their chief. So they quieted down and insisted on giving me fish to eat. I excused myself as much as I could but seeing they threatened me I had to eat. Soon they offered me some women, pointing out some and reserving for me some others. Seeing that I did not move they then made signs to me with their hands that they were giving them to me so that I might violate them. At this moment a sailor arrived who was looking for me as the boat was going aboard. I complained to some of the officers that they had abandoned me and they excused themselves by telling me that the natives who had remained on the beach were peaceable and therefore they had inferred that they would not do me any harm. I forgot to say that as soon as they saw the sailor, they believed that more were coming and I took occasion of the opportunity to get away.” [Wagner, 1936, p. 250.]

The behavior of the natives suggests that Suría was treated in some respects like a ‘deer,’ or peace-hostage, the central figure in a Tlingit peace-making ceremony as, for example, that which ended the war between the Tł’UknaAdi and the anAtedi (Swanton, 1909, Tale 32, pp. 164–165; cf. Swanton, 1908, p. 451; Krause, 1956, p. 171; de Laguna, 1960, pp. 154, 155–156). In such a ceremony, the ‘deer’ is seized in the middle of a mock fight, which is reported as terrifying, and in which persons may be hurt. His captors dance for him, and he also dances for them. Many of the songs are funny, to show good feeling; Suría may have been mistaken that he was being ridiculed. However, every gesture and word of the ‘deer’ is closely observed, since it may indicate whether there is to be peace or further war. The ‘deer’ is under a taboo against work, against eating certain foods, and against sexual intercourse; yet his captors may test him by urging him to break these rules, since his willingness to comply with their wishes is proof of his peaceful intentions. Although the Yakutat natives could not have been carrying out a full peace ceremony, since the Spaniards were not conducting a complementary ritual with an Indian ‘deer,’ and although the natives were probably trying to frighten Suría, the fact that he had the good sense and courage to act as he did undoubtedly prevented serious trouble, and may even have saved his life.

Because of the theft of the jacket, Bustamente had suspended trading, which the Indians interpreted as an unfriendly act. When the usual detail went to cut wood the following day, they found the natives “insolent and provocative” (Malaspina, 1885, p. 165), and threatening gestures were exchanged. The Indians indicated that if the Spaniards did not wish to trade they should leave. Target practice, and the promise to resume trading the next day, seemed to pacify them, although as Suría observed, the Indians, “like warriors at the least thing became angry” (Wagner, 1936, p. 251). The Spaniards could not understand why the seemingly friendly chief did not secure the return of the jacket.

That afternoon, when Bustamente and a party landed for target practice, a group of armed natives tried first to seize a sailor, then, led by the same man who had been most threatening that morning, maneuvered to seize Bustamente. Although outnumbered, the latter bravely stood his ground, ordered his men not to fight, and called on the chief to restrain his subjects. After hesitating, the chief did speak, although not with a tone of command, and the angry leader finally opened his arms and began to sing the hymn of peace. Although the natives near the huts still retained their arms, the Spaniards were finally able to withdraw to the beach and to their ships.

After a long harangue by the chief, his people came to restore the stolen jacket and to ask for peace, indicating that the men in the corvettes should sing the peace song as they had done. “This agreeable act was repeated both on the ships and on shore, not without a certain harmony, and with the expressive gesture of the open arms” (Malaspina, 1885, p. 166). Bonfires were lit that night on the beach near the ships, where the natives danced and sang happy songs, which Haenke transcribed, while from time to time voices chimed in from the Atrevida and the Descubierta.

On July 4, no woodcutting parties went ashore; trade was resumed, but under the earlier system of forbidding the natives to come aboard; and the officers of the Descubierta, accompanied by the “Ankau,” visited the cemetery. A “new tribe” arrived, under the son of the “Ankau,” probably the group that had been camped at Tłaata. Everything seemed peaceful when Malaspina's two longboats returned in the late afternoon.

The Spaniards were anxious to finish their work at Port Mulgrave, so the next day boat parties were sent out on all the last minute errands of taking soundings, getting fresh water, and finishing the astronomical observations. The chief had come aboard the Atrevida to supervise the trading, in which he enjoyed the great advantage of being the only native allowed on the ship; according to Suría, his son was with him. Gradually a crowd of natives gathered at the observatory, at first trying to handle the instruments, soon surrounding the sailors and demanding their muskets. Again, the Spaniards were in a difficult position, their forces dispersed, faced with the possible loss of their irreplaceable instruments, or with the prospect of a bloody encounter. It would obviously have been rash to wait until afternoon to make further observations, which would otherwise have been desirable. Instead, two officers and four armed soldiers were sent ashore, to attempt to hold back the natives, while the instruments were removed. Meanwhile all the native canoes had left the corvettes, while all the Indians in the village were advancing with drawn daggers against the Spaniards on shore (pl. 41).

Bustamente on the Atrevida now ordered a cannon fired without a ball to frighten the natives. According to Suría, “at once they covered themselves with their skins and others looked about to see who had fallen. [But since no one was hurt] This made them more insolent still…. ” However, Bustamente seized the chief and his son, who were on the ship, “and threatened to punish them if he did not order his Indians to keep quiet” (Wagner, 1936, p. 252). Apparently the chief begged the captain not to fire on the huts, and called to his people to restrain them. Although they were at first even more angry to see him a prisoner, eventually his exhortations were effective, for the Spaniards with the instruments were able to get off in their boats without actual bloodshed. The chief, however, was held as hostage until the safe return of the watering parties later that afternoon.

By this time the natives on shore had indicated their desire for peace, begged for the release of the chief, and even offered to return a pair of trousers that had been stolen the first day of woodcutting. Accordingly, the chief was permitted to leave in the canoe which had come to fetch him, but he shortly returned, “entoning the hymn of peace and holding aloft with great solemnity the stolen trousers” (Malaspina, 1885, p. 168). Again, the song of peace, with the usual gestures, was repeated on shipboard and on shore.

According to Suría: “The chief believed we were angered about some goats [[50]] which an Indian had stolen and which he ordered him to bring. It was something to laugh at to see him in his canoe giving the sign of peace while hoisting high his goats [trousers] after Bustamente had turned him loose.” Suría has left us a sketch of this ludicrous scene (pl. 43). “Our ships answered with the signal of peace and they then asked to come back for the trade in skins. As soon as this was conceded they laid aside all their fierceness and came alongside very contented in their canoes as if nothing had happened” (Wagner, 1936, p. 252).

The ships sailed late that afternoon and the natives took advantage of the last hours to trade, bringing everything they thought might be exchanged, and no longer making excessive demands for hatchets or clothing. When the sails were set, all of the canoes retreated except one that remained close to the Descubierta. In this was a woman with a small baby. The doctor threw her down some bells and ornaments, and when her canoe came alongside made her a second gift of the same kind. She now cut off half of the skin she had brought, and put it on the child's head before passing it up to the ship, as if she were making a gift in the child's name. Much moved, the men on the ship threw down to her whatever trinkets were at hand, and she continued to reciprocate for her child until she had given away all the skins that covered her.

As an anticlimax, the Descubierta ran aground between Point Munoz and “Dixon's Island” [Phipps Peninsula?], but was finally hauled off, and the two corvettes left Yakutat Bay early on the morning of July 6.

After leaving Yakutat Bay, Malaspina's ships stood out to sea, but on July 9 approached Cape Suckling (“Cabo Chubador”). Malaspina wanted to explore the passage between the cape and Kayak Island, but the weather prevented this. After visiting Middleton Island and trading with some Chugach on the outer coasts of Montague and Hinchinbrook Islands, the Spaniards were again just west of Kayak Island on July 15. By this time, Malaspina concluded that there was no passage between Kayak Island and the mainland, and that the island was in fact the “Península de Kaye.” Other names were given to points and bays in the vicinity, but no natives were seen.

The vessels now turned back toward Yakutat Bay. Somewhere east of Cape Suckling was a bay which Malaspina called “Ensenada de Estremadura,” in which were seen two coves or inlets. The one on the west was blocked by ice; the one to the east was close to “la Punta del Indio,” where sheltered “a humble native rancheria” (Malaspina, 1885, p. 178). We gather that Malaspina was by now somewhere between Kaliakh River(?) and Icy Bay. The “Point of the Indian” may have been Cape Yakataga.

On the morning of July 25, the corvettes were visited by an Indian who came from the point. The ships were then anchored[?] at least 7 miles from shore. The Indian in his canoe approached to within a mile, then turned back toward land. However, the longboat came up to him with the usual gestures of peace, and he came on board the ship. His familiarity, his anxiety to induce the Spaniards to come to the shore, and his insistent offer of women convinced the Spaniards that they were not the first Europeans these natives had met. However, Malaspina believes that he must have encountered them or learned about them in Port Mulgrave. “The customs, features, and speech of this young man seemed to be completely the same as that of the inhabitants met in that port. He gave us some strawberries, and traded his robe of otter furs, even though we did not give him the axe that he so coveted.” Finally, about 9 in the evening, he returned to shore with a few trinkets (ibid., p. 178). Since this youth apparently came from ałyI-Kagwantan country, it is a pity that we are given no more details about him. From Suría's narrative, which describes Mount Saint Elias as being at the head of the bay (Ensenada de Estremadura), the ship was off “Icy Bay,” or rather the lagoon at the mouth of the Yahtse River, when they met this Indian.

“Without any fear and boldly he came on board showing much pleasure and confidence and signified to us by signs…to tell us that all his countrymen were ready to entertain us, and that for that purpose we should raise the kedge anchor and follow him and he would conduct us to a large port which was behind the point where they had their town and where they would trade with us for sea-otter skins. [When the Spaniards would not follow, this gallant youth left them] as a present some excellent fish and strawberries and the commander gave him in exchange some looking glasses, little bells, and beads for a large and beautiful sea-otter skin which he wore as a cape.” [Wagner, 1936, p. 267.]

Two days later, the vessels came to Cape Fair-weather, having in sight the whole magnificent panorama of the Saint Elias and Fairweather Ranges. From here to Nootka, which they reached on August 12, they saw no more natives.

Although one of Vancouver's ships was to visit Yakutat Bay 3 years later, Malaspina's voyage has provided us with the most detailed descriptions of the Yakutat natives in the 18th century. Not only do we have the accounts of intelligent and interested observers, but also Suría's many excellent pictures (pls. 40–61). Several officers made their own dictionaries of the language, from which a list of some 121 words and 25 numerals was compiled (Malaspina, 1885, pp. 349–351). While I cannot assert that none of the terms is Athabaskan or Eyak, I do recognize the vast majority as Tlingit. These include not only such words as, hat, gun, bow and arrow, glass bead, but words for body parts, common expressions (yes, no, too bad), common verbs (eat, sit down, cut, wound), natural phenomena (sea, mountain, cold, snow, sun, fire); in short, a considerable proportion of Swadesh's basic vocabulary of 100 words. Of course, the Spaniards often missed the correct meaning, just as they were unable to render adequately the velar and glottalized consonants. They were well aware that this language was quite different from that of the inhabitants of Prince William Sound. It is interesting that the Yakutat name for “enemy” in the 18th century (“Kutef” or “Kutek”) was the same as that which the Eyak in 1933 (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 543), and the Yakutat in 1952 and 1954 applied to the “Aleuts” or Chugach (oe or Ue).

Despite linguistic differences, Malaspina believed that the natives from “the Archipelago of Bucareli,” or even the Queen Charlotte Islands, to Cook Inlet had the same origin. Even though the inhabitants of Port Mulgrave and of Prince William Sound spoke different languages and were frequently at war with each other, they were basically the same in their way of life, social development, material culture and religious rites. They were also “tall, husky, healthy, and agile, whether for fishing, hunting or warfare.” The women were also healthy, and evidently able to bear children to an advanced age. The appearance of the men was generally ferocious, as would be expected of those who fought the great bears of Disenchantment Bay, but those who fished, as well as the women and children, seemed to Malaspina to be docile (but not stupid), modest, and affable. He saw a great difference in physiognomy between the plebians and the “Ankau” and his family, a difference which he felt that Suría had faithfully rendered. A few young people were induced to wash their faces, and showed a naturally fair, even somewhat rosy complexion, in spite of the grease smeared on against the elements (Malaspina, 1885, p. 343).

Malaspina called the Yakutat the “Tejunés” (People of Juné), and reported them as inhabiting the islands of Port Mulgrave, with several families on the mainland facing the islands, or near Disenchantment Bay, or outside Cape Munoz. He did not believe that the people of “Bering Bay” (Dry Bay) belonged to the same “nation,” noting that the lack of inland channels would make communication difficult; he was evidently unaware of the system of lagoons and streams connecting Dry Bay and the Ankau. However, the Dry Bay people apparently had as their leader a son of the “Ankau Juné,” as had the other settlements in Yakutat Bay, so Malaspina believed that these communities would be allied in time of war. This would not be the case, he surmised, with those who lived farther to the west, at the foot of Mount Saint Elias, or between Point “Barrientos” (Point Manby) and Point Novales (Point Martin near Katalla?). Although these people [51] seemed to show an intimacy and ancient friendship with those of Port Mulgrave, when they came on June 30 (or July 1), still Malaspina detected signs that their interests were quite distinct and their leaders naturally opposed.

The Indian that they had met off “Point of the Indian” seemed to have no idea of the rates of exchange prevailing at Port Mulgrave, yet he seemed to be well acquainted with the commerce and vices of Europeans. Malaspina believed that his people, therefore, lived farther away than those who had visited Port Mulgrave. He found it strange that he had seen no signs of habitation in Controller Bay, but thought that the shallow water might make for poor hunting and fishing.

Relying on the data from earlier explorers, as well as upon his own observations, including the smokes seen between Cape Fairweather and Cross Sound, Malaspina estimated that the population in Prince William Sound was about 600; that there were as many more on the slopes of Mount Saint Elias, 400 in Port Mulgrave, and another 600 from Dry Bay to Cross Sound, making a total of 1,600 Indians on the Gulf of Alaska, not counting the Chugach (ibid., p. 345).

Vancouver (1794)

Capt. George Vancouver was the commander of the last 18th-century voyage of discovery to the Gulf of Alaska.[52] He was sent in the sloop Discovery, accompanied by Lt. Peter Puget in the armed tender Chatham, to receive for Great Britain the territory which the Spaniards were to surrender in settlement of the Nootka Controversy of 1789, and also to explore the American coast from latitude 30° to 60° for a possible Northwest Passage. The expedition sailed from England on April 1, 1791, reached the American coast after rounding the Cape of Good Hope and crossing the Pacific, and returned to England in September, 1795, via Cape Horn and the Atlantic. Vancouver made a most careful survey of the Northwest Coast, and his charts incorporate also the information which he received from the Russians who were met in Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, and Yakutat Bay, as well as that learned from Captain Brown, an English trader in charge of the Butterworth, Jackall, and Prince Le Boo. It was Lieutenant Puget, commanding the Chatham who explored Yakutat Bay in 1794.

Puget had left Vancouver with the Discovery in Prince William Sound on June 12, and rejoined him at Port Althorp in Cross Sound on July 10. While Puget was in Yakutat Bay, Vancouver sailed from Prince William Sound on June 20, examined the coast between Cape Suckling and Yakutat Bay, but without seeing any natives, although he noted the mouth of the Kaliakh or Yakataga River. The east point of “Icy Bay” he named Point Riou. Point Manby he named for the master of the Chatham, who came out from Port Mulgrave on July 2 with a letter from Lieutenant Puget for Vancouver, as the latter was passing by. Vancouver himself did not enter Yakutat Bay, but continued down the coast, meeting Captain Brown in the Jackall near Dry Bay, similarly bound for Cross Sound. Vancouver applied the name “Beering's Bay” to Yakutat Bay, convinced that it was here that Bering had landed. Influenced in part by what Captain Brown had told him on a previous meeting about the deceptive appearance of the low foreshore and irregular conformation of the mountains, Vancouver found no bay to correspond to that named “Beering's Bay” by Cook and Dixon, (i.e., Dry Bay), but he recognized how Cook could have made his mistake. Vancouver failed to see that here was the mouth of a great river, the Alsek (Vancouver, 1801, vol. 5, pp. 356–358, 367–370). Although he was so fortunate as to keep both Mount Saint Elias and Mount Fairweather in sight almost all the way to Cape Spencer (which he named), he passed the entrance to Lituya Bay, noting only “one small opening” in the coast, but saw no natives or signs of habitation until he came to Cross Sound (ibid., p. 361).

After leaving Prince William Sound on June 12, the Chatham had skirted the shallow water of the Copper River delta, Puget noting the sand bars (Egg Islands) that stretch from Hinchinbrook Island to Cape Martin. Controller Bay was explored by boat, Wingham Island named, and the existence of a channel between “Kaye's Island” and Cape Suckling proved, despite information from the Spaniards to the contrary. Bering River at the head of Controller Bay was not seen. No natives were met, although many sea bird nests were found on the cliffs along the western side of Wingham Island. “It did not appear to be much the resort of natives; but near the north-east point of Kaye's island, Mr. Le Mesurier [who led the boat party] found a village that had been recently deserted [presumably for the season]” (ibid, p. 381). Since the Chatham continued down the coast to Yakutat Bay at a much greater distance from shore than the Discovery, it is not surprising that no further settlements were seen.

On the evening of June 26, the Chatham had rounded Point Manby, and was sailing up the northwestern shore of Yakutat Bay, when she was hailed by five “Kodiak Indians” in two baidarkas, with the information that there were some Russians in Port Mulgrave (ibid., p. 382). They also brought letters, dated June 13, from Shields and four other Englishmen who were building ships for the Russians at Port Andrews in Blying Sound (see the modern town of Seward). Shields offered the facilities of this shipyard to Vancouver, and the latter regretted having missed him, since Shields could probably have given valuable information which the Russian authorities on Kodiak seemed loath to divulge. It should be noted that Baranov, who had his headquarters on Kodiak, was planning the establishment of posts on the mainland southeast of Prince William Sound and wanted no foreign competition (Bancroft, 1886, p. 278).

The Chatham continued up Yakutat Bay to Point Latouche (named by Puget), beyond which lay “Digges's Sound” (Disenchantment Bay), “closed from side to side by a firm and compact body of ice, beyond which at the back of the ice a small inlet appeared to extend N. 55 E. about a league” (ibid., p. 389). This “inlet” was probably part of the “river” or lead in the ice which Malaspina's sailor had seen in Russell Fiord. From here the Chatham turned back down the east coast of Yakutat Bay, surveying and naming “Knight's Island” and “Eleanor's Cove.”

While anchored near Point Latouche on June 27, Lieutenant Puget saw a number of canoes approaching from the south, “which occasioned some little concern, as the inhabitants of the bay are reputed to be a treacherous, unfriendly, and barbarous tribe” (ibid., p. 385). This impression must have been given by the Russians, certainly not by Dixon or Colnett. These canoes, however, belonged to the party of Koniag and Cook Inlet natives under the Russian, George Purtov or Portoff, whom Vancouver's expedition had met in Cook Inlet earlier that summer. Purtov later came on board the Chatham and gave the English some fresh halibut and some interesting information.

Puget understood that this party consisted of 9 Russians and 700 skin canoes, with 1,400 natives from Kodiak Island and Cook Inlet; not a single Yakutat native was with the party. The actual number seems to have been about 12 Russians, counting the two leaders, and 500 baidarkas manned by about 1000 Koniag, Tanaina, and a few Chugach (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., pp. 60, 83). Purtov gave Puget to understand that they had followed close along the coast, and about 8 leagues (14 nautical miles) east of Cape Suckling had stopped at a small river, “Rica, malo, unala.” A few leagues beyond they came to a second stream, “Riko bolshe unala,” the mouths of both being blocked by bars. Vancouver recognized these as streams which he had passed on June 17 (ibid., pp. 347–348). If the Russian estimates of distance are to be trusted, of which I am skeptical, the first river would be the Tsiu and Tsivat Rivers which have a common mouth. East of this, and some 32 nautical miles from Cape Suckling, is the much larger Kaliakh River, and beyond that again the Duktoth and Yakataga Rivers, one of which must certainly be the “Riko bolshe unala,” the home of the ałyI-Kagwantan.

“Here Portoff had met between fifty and sixty of the native Indians, who treacherously murdered one of the Russians whilst asleep at a little distance from the main body; on discovering which a skirmish had ensued, in which six of the native Indians were killed, and their chief taken prisoner…. ”[Ibid., p. 386.]

From here the Russians had gone on to “another small rivulet on the eastern side of Icy bay,” and so on to Yakutat Bay about 14 days before the arrival of the Chatham (ibid., p. 387).

Purtov also reported a dangerous rocky shoal, off what Lieutenant Puget took to be Vancouver's Point Riou. This was evidently the same as the disputed “Pamplona Shoal,” sighted by Arteaga‘s expedition in 1779. This afforded an excellent sea otter hunting ground, annually visited by the Russians ever since its discovery some years before when one of their ships was wrecked upon it. Purtov himself had been there and proposed to visit it on his return to Kodiak. Vancouver conjectured that this shoal might have been responsible for the loss of the Sea Otter, under Captain Tipping from Bengal, which disappeared after leaving Meares in Prince William Sound in the summer of 1786 (ibid., pp. 387, 388). (See p. 99 for a discussion of the controversy over the existence of this shoal.)

Having finished what exploration was possible at the head of Yakutat Bay, the Chatham was returning and was apparently somewhere below Knight Island, possibly near the northern end of Khantaak Island, when Purtov and about 50 canoes of his party joined the ship and gave the information summarized above.

“At this time about fifty canoes of Portoff's party were about the boat, the Indians [sic] in which carried on an advantageous commerce in purchasing white shirts, stockings, cravats, and other parts of the officers’ apparel, (which comforts were readily parted with) for such things as were deemed curiosities, consisting of bows, arrows, darts, spears, fish-gigs, whale-gut shirts, and specimens of their very neat and curious needle-work; articles with which these people, though at so great a distance from home, were well provided, in expectation of finding a profitable market before they returned. In all their dealings they manifested great keenness, and seemed to know very well what they were about; yet they dealt with the strictest honesty, and with the most implicit confidence of being fairly treated. [Ibid., pp. 390–391.]

This indicates one way in which the Yakutat natives might acquire Chugach or Koniag artifacts, for the natives with Purtov must have been counting on a native market. Doubtless later baidarka parties from Prince William Sound were to bring similar goods.

“During this intercourse, two of the native inhabitants of the bay paid the Chatham a visit; and after the usual ceremonious song was ended, they repaired on board without the least hesitation. A few presents of iron, looking-glasses, and other trinkets seemed to have the effect of making them feel perfectly easy and at home; not a moveable escaped attention, but underwent a most minute examination. [Ibid., p. 391.]

[Purtov remained on board overnight, while his natives were sent out to hunt sea otters. The next morning, June 28, the Chatham attempted to reach Port Mulgrave via the channel inside Khantaak Island.] “The number of native visitors now amounted to ten, who seemed on the most friendly terms with the Kodiak party; one of the former by signs and words, used all his eloquence to point out the impossibility of the vessel's passing through this narrow passage, and that ultimately she would return by the same way she was going…. ” [Ibid., p. 392.]

However, Lieutenant Johnstone who was with Lieutenant Puget had already explored this channel (Johnstone Passage) when he was in Yakutat Bay with Captain Colnett, and although the Chatham did run aground once, she was eventually successful in reaching Port Mulgrave. While still waiting for the high tide to float her, the vessel was again visited by the local natives who brought some salmon, and “seemed to exult in the correctness of their information…” (ibid., p. 394).

From Port Mulgrave, a boat was sent to survey the adjacent islands and mainland shores, including the head of Monti Bay, about 2 miles southeast of Point Turner.

“About the same distance within cape Phipps is a small opening in the low land accessible only for boats [Ankau Creek], near which was found an Indian village, that had the appearance of having been very recently deserted; not one of its former inhabitants was to be seen, excepting about fifty dogs that were making a most dreadful howling.” [Ibid., p. 396.]

It is probable that the natives had simply gone to their usual summer fishing and sealing camps, leaving their dogs behind in the usual Tlingit way, although Puget surmised that the Indians had been frightened away by Purtov's party, into the woods or along the coast to the east. This conjecture, Puget felt, was

“supported by the description that Portoff first gave of these people, as being a treacherous, cruel tribe, by whom his numerous party were kept in a state of constant anxiety for their general safety. It also led to a supposition, that at some earlier period the Russians had made use of harsh and coercive measures to bring the inhabitants of this bay to a friendly intercourse; this, however, had been positively denied by Portoff, who asserted, that no skirmish whatever had hitherto taken place between these people and their modern Russian visitors…. ” [Ibid., p. 397.]

However, as we shall see, the Yakutat people had met the captive chief taken near Cape Yakataga, and there is no reason to suppose that they sided with the Russians in their fight with their relatives, the ałyI-Kagwantan.

The night of June 27 Purtov and the other Russians had spent aboard the Chatham, together with this chief from the Kaliakh River area. The latter, though a prisoner, had managed to steal a gold watch chain and some seals from the cabin, and when these were discovered on him some 2 days later, claimed that they were given to him. Purtov now returned them to Lieutenant Puget, who until that time had not been aware of his loss.

“Portoff embraced this occasion to inform Mr. Puget, that on the evening of the 28th, whilst he and his whole party were on one of the small islands in port Mulgrave, they were surprised by a visit of about fifty of the natives; and notwithstanding the superior numbers of his party, he had so little confidence in the courage of the Kodiak and Cook's inlet Indians, that he was extremely anxious to be quit of such dangerous visitors, and had determined on returning to the Kodiak as soon as the Chatham should leave the bay.”

In the meantime, July 1, he moved his whole party to Point Turner (ibid., pp. 398–399). This would indicate that there were no natives on this part of Khantaak Island.

Purtov himself occupied a tent which also housed the firearms and ammunition for the party; nearby a native hut was erected for the other Russians and for the captive chief and his family. The whole encampment was planned to resist a surprise attack, with spears, daggers and other weapons at hand near the shelters occupied by the natives. These were made by placing two baidarkas on their sides, about 4 feet apart, and roofing the space between with skins laid across the paddles. Here the Koniag were busy skinning the sea otter they had caught, which they did by pulling the entire pelt over the body without making any cut in the back or belly. This method had perhaps been taught them by the Russians, and Puget notes that it was not practiced by any of the other natives on the coast. (At Yakutat today, it is used for small furbearers, like mink, and even for land otter.) The Koniag ate the sea otter with relish and scrupulously saved the bones, “with those of all amphibious animals,” although Puget did not learn why (ibid., p. 401). (The Yakutat save only the humerus of the sea otter, however.)

On the morning of July 3, the day after Vancouver had passed Yakutat Bay, a large party of local natives arrived on the southern shore of Monti Bay opposite Point Turner, which “threw the whole Russian encampment into a state of confusion, and caused every preparation to be made for acting on the defensive,” while the captive chief was sent to the newcomers to make friendly overtures on behalf of the Russians (ibid., p. 402).

“Early in the morning of the 4th, a large wooden canoe, with twelve of these strangers, visited the Russian encampment, and were welcomed to the shore by a song from the Kodiak Indians; this compliment being returned in the same way, a conference took place; in which the native chief exerted his utmost eloquence to point out the extent of their territories, and the injustice of the Russians in killing and taking away their sea otters, without making them the smallest recompence. After these grievances had been enumerated with great energetic force, the chief sent a sea otter skin to Portoff, and on his accepting this present, a loud shout was given by both parties: this was followed by a song, which concluded these introductory ceremonies.” [Ibid., p. 402.]

Probably acceptance of the gift was interpreted by the Yakutat as meaning something more than good will on the part of the Russians. Indeed, they probably understood it to mean a recognition of Yakutat hunting rights.

“The visitors now landed, and were conducted to the encampment, where the friendly reception they met with, induced the chief to dispatch his canoe, with such information to the rest of his tribe, that they soon repaired to point Turner; and after similar ceremonies of songs and dancing, these likewise landed, amounting to about fifty, in whose possession were six excellent muskets, kept in the highest order, and each had a large iron dagger that hung from his neck in readiness for immediate service.” [Ibid., pp. 402–403.]

Three years before, Malaspina found no guns at Yakutat. Now we should note that Vancouver's exploring party under Lieutenant Whidbey in Lynn Canal was to meet two hundred Chilkat warriors, in one of whose canoes there were “seven muskets, and some brass blunderbusses, all in most excellent order.” The chief in that boat was equipped with a speaking trumpet, powder horn, spy glass, and “a clean bright brass blunderbuss” (ibid., p. 433). In August 1791, the French explorer, Captain Marchand, found a few muskets, but without ammunition, in the hands of the natives at Sitka, and believed that they had come from the English (Fleurieu, 1801, vol. 1, p. 343). I think it more likely that these firearms had been obtained from American traders, not from the Spanish, British, or Russians, since the reckless “Boston Men” had apparently neither scruples nor fear of arming the Tlingit, provided they made their own quick profits. This does not mean necessarily that the Yakutat themselves had met these traders; their muskets might have come through intertribal trade with the Sitka, Hoonah, or Chilkat.

Poor Purtov became most apprehensive at this display of Yakutat arms,

“especially as the native Indians took up their abode in the vicinity of his encampment; and although at that time it contained nearly nine hundred, whilst the number of the natives did not amount to more than seventy persons, amongst whom were some women and boys, yet he greatly dreaded an attack; being conscious that the major part of his people would be unequal to resist the impetuosity of so daring and desperate an adversary.” [Vancouver, 1801, vol. 5, p. 403.]

Lieutenant Puget promised him protection as long as the Chatham remained in port. Purtov was reassured,

“and for the purpose of preserving the good understanding that appeared to have taken place, he distributed amongst his visitors some large and small blue beads, with sheet copper, and bracelets made of that metal. This measure appeared to have its desired effect, as the chief and his party seemed to be well pleased, and soon after they all retired from the encampment, apparently well satisfied with their reception. The trivial articles given by Portoff, were the only species of merchandize the Russians had with them; even these, had been brought in very small quantities; and it would appear that they were very inadequate to the purchase of furs from the tribes or nations, in the more south-eastern parts of this coast; but a commercial intercourse with the native inhabitants of North West America to the eastward from Prince William's sound did not appear to be an object of the Russian pursuit.” [Ibid., p. 404.]

That night the Jackall arrived in Port Mulgrave, having been separated from the Discovery on the way to Cross Sound, and forced back by easterly winds.

On the morning of the 5th of July, all the Indians, whose number had gradually increased to over 100, left Port Mulgrave, to the relief of the Russians.

“The several chiefs had occasionally visited Mr. Puget, who made them all presents of such articles as were by them considered valuable, and were well accepted. Mr. Puget mentions also, that after an amicable intercourse had been established between the two parties, they entertained each other with songs and dances, according to the different customs of each particular tribe.” [Ibid., p. 405.]

The Chatham sailed later that day for Cross Sound, after leaving with Purtov some books for the English shipbuilder, Shields, and a polite letter to Baranov at Kodiak. This letter is mentioned by Baranov in his own report to Shelikhov the following year.

Lieutenant Puget was struck by the suspicious attitude of the Hoonah in contrast to that of the Yakutat Indians:

“On approaching cape Spencer, a dozen of the natives in one canoe visited the brig, all of whom expressed the same want of confidence that had been exhibited to us [i.e., to Vancouver in Cross Sound, ibid., pp. 362–363], and not one of them would venture on board, without a hostage being sent into the canoe. As this ceremony had not been before observed by any of our North West American visitors, it was not at first comprehended, but on the demand being understood, Mr. Puget ordered one of his people into the canoe; upon which the chief immediately repaired on board, and a large supply of halibut was soon purchased with iron. Whilst this traffic was going on, and the hostage remained in the canoe, the chief seemed perfectly satisfied, and reconciled to his situation; but the instant the man was desired to come from out of the canoe on board, the chief returned. This excessive suspicion and distrust, which had been by no means the general character of the North West Americans, is not easily to be accounted for; unless it be supposed, which is too much to be apprehended, that some of their civilized visitors had given them cause for adopting this precaution.” [Ibid., p. 408.]

While the Discovery and Chatham were in Port Althorp they were joined by the Jackall, whose captain reported that he had left Port Mulgrave on July 6, the morning after the Chatham had sailed, but that he had been driven back again by a strong gale. On his return he found the Russians still at Point Turner. They told him that the Yakutat Indians had captured six of the Kokiak natives, and Purtov begged Captain Brown to help him get them back. Accordingly one of the Jackall’s boats was sent with a fleet of baidarkas up the bay, where they soon met the Yakutat group. After much discussion, the latter released five of their Koniag prisoners in exchange for five of their own men whom the Russians had captured in retaliation. Purtov still had 12 men and women whom he retained, until the sixth Koniag should be restored. Vancouver's account, however, fails to make clear what was the final outcome. It seems doubtful that Purtov ever contemplated freeing all these captives for one Koniag, since it was the Russian policy to keep hostages. Captain Brown stayed only a very short time at Port Mulgrave, and Purtov with his whole party hastened to leave a few hours before him (ibid., p. 414).

Captain Vancouver lived long enough after his return to England to see to the publication of his voyages in 1798. These were soon translated into German (1799), French (1800), and Russian (1827–38). This ends the history of the great voyages of discovery to the Northwest Coast in the 18th century. For the Gulf of Alaska natives and for the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska there followed the period of Russian advance and occupation, which, as we shall see, lasted a much shorter time at Yakutat than at Sitka.

THE RUSSIANS

Shelikhov's “Glory of Russia” and Baranov (1792–93)

The expedition of Purtov to Yakutat Bay in 1794 can best be understood in the light of Shelikhov's plan for the expansion of his company, and especially of extending its operations east of Prince William Sound, where already the sea otter herds had become depleted. The private merchants had been forced out of business, leaving the field to the bigger companies, between whom competition was bitter. Of these rivals, the most important were the Lebedev-Lastochkin Company and that founded by Shelikhov, Golikov, and other Siberian merchants.[53] Agents of the former were on Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound, and were determined that Shelikhov‘s men should not go eastward beyond the Copper River.

Even in 1787, on his return to Irkutsk from Alaska, Shelikhov was presenting the Russian government with his plans for a strong company and was soon to seek an imperial monopoly (Okun, 1951, ch. 2). To secure the favor of the Tsarina he even begged her to authorize the building of churches in the colonies, while Golikov asked for missionaries, although it was quite clear that neither partner intended to allow religion or philanthropy to interfere with business (Bancroft, 1886, pp. 312–313).

Shelikhov was really planning a private fiefdom in Alaska under the imperial crown, to be maintained by colonial troops, by “hired” laborers (including convicts, who could be exploited without trouble since they would be powerless to break with the Company), and above all by natives who would be virtual serfs. In addition, it was planned to purchase slaves, ’kalgi’ from the natives, these persons “to become the absolute property of the Company” (Okun, 1951, p. 27). Slaves were also to be given as personal property to the Russians that Shelikhov hoped to establish as settlers in the Alaskan colony he envisioned as Slavorossiya or ‘Glory of Russia’ (ibid., pp. 32–34).

It was this dream which led eventually to the founding of the Russian American Company in July 1799, and the granting to it by imperial ukase a month later of the desired monopoly, even though Shelikhov himself had died in 1795 and his brother-in-law and successor, Nikolai Rezanov, had to carry forward his plans.

The most important man in Russian America was, of course, Alexandr Andreievich Baranov, whom Shelikhov had recruited in 1790. He relieved Delarov in July 1791 as manager of the Alaskan posts of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company and, as we know, retained this position in the later Russian American Company until November 1818. The Russian explorations of Yakutat in 1793, 1794, 1795, and later were undertaken by him or under his orders. He established there the ill-fated Russian post, destroyed in 1805, as well as the post built and lost, retaken and rebuilt at Sitka.

Baranov's first personal contact with the Yakutat Tlingit occurred in June 1792, while he was exploring Prince William Sound with a party of 30 Russians in two baidars and a fleet of 150 baidarkas, manned by (presumably 300) Koniags. On June 20, he was camped on Hinchinbrook Island, near what was shortly to become the site of the post of Nuchek. He had sent almost all his men across to Montague Island to put up a big supply of fish because he planned to winter in the sound, and had with him only 16 Russians, an unspecified number of Koniags, and some Chugach hostages that he had taken from the three main villages. Ismailov in the Sv Simeon was anchored in the vicinity.

As Baranov wrote to Shelikhov, July 24, 1793 (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., pp. 36–37; see also a letter of 1792 quoted in part by Okun, 1951, pp. 208):

“We saw signs of armed natives in the neighborhood and we heard from some Kolosh that their intentions were hostile but I did not believe it and expected no danger from the Chugatz, as we had taken from them 20 hostages, which as some released prisoners told us, were children from distinguished families.

[That night, however, Baranov's party were attacked, as they camped under their overturned baidar, in front of which they had felled two trees as a kind of fortification.]

“…in the dark of the night just before dawn a multitude of armed people surrounded us and from all sides began cutting and slashing on the part of the heathens who jumped over the two large pine trees we had felled, though 5 men were on guard, but they came so near during the darkness of the night that the Kolosh were only seen when within 10 paces of our tents; we fired at them from our guns without much success, since they were covered with three or four thicknesses of wooden shields, plaited with sinews and wore very thick rawhide cloaks; on their heads they had helmets in imitation of foxes or other animals, of wood, and very thick, which neither our bullets nor grapeshot could penetrate.” [Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 37.]

[It would appear that the Tlingit had profited by the display of shooting given by Malaspina‘s men in Yakutat Bay the year before.]

“In the darkness they appeared terrible to our people and their lines and movements were directed in the greatest order by one man with a commanding voice; and they marched to one side and then to the other, trying to break in upon us and the natives with us, but as one cannon remained to us, we began to do a little better; three times we fired the cannon without success, but then they began to give way and when the heathen saw that neither spears nor arrows hurt as much and that our volleys of musketry continued as strong as ever and that the ‘Okhotsk Commander’ was there himself, they began to fly to the bidars and went out to sea, while others remained in close vicinity to our camp. Two hours passed by in this manner and we kept up our fire until broad daylight. Some of our wounded natives excaped to the ship and informed Ismaïloff of our situation and he sent a bidar full of people to our assistance and these men saw 6 large wooden canoes with well-armed barbarians.

“[No para.] One of the wounded explained that these were Kolosh from Yakoutat Bay and Cape St. Elías and had come to avenge some injury inflicted upon them by the Chugatz the preceding year (1791). They had made a sudden attack and killed quite a number and then had surrounded our camp, thinking that we were Chugatz people also, but when they had found out that we were Russians they had resolved to measure their strength with ours, especially as they knew that we had many valuables with us.

“[No para.] We found 12 dead men on the spot, but their wounded they had carried off, and a trail of blood, two versts long, led to their bidars. Of our men they had killed at the very beginning a man named Kotovshikoff, from Barvaoul, and two weeks later Naspeloff, of Tumensk, died of his wounds; nine men of the natives were killed and 15 of them wounded…. The barbarians carried off 4 of our Chugatz hostages; as soon as the attack began they threw themselves upon the Chugatz, but when they retired our small number and the continuous rain did not allow us to follow them and rescue the prisoners, but from a wounded man who afterwards died we heard that they had expected a re-inforcement of 10 bidars from Copper river [Eyak] and intended to destroy the Chugatz and then go to fight the Kenaitze [Tanaina of Cook Inlet].” [Ibid., pp. 37–38.]

This information about Yakutat intentions was apparently obtained from four men who were captured by the Chugach and were brought to Baranov by one of his Chugach hostages. Although Bancroft (1886, p. 327) did not believe this explanation, it seems quite plausible to me in view of the bitter hatred of the Chugach felt by the Yakutat Tlingit, the Eyak, and even the Copper River Atna (cf. Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 146–149; de Laguna and McClellan, fieldnotes). All of these peoples have traditions of raids on the Chugach, and the latter also have similar traditions (Birket-Smith, 1953, pp. 141–142).

Because of this attack, Baranov changed his plans and returned to Kodiak for the winter. Here he at once set about shifting his headquarters from Three Saints Bay to Pavlosk (St. Paul) Harbor farther north on the island, and established the shipbuilding yard in Blying Sound, where Shields, who had come from Okhotsk in the Severnui Orel (Northern Eagle), built a new vessel, the Fenix (Phoenix), launched August 1794.

By the spring of 1793 this work was so far advanced that in June 1793, Baranov sent Shields with his four English sailors to Yakutat Bay in the Orel to escort a party of 170 baidarkas, under the leadership of four Russians, Purtov, Prianisbruskov, Voroshilov, and Galaktianov.[54] The object of this expedition was to find new sea otter breeding grounds. It is not certain whether the Orel or the baidarka fleet actually entered Yakutat Bay. They became separated near “Cape St. Elias” [Kayak Island? Cape Suckling? or the shore near Sitkagi Bluffs?], but Purtov's party saw many sea otter near Yakutat Bay and at other places along the coast, and easily secured 400 skins. They cruised about for some time, until the weather became bad, and the native “Kolosh” began to show a hostile disposition. On their way back, Purtov met an “English vessel from Boston” under Captain James, and told the latter that “our stations extended from Kadiak to Ltua Bay” (Tikmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 44). This, of course, was a lie intended to discourage foreigners from trying to obtain furs in these regions. Baranov was delighted at Purtov's discoveries.

MAP 23.—Yakutat Bay to Lituya Bay, 1849. (Tebenkov, 1852, detail of map vii.)

Purtov and Kulikalov (1794)

It was to follow up these promising discoveries that Baranov sent a second expedition in 1794 to “Ledian off Bay” (Icy Bay) and Yakutat, where the leader, Purtov, met Lieutenant Puget in the Chatham. The report made by Egor Purtov and Demid Kulikalov to Baranov, August 9, 1794 (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., pp. 60–67), is naturally more detailed than what Lieutenant Puget was able to tell Captain Vancouver of their dealings, but, as already mentioned, it differs in certain significant points. While we must remember that the dates will not coincide because the Russians were using the Julian calendar, and the English the modern, or Gregorian, calendar, the Russians also seem to have been careless about dating events.

The expedition consisted of about 500 baidarkas with Koniag, Aleut, and Chugach, the Russian hunters Shvedzov, Repin, and Voroshilov, five men from the shipbuilding station on Blying Sound, and five more laborers who were not needed there. The party had started from Kenai, Cook Inlet, on May 8, and after recruiting some of the men and procuring guns and ammunition at Blying Sound, went on to Prince William Sound, where they fell in with the agents of the Lebedev Company. The latter had just founded a post at or near Nuchek on Hinchinbrook Island, and also claimed to have others at Tatitlik in Prince William Sound and at the mouth of the Copper River. They tried to frighten Purtov's party from going farther to the east.

However, the latter went on “to the first mouth of the Copper River,” and then, on May 24, at “the second mouth,” met two Chugach baidarkas whose crews assured them that there was not then and had never been any trading post in that area. They also reported that a baidar or big skin canoe had come from the interior with “Mednovtze people” (Atna), but refused to guide the Russians to where they had seen the Athabaskans. Although the Russians went 15 versts (about 10 statute miles) up the river, they failed to see them.

From here the party went to “Kaniak Island” [Kanak Island, or possibly Wingham Island in Controller Bay?] to fish for halibut and hunt sea otter. The Russians were unable to make contact with the timid Eyak, for as they report:

“On the 30th we left Kaniak and went across a strait to the mainland and after rounding a point we went to the shore where we saw a cabin but the people had all fled, leaving all their property behind of which nothing was taken. A small amount of provisions was taken but in its place beads and corals were left in the house. Meantime a bidar was sighted in the distance, traveling along the Kolosh shore; a few bidarkas with natives were sent out at once along the shore to meet it, but as soon as they were noticed they appeared to be frightened and expected nothing but robbery at our hands and while we tried to get to speak to them and ask them to come to our camp they hurried away from the bidarkas sent out to meet them, made for the beach, pulled their bidar ashore and fled inland, leaving many articles in the bidar and on the beach of which nothing was taken.” [Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., pp. 61–62.]

Although we do not know whether these episodes occurred in Controller Bay or just east of Cape Suckling, perhaps at Ugalenka River, the expression “Kolosh shore” strongly suggests the ałyI-Kagwantan territory between Cape Suckling and Cape Yakataga. Certainly it was here that the first clash occurred with Eyak-speaking natives, and the report of Purtov and Kulikalov to Baranov (which we quote) should be compared with what they gave Lieutenant Puget to understand had occurred at “Riko bolshe unala” (see pp. 154–155).

On the 31st the Russians camped at “an Ougalakmute [Eyak] village,” apparently abandoned through fear of the Russians. Some of the hunters reported hearing voices in the woods, near a small stream where many tracks of adults and children could be seen. That night six Russians and two interpreters went to look for the fugitives, following a trail across one stream and coming to another which they could not ford, but where they saw some huts, apparently also deserted.

“They went down close to the water's edge in the woods and could smell smoke and when they finally heard children crying they went straight on through the woods following the sound and holding their arms ready they rushed into the place and captured one chief, his brother and a slave, but when they brought the prisoners to our camp, one of our Kadiak interpreters, Ignatiz Bacharoff, was suddenly seized by two men springing from the woods and pierced with lances, but they could not assist him because he was across the river, but we took our prisoners to our camp on the other creek near the sea while the others escaped. [Ibid., p. 62.]

MAP 24.—Yakutat Bay to Cape Suckling, 1849. (Tebenkov, 1852, detail of map vii.)

[This account clearly indicates that it was the Russians who made the unprovoked attack.]

[No para.] “We told them through our interpreter that they had nothing to fear from us, took them into our tents and made presents to the Chief and his brother and asked them where their tribe was and finally the Chief consented to call them together in the camp, sending out his brother to call them in. On the 3rd of June the Ougalat [Eyak] people came to camp and were received with presents. Their families were counted and 7 hostages taken from them, among them 2 men from Yakoutat Bay. When all the people went away again the hostages only remained with us and one Chief voluntarily asked to go with us to Yakoutat Bay. We left at that village a paper saying that the inhabitants had become subjects of the Russian Empire, a copy of which document is appended to this report. They were asked if they had not with them as prisoners some European people, to which they all unaminously answered that not a single European had ever been with them.” [Ibid.]

Bancroft (1886, p. 346 note 21) indicates that the Russian government had ordered such inquiries, believing it possible that some of LaPérouse's men might have escaped drowning, but be held as slaves. The questions also suggest concern for possible survivors from the wreck on “Pamplona Shoal,” which in turn reminds us of the native tradition (p. 233).

These natives seem to have been those who attacked Baranov's party on Hinchinbrook Island in 1792; “…but it was clear that they had then not the slightest reason for hostility towards us as we were the first Russians they had seen.” They reported that several of their men had been wounded in this raid, and that they had killed and wounded several Koniags, and had captured the four Chugach hostages of the Russians. They said that the latter had been taken to Yakutat Bay where they subsequently died. The natives

“answered unanimously that the Ougaliagmutes had planned, together with the people of Yakoutat Bay, an attack upon the Chugatz, but that they were not guilty of hostile intentions against the Russians. In the first place they had not known at all that the Russians were allied with the Chugatz with whom they lived in almost continual warfare and they gave hostages to each other whenever they had any intercourse.” [Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 63.]

Purtov's party stayed at this place until June 5, when they went to Ledianov Bay, “which is called Nachik by the inhabitants there.” (Is this “Wachik,” or rather Wae or ae, initial w and n being sometimes interchanged in Tlingit proper names?) Here they secured 400 sea otters, and then went on into Yakutat Bay, where the Eyak chief and a Kodiak man who could speak Tlingit were sent on ahead to inform the inhabitants that the Russians were friendly. In the meantime, the party camped at “one of the capes of Yakoutat Bay,” probably Cape Manby, and the next day went hunting, but had the misfortune to lose two Koniags whose baidarka capsized in the surf (ibid.).

“On the same day [June 12] the Ougaliagmute Chief returned from the village on Yakoutat Bay and with him the Yakoutat Chief sent his own son as hostage and three wands, ornamented with beads and eagle feathers, together with some sea-otter skins; according to their custom these wands are a sign of friendship. Our Kadiak man S‘emen Checheneff remained with them as hostage on our part.” [Ibid.]

Bad weather prevented the Russian party from crossing to the Yakutat village, but on the evening of the 13th (according to the Russian calendar; June 26th according to the Gregorian), the Chatham, which Purtov had already met in Cook Inlet that April, was seen entering the bay. Kachessov was sent in a baidarka to speak the ship. He furnished her with 30 fresh halibut, and was “very hospitably received and treated to whisky” (ibid.)

“After passing the night at that place [Point Manby?] we started early in the morning for the Yakoutat village, and the hostage who showed the route told us to proceed to an island which was situated directly opposite the village, where the ship had also anchored. [This village or camp may have been on the north end of Khantaak Island, and the Russian camp on a small island near by: Kriwoi or Otemeloi, for the Chatham was anchored in that vicinity on the night of June 27, Gregorian. Purtov, however, makes no mention of spending the night aboard ship with his hostage chief.] But on the 15th the ship hoisted anchor and proceeded into a cove situated in the interior of the Bay, where it anchored in exactly the same spot where the ship ‘Vassili’ [Trekh Sviatiteli surely?] anchored in the year [1]788.” [This would appear to be Port Mulgrave [ibid., p. 64].]

[Purtov and Kulikalov now give an account of their reception by the Yakutat natives at the village on Khantaak Island(?):]

“When we had reached the village and landed on the beach the Chief and many of his people emerged from their huts, dancing and singing and when they came to our bidarkas they asked us to stop and when we consented a number of men (about 20) came toward us and lifted up the bidarkas with us sitting in it, and carried us in their hands to a larger building which stood near the beach. The Chief then asked us into the hut and began to treat us to food, consisting of halibut meat, fresh and dried, spruce-bark pans with berries preserved in oil, etc. He also presented us with two sea-otters, in exchange for which we gave him beads, corals and copper-rings. After remaining with them a few hours we returned to our camp taking the Chief and his command with us and after he had consented to give us some more hostages they returned again, taking with them the same S’emen Checheneff as hostage on our part.

“[No para.] On the 16th the Chief was expected at our camp as he had promised, but when he did not come Kulikaloff and Akhmuilin were sent to him and when they reached the village they intended to take the Chief with them, but he demanded that a Russian be left in his place. They found themselves compelled to leave Akhmuilin in the village as a pledge and then the Chief with 15 of his best men were taken to our camp where he was very hospitably received and presented with beads, corals and copper shields, after which the negotiations began.” [Ibid.]

From the Yakutat chief, the Russians learned that the chief to whom Ismailov and Bocharov in 1788 had given the shield with the imperial coat-of-arms had died, “and on his death the shield had been sold to the people living on Chilkat Bay [Sitka Sound or Lynn Canal] and that there the upper part had been accidentally broken off.” All of this certainly sounds like the distribution of coppers at an important funeral potlatch. The Yakutat people also admitted that in 1792 they and the Eyak had planned an attack on the Chugach, and “without the least intention of doing so had killed one Russian at the beginning of the fight,” as Baranov had reported. “They acknowledged that they had offended us and said that they had known we were allied with the Chugatz, but when they had gone to camp they had learned that the Russians had resolved to attack them,” (ibid.,), so presumably they attacked first, a statement which contradicts that previously made by the Eyak. They admitted that they had taken the four Chugach child hostages, but when the Russians asked for their return, the Yakutat said that

“these hostages had been sold to tribes living beyond Chilkat bay and that most of them had died there subsequently.

“[No Para.] Upon this we assured them that we desired to live in perpetual friendship with them and the Chief formally presented us with Yakoutat Bay and the small islands within it.” [Ibid., pp. 64–65.]

Details of the exchange of hostages which followed are unfortunately omitted from Tikhmenev's publication of Purtov's letter. It is, of course, impossible to tell what the Yakutat people were giving the Russians, although according to their own traditions they offered nothing more than permission to build a trading post (see p. 259). Bancroft (1886, p. 347) suggests that the chief was drunk on Russian liquor when he gave away the southeastern part of the bay. We can be sure that they were not giving away all their territorial rights to the whole bay!

“On the 20th we left the small island and proceeded with the whole party to the cove where the English ship was anchored. As we apprehended no danger from the Yakoutat people by reason of the many hostages demanded of us we established our camp directly opposite the ship in the bay.

“[No para.] On the 22nd several bidars came to our camp and some small canoes with Kolosh living beyond Grekoff Island [[55]] at Ltua Bay which is situated about one day‘s journey in a bidarka from Yakoutat; we received them hospitably and presented the Chief and most prominent men with beads, corals, copper kettles and rings, both large and small, and with medals to be worn on the breast. After talking with them for some time we demanded hostages from them, to which the Chief consented under condition that we and the Kadiak people also gave hostages. Four of the Kadiak men volunteered to remain with them until exchanged, when a list of tribes was made out which is hereto appended.” [Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 65.] [This and several similar lists are also omitted.]

“They were asked if they knew of any trading companies to their shores, Europeans or Russians, who traded with them or had exchanged hostages, but they replied that as far as they knew there was no station of Europeans or Russians anywhere further down the coast but as we saw with them many guns and ammunition of lead and powder in considerable quantities we asked them from whom they had received the guns and powder when they said that they had exchanged them for sea-otters from Europeans who came to them every year in ships to purchase sea-otters. They asked us also for guns and ammunition, but we refused firmly and they did not repeat their demand.” [Ibid.]

It was, of course, a firm policy of the Russians never to trade firearms to the natives.

The Jackall is reported to have arrived on June 24 (Julian), and the Chatham sailed on June 26, “having received as a present one female full-grown sea-otter and one 3-hole bidarka” (ibid.). The third hole in such a skin-covered canoe was an innovation which the Russians had induced the Aleut and Pacific Eskimo to adopt, for the convenience of a Russian passenger. Purtov and Kulikalov also noted that the English were very grateful for the fresh provisions with which they had kept the ship supplied.

“After this the tribes around Yakoutat came with the proposition that as they had consented to give us hostages they should receive some of the Kadiak men from us. Some relatives of the Chief of Ougashensk and the Chugatz Chief consented to this and we agreed to wait for an exchange of hostages from their villages until the 30th, but when we had received no news from them at that time Kulikaloff with 4 Russians and several Kadiak men went to their village to find out their intentions. When they arrived at the village and landed upon the beach they began to negotiate and asked for the hostages according to agreement, when they were answered that that business could not then be attended to, as the tribe from Akoy Bay [literally ‘Bays of Akoy,’ i.e., the Akwe River-Dry Bay area], who are related to them, had come to pay a visit, but when they had gone home again they would exchange hostages from both sides. Kulikoff [sic] could not make them change their mind and was glad to get away in safety from the shore. [Ibid., p. 66.] [Again, details about exchange of hostages are omitted.]

“On the 1st of July we went to the village on Yakoutat Bay with the intention of liberating the interpreter Chicheneff and the other Kadiak men detained with him. When the commander of the English vessel [Captain Brown of the Jackall] learned of our intention he accompanied us with an armed whaleboat and six sailors in person, and went with us though we tried to dissuade him from such a step and had asked for no such assistance. [The captain is earlier reported to understand “but very little Russian” (p. 65); yet Brown certainly thought Purtov asked for his help.] Nevertheless the whaleboat came along with us and on arriving near the village we stopped close to the beach and demanded the interpreter Nechaëff and the other Kadiak men detained with him. They only gave us one of the men, a Chief from Afognak, and said that the following day they would go home and promised to bring the other men to our camp. After this we returned to the party in the bay. [Ibid.]

“[No para.] On the 2nd of June [July] the Akoy Chief and 8 men came to us in a bidar bringing 3 of our Kadiak men, having left behind the interpreters Checheneff and Nechaëff and said that those men would be brought in another bidar, promising to go after that bidar himself and send us Nechaëff. The Chief asked us to await his return, but fearing some evil design on his part we made him leave behind two of his relatives and some of his best men, a daughter of a prominent man and a boy who had been captured in 3 canoes, numbering 14 persons; we also kept with us the brother of the Yakoutat Chief. On the same day the Ougaliagmute and Kolosh hostages were sent to the English vessel as a measure of protection against the Yakoutat tribe. The Chief of the Yakoutat village sent a canoe with 4 men, demanding that his brother be returned, in place of whom he promised to send his son.” [Ibid., pp. 66–67.]

[If the action of the Yakutat chief seems callous, we must remember that his brother belonged to his own sib and was perhaps his successor, whereas his son would belong to the opposite moiety.]

“On the morning of the 3rd we awaited the sending of the promised hostage and the return of Nechaïeff, but as we could learn nothing about them we resolved to go back to Yakoutat Bay [?] and take the hostages which the commander of the English vessel had been kind enough to keep for us.” [Ibid.]

The Russians then left Yakutat Bay, where they had obtained some 515 sea otter skins. On the return voyage bad weather prevented them from landing on “the beach opposite to Cape St. Elias.” Could this possibly be the “Pamplona Shoal” that Purtov had intended to visit? At Nuchek they informed Balushin, foreman of the Lebedev Company, and Samoilov, its navigator, that they had been “beyond Yakoutat Bay,” and they gave the latter a list of the villages visited and of the chiefs from whom hostages had been taken, and let him make a copy of the agreements with the Kolosh which had been drawn up by the interpreters. Unfortunately neither these documents, nor the lists of presents made “in Ougaliagmute, Yakoutat and Akoy Bay and to the Kolosh tribes” are attached to the document published by Tikhmenev (ibid., p. 67).

Baranov, reporting Purtov‘s expedition in a letter of May 20, 1795, to Shelikhov and Poveloi (ibid., p. 83), specifies that from Yakutat, Lituya, and “Akoy” Bays, some 15 hostages were taken, and 4 “prominent Kadiak men” were left in their place at Yakutat. These 15 captives are reported to have been baptized at Kodiak, where the first Russian priests in Alaska had just arrived (Tikhmenev, 1861, vol. 1, p. 41; Krause, 1958, p. 29).

The account of this Russian expedition to Yakutat has been quoted at length because it so clearly illustrates the attitude of the Russians towards the natives, as well as that of superiors to inferiors within the Company. All of this indicates the picture of the White man which the Yakutat were to get from the Russian colony in their midst, and explains also how the Russians were to provoke their own destruction.

“Novo Rossiysk” (1795–1801)

The events of the next years, leading to the establishment of posts at Yakutat and Sitka, are difficult to reconstruct, for there are incomplete, inconsistent, and contradictory statements in the summaries given by Khliebnikov (1861 a, 1861 b), Tikhmenev (1861–63), and Bancroft (1886), and even the documents quoted by these historians and by Okun (1951) too often fail to supply exact information.

We may infer, however, that on August 9, 1794, Shelikhov wrote Baranov detailed plans for the new colony to be established on the mainland and named “Slavorossiya” or “Novo Rossiysk.” Baranov had under him at Kodiak some 149 men, but that same year received an additional 123, who included artizans and peasants recruited from among convicts and Siberian exiles (Okun, 1951, pp. 30, 32–34; Bancroft, 1886, pp. 351–355). Apparently Shelikhov had dispatched two ships from Okhotsk that year: the Ekaterina, which arrived promptly, and the Trekh Sviatiteli, which came in 1795. The latter “after a two [sic] years’ voyage from Kamtchatka, with her cargo of stores and provisions in good order and intact,” according to Bancroft (1886, p. 355), who also states (p. 352) that both ships had reached Kodiak in August, 1794, “with provisions, stores, implements, seeds, cattle, and a hundred and ninety-two persons on board, among whom were fifty-two craftsmen and agriculturalists, and eighteen clergymen and lay servitors in charge of the archimandrite Ioassaf.” The supplies and colonists were intended not only for the colony to be founded at Yakutat, but, like the missionaries and artizans, for the many posts already established on the Aleutians, Kodiak Island, and Cook Inlet.

The summer of 1795 seems to have been a busy season for Baranov's men. As the latter wrote to Shelikhov and Poveloi on May 20, 1795, from Kodiak: “I now send out Messers Rodionoff and Ostrogin to Cape St. Elias for the purpose of seizing Kaniak Island, opposite the mouth of Copper River, with a large bidar and a sufficient number of men, to establish a station for the winter and perhaps for permanent use.” This was to shut out the Lebedev Company and other rivals. The 40-foot and 35-foot sailing ships, Dolphin and Olga, had been launched at Blying Sound that spring, and Baranov proposed to dispatch Shields in the Dolphin to explore the coasts between Lituya Bay and Queen Charlotte Islands (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., pp. 94, 95). Baranov also wrote of trying to make bricks, of hoping to procure copper from the Copper River, and especially about the prospects for an agricultural station near Cape St. Elias.

According to Tikhmenev (1861, vol. 1, pp. 50–51), Shields was sent south in the Dolphin as planned, but Khliebnikov (1861 b, p. 41) states that Shields went in the Orel as far south as Bucareli Bay; but both agree that Baranov himself sailed in the Olga to visit Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, and Yakutat, before going on to “Chilkat Bay” or Sitka Sound, where he was to meet Shields. With Baranov in the Olga was the Archimandrite, full of plans for “an eccesiastical empire in Russian America,” but destined to be thwarted by Baranov and to drown on his return from consecration as bishop, when the Phoenix was lost in the winter of 1799–1800 (Bancroft, 1886, p. 365).

In the meantime, Baranov had sent Polomoshnoi, appointed as leader of the colonists, directly to Yakutat Bay. He was to select a site, begin erecting the necessary buildings, and start the experiment of planting different kinds of grain and vegetables. Ensign Cherto-vitz was to be in charge of the hunters and of the colonists in case of an attack by the natives. We also gather from Tikhmenev (1861, vol. 1, pp. 50–51) that this party and their supplies were taken to Yakutat Bay in the Trek Sviatiteli. The group on this ship included “a part of the missionaries [none of whom stayed at Yakutat as far as I know], the settlers, and about 30 hunters. The cargo of the vessel consisted of various materials, stores, and provisions” (ibid., p. 50). Father Juvenal seems to have been aboard also, but only to draw up some plans at Yakutat for Baranov. He returned to Kodiak that fall, and was murdered by the Tanaina Indians at Lake Iliamna the following September (Bancroft, 1886, pp. 365–374).

Bancroft (1886, p. 350) also reports that in 1795 Baranov sent Zaikov to Yakutat Bay in command of a “sea-going vessel,” because Purtov in 1794 had brought back a promise from the Yakutat chief that many sea otter skins would be waiting for the Russians. However, the chief did not live up to his promise and the only furs secured were the 400 taken by the native hunters with the Russians. Their activities were bitterly resented by the Yakutat people. “What the result may have been is difficult to say, for just then two Aleuts were seized with small-pox, and panic-stricken the party hastened away” (Bancroft, 1886, p. 350). While I am not aware of any written record that this disease was communicated to the local natives at this time, my Yakutat informants reported that a smallpox epidemic had struck them before the Russians came, i.e., before they had established their post.

Baranov had just reached Nuchek on his way down the coast when he received word that many of the natives in the Russian service, who had been hunting at Yakutat, had fled because they were afraid of the local “Kolosh—a warlike tribe who are always in possession of an abundance of guns, powder and equipment, which are furnished to them by the English” (Tikhmenev, 1861, vol. 1, p. 52). This is probably the same flight as that already ascribed by Bancroft to an outbreak of smallpox. Baranov punished the Kenai chief who led the retreat by ordering half of his beard and mustaches cut off. From Nuchek, Baranov went on himself to Yakutat.

“On his arrival in Yakoutat in August, Baranoff induced many tribes of savages who were still hostile to the Russians to enter into friendly relations with him and hoisted to a pole the flag and coat of arms of Russia amid firing of guns, beating of drums and shouting of hurrahs, when according to his report, all of Baranoff‘s people formed in line and went through military evolutions.

“On account of the lack of accommodations and want of provisions on the vessel, Baranoff left there 30 men and soon reached Chilkat Bay [Sitka Sound], but found none of his vessels there.” [Here, Baranov took possession of the country, despite the hostility of the Sitka Tlingit. After a second visit to Cook Inlet, he returned to Kodiak (Tikhmenev, 1861, vol. 1, p. 53).]

Although Polomoshnoi had reported unfavorably about the Yakutat Bay area as a site for a settlment, Baranov went ahead with the project the following year (1796). The Trekh Sviatiteli reached Yakutat on June 25, while Baranov followed in the Olga on July 15. The Ekaterina also brought some of the exiles for the colony. Shields in the Orel also visited Yakutat, while convoying a fleet of 450 baidarkas to Lituya Bay, where 1,800 sea otter were killed in a very short time.

“The few men left at the place [Yakutat] the previous autumn were found in good health, but complained of having been frequently in want of food during the winter,” according to Bancroft (1886, p. 356). Khliebnikov (1861 a, pp. 1–2) however writes:

“In 1795 a transport ship with a number of people was sent off to settle at Yakoutat, but getting short of fresh water through bad management of the commander, they returned to Kadiak. In the following year, a fort was built and in its immediate neighborhood a settlement was established by agricultural laborers sent out by Highest permission

to inaugurate agriculture and cattle-breeding.”

This statement would cast some doubt as to what was the first winter actually spent at Yakutat. It is more clear, however, that the fortified post was erected in 1796.

Although delayed by rains until August, Baranov set about building huts, into which the (married?) settlers and hunters moved. He also saw to the erection of barracks for the (unmarried?) men and of storehouses for goods and provisions. When he sailed at the end of two months, he instructed Polomoshnoi, who was left in charge, to continue building according to the original plans, and to follow the instructions for planting crops, and for procuring and storing food for the winter. The little colony, which Baranov called Novo Rossiysk or Slavorossiya, was composed of some 80 persons, consisting of the settlers and the hunters, together with their wives and children (Tikhmenev, 1861, vol. 1, p. 54).

[While Baranov was at Yakutat,] “the principal Chief of that region appeared before him with a large number of people with their customary ceremonies, fully armed and dancing and singing. The reason for this festivity was the general wish of the savages to enter into friendly relations with the Russians. In proof of their sincerity the Chief, to assure Baranoff, sent his own children and relatives as hostages. On account of the great age of the Chief [presumably “Ankau Juné” of Malaspina], a relative [“nephew,” according to the translation by Michael Dobrynin, 1940] was chosen in his place, with the general consent of the savages and upon his request a diploma signed by Baranoff was given him as a token of the power bestowed upon him.” [Ibid, pp. 54–55.]

The new chief was evidently the Yaodaqet of my informants, and one wonders to what extent his firm control over hunting in Yakutat Bay was purely aboriginal or may in part have reflected Russian notions of authority (see pp. 374–375).

“The Ougalakhmutes which live in the interior from Yakutat Bay also sent hostages, receiving in return written promises that they would not suffer any indignity or ill-treatment at the hands of the Russians” (ibid., p. 55). These people were probably Eyak-speakers living on the foreland between Yakutat Bay and Dry Bay.

The following winter was a hard one for the little colony. There were disputes between the hunters under Stepan Larionov and the settlers under Polomoshnoi. As Baranov wrote to Shelikhov, the settlers were in open revolt against the commandant, Ivan Grigoryevich Polomoshnoi, threatening to break up his store and claiming that they had been cheated by the company (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 95; quoted by Okun, 1951, p. 188). Khliebnikov (1861 a, p. 2, note) adds that: “The two overseers, stationed at different localities were in continual quarrel and strife.” Polomoshnoi, was, however, in charge of the whole establishment, and also aroused such hatred among the natives that, even after his removal in 1799, good feeling was never restored. Proper accommodations and provisions were lacking, and 30 members of the settlement died of scurvy during the winter of 1796: 13 hunters, 7 settlers, and 10 women and children.

MAP 25.—Yakutat Bay, 1849. Site of Russian Fort at x. (Tebenkov, 1852, detail of map vii.)

Baranov seems to have gone to Yakutat the next summer (1797), after news of the colonists’ misfortunes had been brought to Kodiak by Radionov in a skin boat. On his way to assist the colony, Baranov succeeded in recruiting practically all the Lebedev men at Nuchek and also obtained the surrender of the Chugach, who gave him 100 baidarkas and their crews. Thus, there was nothing further for him to fear in Prince William Sound. Meanwhile, Shields again took the Olga and a baidarka fleet down the coast, reaching Sitka Sound where they obtained 2,000 skins (Bancroft, 1886, pp. 357–358). In 1799 parties were hunting in Lituya Bay and at other places along the coast (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 139). Most of these parties were led by two or three Russians, but were not escorted by sailing vessels, even though they had to cross the dangerous Gulf of Alaska, which offered few landing places for their frail craft, and even though they were also exposed to the anger of the Tlingit who bitterly resented this poaching on their hunting grounds. “The village at Yakutat, though used as a resting place, was too far from the parties to be made a depot for the skins” obtained on these expeditions to southeastern Alaska. Parties that were too successful in hunting and that delayed their return until caught by autumn storms were lost in the Gulf (Khliebnikov, 1861 a, p. 3).

Unfortunately no report to which I have access details the events at Yakutat during the early years of the Russian colony. Nor is the Russian post itself described, except that Davidson (1869, p. 139) writes: “In 1795 the Russians had a post on the lagoon inside Cape Phipps, but it has been abandoned, as also one on the steep cliff east of the anchorage under Cape Turner.” This last would have been near the present site of the ‘Old Village’ at Yakutat, perhaps on the hill between the ‘Old Village’ and the mission, where there is now a graveyard. One would have supposed that Ankau Head, at the south side of the entrance to Ankau Creek, would have been a better location. When Belcher (1843, p. 85) visited Yakutat Bay in 1836 he noted the remains of a blockhouse on a cliff on the east side of the harbor. As already mentioned, the main colony, “New Russia” on “Russian Lake” in the Ankau lagoons, consisted of seven buildings inside a stockade, with five more outside the walls (Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 207). The natives also mentioned some kind of fortified position, or lookout post, on an island in the lagoon, another lookout or “lighthouse keeper” (sic) at Ocean Cape, and guards at the barrier on áwàł Creek. Cattle were said to have been kept at “Cows’ Bay” near the main post.

Apparently one of the Company's ships used to make an annual voyage to Yakutat, bringing supplies and perhaps replacements for those who had died, and taking back skins that had been collected. Baranov writes of sending the German navigator, Padgash to Yakutat in 1798 and 1799, and when the Phoenix was lost (in May, 1801), remarks that it will be hard to send the necessary annual reinforcements to Yakutat and Sitka. Furthermore, inefficiency, bad feeling between the hunters and settlers at Yakutat, and general hatred of Polomoshnoi (which Lieutenant Talin only aggravated on his visits with the supply vessel), and presumably failure of the agricultural experiments (which Polomoshnoi thought never should have been attempted at so unpromising a locality), made Baranov think of abandoning the whole Yakutat project (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., pp. 134–141).

It is quite evident that Baranov was less interested in the Yakutat venture than in his plan to establish a post at Sitka, in the heart of the Tlingit country, from which he hoped to exclude the foreign traders who were obtaining such rich hauls of furs. In the spring of 1799 he set out, planning to straighten out affairs at Yakutat before going on to found a new fort at Sitka. Baranov had with him the Orel, the brigantine Elizaveta, recently arrived from Ohkotsk, and the new sloop Konstantine, built in Alaska. The expedition was accompanied by a fleet of almost 200 baidarkas, and in Prince William Sound was joined by 150 more under Kuskov.[56] Baranov was, however, soon to encounter trouble.

On May 2, when passing Cape Suckling. 30 of the baidarkas with 60 men were lost in a storm. Baranov, who seems to have been also at that time in a baidarka, ordered all of the men in the skin boats ashore. However, here they were surprised by the “Kolosh,” who succeeded in killing or capturing some 26 of the unfortunate “Aleuts,” since there were only two Russians with Baranov and only a few hunters armed with guns to defend the group (Bancroft, 1886, pp. 386–388).

This episode was told as the story of “The Massacre at St. Elias Rock” (Birket-Smith, 1953, pp. 140–141), by a Chugach informant in 1933 who said that the events had taken place when his grandfather was alive. He ascribed the massacre to a Yakutat Indian named Yakegua who came from Chilkat River in Controller Bay, and whom the Russians later tortured to death, and to a Chugach named Irquq, who came from Gravina Bay in Prince William Sound. Those slain belonged to different Chugach tribes on Hinchinbrook and Hawkins Island. This would show that even such traditional enemies as the Tlingit and the Chugach could unite against the Russians and their associates.

At Yakutat, Baranov “found nothing but trouble and disaster in every department,” as he wrote to Larionov at Unalaska on July 24, 1800, after his return to Kodiak from Sitka (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 140; see also Bancroft, 1886, pp. 394–398, for quotations from this illuminating letter). The commander of the settlement, Polomoshnoi, asked, or had asked to be relieved, so Baranov appointed Nikolai Monkhin in his place. Later that year, the Orel, with Polomoshnoi, Lieutenant Talin, and all her crew, was lost near Montague Island. According to Bancroft, Polomoshnoi had gone to Kodiak to protest conditions at Yakutat but had been ordered back to his post by Baranov's representative, and was on his way to Yakutat when the Orel was wrecked (Bancroft, 1886, p. 391; Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 136).

Baranov was also told that at Yakutat “several people had been made sick by eating certain herbs, but that others had been seized with the same symptoms who had not partaken of the herbs at all. The symptoms were the same—swelling of the throat and pain in the chest and in a few days twenty persons had been attacked and fifteen died” (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 143). Nor was this the only loss from poisonous food (although the Yakutat deaths would seem to have been due to some other infection) for, of the large party of “Aleut” (or Koniag?) hunters sent back from Sitka later that summer, about 100 died at Poison Cove in Peril Strait from eating poisonous mussels, and Baranov was afraid that the survivors would be attacked by the “Kolosh” on their way from Yakutat to Prince William Sound.

Also in this same letter, Baranov complained that the Tlingit were being supplied with quantities of firearms and ammunition, particularly by American traders who had been sending from six to eight ships to the Northwest Coast for the last 2 or 3 years. These Boston men not only gave the natives far more for their furs than the Russians could afford, but furnished the Tlingit with pistols, muskets, four-pound cannon, and a few weapons of even heavier caliber. It was natural that with such arms the Sitka Tlingit soon became bold. Even during the winter of 1799–1800 their initially friendly attitude towards the Russians underwent a marked change, and an armed clash at the newly established Fort St. Michael (at what is now called “Old Sitka”) was narrowly averted by Baranov.

Presumably some of these arms also found their way to Yakutat, where the same hatred of the Russians and of their imported hunters was growing. The leaders of these posts, however, continued to ignore the signs and rumors of impending trouble even though Baranov seems to have been more concerned, to judge from a letter written on March 22, 1801, to Larionov, in which he tells of difficulties with the Koniag chiefs and expresses his fears that this disaffection would spread to Yakutat and Sitka.

Revolt of the Tlingit: Sitka (1802–04)

The Russian fort at Sitka was destroyed in June, 1802.[57] The successful attack was made when the Russians were divided: a party of Aleuts in 90 baidarkas under Urbanov had gone south to hunt sea otters; other groups were out hunting and fishing or attending to other duties, leaving most of the women and children and only 15 men at the barracks, under Vassili Medvednikov. Through Tlingit women who had been living with the Russians, the Indians seem to have learned all about the routine of the garrison and of the means of defense. The careful planning and strategy of the attack were similar to those successfully employed at Yakutat 3 years later, where also the natives took advantage of Russian carelessness, slack discipline, and poor morale.

At Sitka the Indians are said to have been assisted by some American or English seamen who had deserted their ship or been marooned at Sitka in 1799; three had joined the Russians, while the others remained with the Indians. It is also claimed that the natives had been further incited by British traders who hoped to profit from the elimination of their Russian competitors. Whether or not these charges are completely true, it is agreed that the English captain, Barber, and two American or British captains who came into port just after the fort had fallen, rescued the survivors who had escaped into the woods or had been enslaved by the Tlingit. Captain Barber took them (3 Russians, 5 Aleuts, 18 women, and 6 children) to Kodiak, but released them to Baranov only after obtaining a large ransom in furs.

Of more concern to us than the question of Anglo-American opportunism or complicity in the destruction of Sitka is the assertion that the attack was only part of a concerted plan involving most of the Tlingit tribes from southernmost Alaska to Yakutat. It is hard for us to learn the degree of cooperation implied, since the Russians who reported this plot were ignorant of Tlingit social organization. The groups forming the alliance would have been sibs, not whole tribes (local communities), as the Russians supposed. Furthermore, it is clear that some groups (sibs, lineages, or houses) were not involved. It is also hard for us to judge to what extent the inconclusive attack on Kuskov at Dry Bay (May 22–25), the successful assaults on Sitka (June 18 or 19) and on Urbanov in Frederick Sound (June 20–21), and the contemplated attack on the Yakutat post (late June) were actually all planned in advance, or to what extent news of earlier ventures precipitated later attempts by natives who were eager to seize any opportunity.

Khliebnikov reports the Indian plan as follows:

“Subsequently [after the attacks] Mr. Kuskoff accidentally learned from some Yakoutat Koloshi who were favorably disposed toward him that this plan was communicated with the greatest secrecy, through special agents sent from place to place. In pursuance of these communications the principal chiefs from the Charlotte Islands [i.e., Haida !], Stakhine [Stikine or Wrangell Tlingit], Kouieff [Kuiu], and Kake came to Khutznoff [Angoon] and perfected a plan by which they proposed to destroy all Russians and Aleuts and provided the cooperation of the Sitka Koloshi could be secured, but if they should not consent to this, to destroy them also without exception. The Chief of a village on one of the islands of Prince of Wales Archipelago, near Port Buccareli, by the name of Kaniagit [probably a Henya man, sib not identified] undertook to furnish as much powder as was necessary, guns and even cannons with grape and canister. The plan was communicated to the Sitka, Chilkhat and Yakoutat Koloshi, with the proposition of attacking the various establishments at one and the same time. In the north they were to attack the party coming from Kodiak [under Kuskov] and then return to the fort at Yakoutat and submit that place to the same fate…only the stubborn resistance of Kuskoff [see pp. 172–173] prevented the execution of this plan, but the settlement at Sitka and Urbanoff‘s party were destroyed nearly at the same time.” [Khliebnikov, 1861 b, pp. 53–54.]

“The Toyon Kaniagit, in undertaking to furnish powder, guns and cannons, assured the other Koloshi that the foreigners would give them all they required if only the Russians and Aleuts were exterminated everywhere in their country.” [Ibid., p. 54.]

Kuksov himself wrote to Baranov on July 1, 1802, from Yakutat, apparently just after the proposed attack on that post had been abandoned. His letter is worth quoting because it indicates the close connections maintained by the Yakutat Tlingit with all of the southern tribes, and also because our Yakutat informants did not talk about this earlier attempt to to drive out the Russians. As Kuskov explained:

“Two relatives of the Yakoutat Elder [chief] Khakskiaknu [, unidentified], who have their residence in Akosk village [Gue on the Akwe?], were last winter at Kaknaoutsk village [, Kanuwu, Grouse Fort on Icy Strait] and from there went together with Pavel and others, in a bidar, to Tuikin [, Dekína, ‘people far out (to sea),’ Henya Tlingit or Kaigani Haida of Dall Island] to have some games [attend a potlatch ?], and on the return journey from Tuikin they went to the Kouyuk village [a Kuiu village, perhaps on Tebenkov Bay, Kuiu Island], and from there to Khutznoff [Angoon, Admiralty Island], where the people had come together in bidars from several villages of the large island called Tuikin [Dall Island], which is situated near Beaver Bay,[58] in the direction of the Charlotte Islands; and when the chief called Kaniagit, from Kustasten[59] and the chiefs of other neighboring villages of Kouyutsk [Kuiu], Tuikinsk [Henya or Kaigani], and Kheksk [Kake], a tribe adjoining the Tuikinsk, called the Chouchkan [, CAx′n, Shakan on Kosciusko Island, a Henya village[60]], and many other neighbors of the Khutznoffs [Angoon], besides the chiefs of Kaknaützk [Grouse Fort] and Chilkhat village, held a council for the destruction of our fort at Novo-Arkhangelsk [Sitka] and our principal hunting parties on the American Coast and after long discussions it was agreed that at a certain date the coming Spring they should all assemble at the Khutznoff village and from there proceed to our fort and after joining the Sitka party make an attack upon the fort, but if the inhabitants of Sitka refused to participate in the attack they were to be destroyed also, but if they could not destroy the parties at once on account of their strength they were to watch their chance on the return journey of the party from Sitka, either at Destruction Bay [Poison Cove, Peril Strait] or some other convenient place, surround them, fall upon them from all sides and destroy them.

“[No para.] When every detail of the attack had been settled some of the chiefs went to Ledianoff Sound [Cross Sound] and the above-mentioned Chief from Tuikinsk [Dall Island] furnished a large quantity of powder and lead and other equipments and gave a few cannons to each of the Chiefs. These cannons which had been brought to Khutznoff [Angoon] and all the other guns and ammunitions he had received from the English or Republicans who have settled among them on Tuikin Island and built a fort, from where they send out vessels to trade along the coast, and an American vessel which wintered near the Khutznoff village told the inhabitants that they would not visit them with their ships any more as they did not have sea-otters enough to trade and said plainly that if they did not destroy our Fort Novo-Arkhangelsk at Sitka the Kolosh would deprive themselves of great advantages.

“[No para.] There is a report also, but we cannot say whether it is true, that at Chilkhat and other places three Americans purchased sea-otter skins with black-faced men [slaves]; but whether from the coasts of Africa or from the Svinikh Islands [Sandwich or Hawaiian Islands] those people could not know.

“[No para.] At the end of their villanous negotiations for the destruction of our fort and parties the Tuikinsk Toyoun and other conspirators made presents of powder and other ammunition to the Akoïsk Chiefs Chesnuikh and Ossip [DjIsnIa, a TłUknaAdi name ascribed to the builder of Frog House at Gue; is possibly ’AwcÀ’, a Yakutat Teqwedi name] and let them know that our fort at Novo-Arkhangelsk would be destroyed [and] advising them to do the same with the settlement at Yakoutat.” [Tikmenev, 1863, vol. II, Suppl., pp. 180–182.]

Khliebnikov (1861 b, p. 53) is astonished that so many tribes, numbering “over 50,000 souls[!],” who often warred among themselves, could have kept secret such a conspiracy. He also (p. 54) points out that not all the Tlingit cooperated in this scheme. Thus Medvednikov had heard rumors that the Tlingit wanted revenge “for some of their countrymen who had been killed the year before by the Aleuts” (ibid., p. 45), and this information must have come from friendly sources. Kuskov when at Yakutat in April had also received some warnings of the plot which, like Medvednikov, he ignored until too late. Even after the destruction of Sitka, Kuskov and his “Aleuts” were advised and warned by friendly natives, some of whom were evidently Hoonah. What is also astonishing is that the initiative for the attack upon the Russians seems to have come from the southernmost Tlingit, who had suffered only from poaching on their hunting grounds, not from oppression. This account conflicts with the local tradition at Sitka and Angoon that the attack on the Russians was undertaken by the Sitka KIksAdi. Perhaps the Dekina chief, Kaniagit, was a KIksAdi man, for this sib traces its origins to the south (Swanton, 1908, pp. 408–410).

The chiefs who actually led the attack at Sitka were “Ska-oushle-oot” or “Mikhaïloff,” “Katleyan” (Katłyan) whom the Russians had made “head chief,” and the latter's young relative. Some 60 or more canoes are reported to have come to Sitka to participate in the fight. There was also a similar gathering at Yakutat. While victory over the Russians at Sitka is generally ascribed to the KIksAdi, and Katłyan is the name of the leading chief of that sib in 1802, 1880, and 1904 (Beardslee, 1882, p. 45; Swanton, 1909, p. 1), it should be noted that this Raven sib has been, at least since 1904, deadly rivals of the Tł’UknaAdi, a Raven sib of Yakutat, Sitka, and Hoonah. A chief of the latter, as we have seen from Kuskov's report, was involved in the part of the plan directed against Yakutat. I cannot identify “Ska-oushle-oot.”

We do not know what sibs attacked Urbanov on June 20–21. The latter, with a party of “Aleuts” in 90 baidarkas, had gone from Sitka to “Sea Otter Bay” on or near Dall Island, where they had killed some 1,300 sea otter without opposition from the natives. They were on their way back towards Sitka when they were attacked in “Kenoffsky Sound” (Frederick Sound, probably near its juntion with Chatham Strait). Krause (1956, p. 31) identifies the locality as “Kek” or “Kake Strait” (probably Keku Strait, between Kuiu and Kupreanof Island) and the attackers as Kake or Kuiu. Urbanov and about 13 “Aleuts” managed to escape, cautiously made their way to Sitka, where they saw the still smoking ruins, and finally reached Yakutat on August 3, where they reported the tragedy. A few days later 15 more “Aleuts” from the party arrived, thus bringing to 42 the total number of survivors from the Sitka settlement, where more than 200 had been killed, including the commander of the fort.

While the Russians and their native hunters were being massacred in southeastern Alaska, there was trouble at Yakutat.

Ivan Alexandrovich Kuskov, Baranov's most trusted assistant, had been sent from Kodiak to Yakutat with a fleet of over 450 baidarkas. Here,

“he received some dark hints of the Koloshi's intentions to destroy all Russians and Aleuts, but seeing the friendly disposition of those at Yakoutat, he believed these rumors to be false.

“About 60 bidarkas which had gone from Yakoutat to a place called Akoï [Akwe River] found there a large number of Koloshi who, to defy Kuskoff, purposely picked quarrels with some of the Aleuts and beat them. Mr. Kuskoff tried all means of pacification, but they remained inflexible.” [Khliebnikov, 1861 b, p. 51.]

According to Tikhmenev (1861, vol. 1, p. 90), the Russian party had stopped at a village near Yakutat to dry furs which had been soaked when their baidarkas overturned. Tikhmeney is, however, in error in reporting that the natives became aggressive because they had learned of the destruction of the Sitka fort. Kuskov was at Akwe River in May, while Sitka was not attacked until a month later! The Yakutat, or rather the Akwe River chiefs, complained to Kuskov that his hunters had not only taken their furs but had robbed graves, and so they could no longer be friendly with him and his people, and they refused to listen to his denials.

“On the 22d of May the Koloshi, armed with guns and spears tried to surround his camp in the daytime, but Kuskoff, with vigilent circumspection, had taken measures for defence. While matters were in this condition he once more endeavored to pacify them, but instead of an answer the Koloshi rushed to within a short distance of the camp and fired off all their guns while some hurled their spears. Kuskoff staunchly repulsed their attack and they went flying back to the woods. The Aleuts followed up the fugitives, but when approaching the woods they were met by a heavy fire and returned to the camp with the loss of 1 killed and 4 wounded. The Koloshi, on their retreat, left 10 killed behind and must have had many wounded.

“Kuskoff, finding it impossible to remain in that position, resolved to move to the other side of the bay [east side of Dry Bay] and there fortify himself. He had hardly expressed his intention when the Aleuts threw themselves into their baidarkas in disorder, while the Koloshi directed a strong fire upon them, but fortunately nobody was wounded. Arrived on the other side Kuskoff quickly made them roll logs together, to cover themselves from the volleys which continued without intermittance but did no injury whatever. On the 25th the Koloshi sent intermediators and proposed to exchange hostages. Kuskoff was compelled by his critical position to accept the proposal and gave them 2 Aleuts, taking from them 2 chiefs of distinguished families. He had only 250 cartridges left and this circumstance induced him to return to Yakoutat.” [Khliebnikov, 1861 b, pp. 51–52.]

Tikhmenev (1861, vol. 1, p. 91) would have it that the “savages had to sue for peace,” and returned half of the plunder which they had taken from the party, promising the rest when Kuskov returned.

The latter hastened back to Yakutat, not only to procure ammunition and provisions, but to help in the defense of the settlement which he feared would be attacked. Here he found many natives gathered from places from which visitors seldom came. Although they assured the Russians that they had come only to trade, the latter prepared against a sudden attack. From these natives Kuskov also learned that they planned a war on the tribes near Sitka. Fearing disastrous consequences to the Russian post, Kuskov determined to go at once to Fort St. Michael (ibid.).

Having obtained more ammunition and three additional Russians at Yakutat, Kuskov set off on June 3.

“On the 15th he reached the mouth of Ledianoff Sound [Cross Sound]. There a friendly old man warned him to be on his guard since at no great distance the Koloshi had collected and awaited the party, many having come to Sitka from various localities.” [Khliebnikov, 1861 b, p. 52.]

Kuskov sent on 17 of his best men in six three-hole baidarkas to learn what had happened at Sitka, cautioning them to hide in the day and travel only at night. He moved his party down to “the Bay of Islands” or Salisbury Sound. While waiting for the return of his scouts, the “Aleuts” with him were thrown into a panic by the sight of a large meteor, “like a red-hot bomb,” which they interpreted as a “foretoken of disaster” (ibid.).

“On the 20th [of June] five of the bidarkas returned with the sad news that the people had been killed and the fort reduced to ashes, and that they themselves had hardly escaped from the hands of the barbarians with the loss of one bidarka which had been captured by the Koloshi! They informed him also that on their trip they had fallen in with a Kolosh who had advised them to travel to the fort only at night and very cautiously, as all the Koloshi were assembling there. [Ibid., pp. 52–53.]

Kuskov at once hastened back to Yakutat.

“Kuskoff was in doubt whether this fort was yet in existence and therefore traveled at night, very cautiously, but when he ascertained that it was still safe, he joyfully stepped ashore. Here he learned that the fort had been saved only on the very last day since the assembled Koloshi had proposed to attack it in the following night. The arrival of the party prevented this and the Koloshi which had come from distant localities gradually returned, but from those at Yakoutat Kuskoff took hostages and removed them to Kadiak.” [Ibid. p. 53.]

Tikhmenev (1861, vol I, pp. 91–92) reports that the settlers at Yakutat were so demoralized by news of the disaster at Sitka that they wanted to flee. All the Tlingit at Yakutat unanimously agreed that the conspiracy for the destruction of Sitka had been fomenting for some time, that Medvednikov had received repeated warnings, and that many captains of foreign vessels had encouraged the natives to drive out the Russians.

The following year, 1803, Kuskov was again sent to Yakutat by Baranov, to make sure that the settlement was secure against attack, and also to see to the building there of two sloops, Ermak and Rostislav, in preparation for the retaking of Sitka which Baranov planned for the next year.

In June 1804, therefore, Baranov himself was at Yakutat on his way to Sitka. Here he met with important natives from Cross Sound (i.e., Hoonah), and from those who lived near the villages of “Khutznoff and Chilkhat Bays” (i.e., on Chatham Strait and Lynn Canal), and secured the son of the principal chief as hostage. He forgave them their hostile acts of 1802, including the attack on Kuskov‘s party. To celebrate the new accord, the hulk of the Olga, which had been cannibalized to provide metal and rigging for the two new sloops, was burned and salvos fired. (Tikhmenev, 1861, vol. I, p. 106.) It is not clear, however, that the Hoonah (or others) who agreed to this new treaty of peace had been involved in any of the prior attacks.

From Yakutat, where he left some additional settlers, Baranov went on to southeastern Alaska, going as far south as “Beaver Bay” to hunt, and returned to Sitka in September where he was joined by several vessels, including the frigate Neva. With these forces, the Russians compelled the surrender of the Tlingit, who fled from their fortified village. A new Russian post, Novo-Arkhangelsk, was erected on a hill above the deserted village site.[61]

Revolt of the Tlingit: Yakutat (1805–06)

Russian fortunes now seemed restored. In reviewing the posts of the Russian American Company in 1803 [sic, 1804], Tikhmenev (1861, vol. 1, p. 125) lists 9 on Kodiak, Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound, and adds: “Besides these fortifications there was one near Cape St. Elias, two on Yakoutat Bay and finally Novo-Arkhangelsk on Sitka [Baranof] Island. All these forts were generally armed with copper pivot guns of 3-pound caliber (iron guns were very rare).”

Nevertheless, new misfortunes were to come. In August, 1805, the fort and settlement at Yakutat were totally distroyed, and soon after a baidarka fleet of 300 natives was lost in a storm in the Gulf of Alaska.

The successful attack on the Yakutat settlement had been carefully planned. As Repin wrote from Nuchek to Baranov:

“On the morning of the 26th of August a three-hole Aleut bidarka arrived from Yakoutat and brought the sad news that our enemies the natives and a part of the inhabitants of Yakoutat had attacked and destroyed the Russians and their commander, the late Stepan Fedorovitch Larionoff, and only one of the Russian children was spared, and as the Aleut was afraid to bring the sad news to you he came to me. I questioned him more than once with regard to these news, whether they were true. He said they were perfectly true. Some Chugatz from the Kanikhliutsk village [Kiniklik () on the north shore of Prince William Sound], who had fled from Sitka the year before, were stopping at Yakoutat, and 6 more Chugatz were there accidentally, together with 4 Kadiak men. When the enemies made their attack there were no Chugatz men in the houses, as the late Larionoff had sent them out after berries,[62] and when they returned to the house they found nobody alive and only saw dead men lying all over the fort. At that sight they did not wait for their companions, but got into the bidarka and paddled into the bay, when they were fired upon with guns three times, but nobody was killed. They came from Yakoutat [to Nuchek] in five days and nights and the murder must have taken place on the 20th. I questioned them if they had heard anything of the post of Novo-Arkhangelsk, further down the coast. They told me that they had only heard from the Akoisk people [Akwe River and Dry Bay] that there was not a single bidarka there and that they had heard nothing of the Russians. This summer no vessel has been at Yakoutat. I also heard that all the people needed for the defence of the fort had been working.” [Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 195.]

The commander of the Russian post at Yakutat is remembered by the natives today as “Stanislas” or “Shawnista.” Possibly he was not Larianov, but the leader of the hunters at the fort.

Rezanov wrote in secret on February 15, 1806:

“The ‘Juno’ brought us very bad news from Kadiak: At Three Saints Bay they heard from Pavloffsky harbor that the Kolosh had butchered all the Russians at Yakoutat, numbering some 40 persons, counting in women and children, and captured our fort, in which they found two 3-lb. brass guns, two iron 1-lb. guns and one -lb. iron gun, with a supply of ammunition and five pounds of powder, and that with those arms they were already threatening the Gulfs of Chugatz and Kenai [Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet]. As soon as Agent Banner [deputy commander at St. Paul Harbor, Kodiak] had received this news in a bidarka he immediately sent word to all the settlements on the island of Kadiak to be on their guard, but to Chugatz he sent a bidar with ten men. Banner did all he could, but what does such a reinforcement amount to, which may only increase the number of victims?” [Ibid., p. 222.]

The fate of the captured guns will be traced in discussing the native traditions. The attack on the Russian post at Nuchek, which Rezanov feared, was defeated largely by the Chugach themselves (see below).

In a letter dated June 17, 1806, Rezanov adds that by the Alexander, which had arrived in Sitka, April 26, they had learned:

“Yakoutat was captured by the savages in October [sic], the fort burned, the people all knocked on the head except 8 men, 2 women and 3 boys who were absent from the fort, and made their escape after hiding in the bay and are now prisoners of the Ougalakhmutes [Eyak-speakers], who demanded a ransom for them which has been sent from Kadiak. The crime was accomplished by their own native servants whom they had bought of the Kolosh living at Akoï.” [Ibid., p. 278.]

Possibly some of the Eyak-speaking people living east of Yakutat had been enslaved by the Tlingit of Akwe River and Dry Bay, and sold by them to the Russians. However, I am informed by Dr. Michael E. Krauss (letter of December 27, 1966), that this passage has been very loosely translated. The last sentence would more correctly indicate, not that the natives or servants had been purchased from the Akwe Tlingit, but had been bribed by them to attack the Russians. According to native tradition, the success of the attack was dependent upon the leadership of Tanu, a TłaayIK-Teqwedi man (from Situk?), who was working for the Russians, ŁucwAq who was also a Ł’uedi man (another name for the same group), and DudAnekw, a Kwacqwan man, evidently the brother-in-law of Tanu. There is no indication that these were not free men.

Bancroft (1886, p. 451) indicates that of the Yakutat colony only the wife and children of the Russian commander, and a number of Aleuts, escaped the massacre.

A few days or weeks after the destruction of Novo Rossiysk, and long before the news had reached Sitka, Demianenkov with a baidarka fleet was sent from Novo-Arkhangelsk to Kodiak. He had not gone very far, however, when he heard rumors that the Yakutat post had been destroyed and that the Tlingit were planning to attack his party. Demianenkov and his men then began to travel only at night, hiding in the woods by day, and when about 40 miles away, planned their trip to reach Yakutat at midnight. Here the tired men found the reports were true. “Of all the buildings, not one log was left standing upon another. Ashes, the remains of destroyed implements and of other property, covered the whole village site” (ibid., p. 455). Most of the Aleuts were too frightened to land, even though they were exhausted, but tried to push on at once to Kayak Island. Only the occupants of 30 baidarkas, who were so tired that they prefered to risk the Tlingit on shore in order to sleep, were saved. They eventually reached Kodiak, but all those at sea were lost in a storm, and the next morning “the shore was lined with corpses and the shattered remnants of bidarkas” (ibid., p. 456). In the same(?) storm, the Russians also lost the Elizaveta that had been sent to Kodiak to get provisions for Sitka, and also six large skin boats with a cargo of furs.

That fall or winter, encouraged by their victory at home, the Yakutat natives “determined to attack the Russian settlements lying farther to the north.” Bancroft's account, which we quote (ibid., pp. 451–452), is based upon Khliebnikov‘s biography of Baranov. Native traditions of both the Yakutat and the Chugach would indicate that the Yakutat were chiefly motivated by a desire to even old scores with their traditional native enemies, the Chugach.

“Embarking in eight large war-canoes, they proceeded to the mouth of the Copper River, where, leaving six of their vessels, they despatched the other two to the Konstantinovski Redoubt, on Nuchek Island [Nuchek, on Hinchinbrook Island]. Their chief, Fedor, a godson of Baranof, and a man well known to the promyshleniki, appeared boldly before Ouvarof, the commander of the station, declaring that he wished to trade with the Chugatsches. Ouvarof gave him permission, and witnessed the usual preliminary dances and festivity. On one of the canoes kept in reserve there was, however, a captive Chugatsch, who succeeded in escaping, and informed Ouvarof of the real object of the Kolosh. Thereupon the Russian commander seized the chief, and told him that his plan had been revealed. In the mean time the native allies, hearing of the matter, had taken the remainder of the Kolosh to their village [TautvIk, on Hawkins Island] under pretence of inviting them to a feast, and had there massacred almost the entire party. Among the few that escaped was Fedor, who carried to the party at Copper River the news of their comrades’ fate. Fearing that the Chugatsches would soon be upon them, the panic-stricken Kolosh at once put out to sea, and while attempting to cross the bar in the teeth of a gale, the bidarkas [sic, dugouts?] were dashed to pieces and their inmates drowned.”

Apparently 200 Indians died, including the 70 who were killed by the Chugach. The Chugach version of this incident was told us in 1933 by old Chief Makari, a grandson of the chief's young daughter who had sat with her back to the bathroom door so that the Yakutat Indians inside could not escape while the Chugach speared them through the window (Birket-Smith, 1953, “The Slaughter of the Yakutat at Taukhtyuik,” pp. 141–142; de Laguna, 1956, pp. 18–19).

Although the disaster at Yakutat had been reported by Repin, agent at the Redoubt St. Konstantine (Nuchek), in a letter dated September 24, 1805, Baranov evidently did not receive the news until the following February, when the Juno came from Kodiak to Sitka; further details were supplied by the Alexander in April. Meanwhile, the winter of 1805–06 had been a terrible one, with men dying of scurvy at Kodiak and Sitka, while the Sitka and Angoon Tlingit gathered over 1,000 armed men for an assault on the weakened garrison of Novo-Arkhangelsk. Rezanov, who had gone to California early in the spring to secure food for the Sitka post, came back in time to prevent the contemplated attack, but unfortunately on the return voyage his own crew had suffered from “fever and an eruption resembling measles” (Letter of Rezanov, dated Novo-Arkhangelsk, June 17, 1806, in Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., p. 277). We do not know whether the disease spread to the garrison at Sitka or to the Tlingit outside, but this possibility must be considered when trying to follow native traditions about epidemics.

The northern Tlingit of southeastern Alaska, of course, also learned about the destruction of the Yakutat establishment, and Rezanov reports in the same letter how a chief whom he calls “Fatty” came to see him, professing friendship for the Russians, but really trying to investigate their defences at Sitka. “Today new guests appeared and with them some women, relatives of our girls [i.e., Tlingit mistresses and servants]; they were treated, became intoxicated and told that the Chilkhat, Khutznoff and Akoisk tribes had united with the Sitkas to the number of 3,000 to make an attack upon us.” The chief had been sent only to spy on the fort of Novo-Arkhangelsk, but returned with such a discouraging report that the contemplated attack was abandoned. It had been as carefully planned, apparently, as the earlier, successful assaults, but by now the Russians were constantly on their guard (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., pp. 281–283). Of particular interest to us is the involvement in this plot of Dry Bay Tlingit, perhaps representatives of the Tł’UknaAdi, Kagwantan, and Teqwedi sibs.

Yakutat (1806–67)

Although the reestablishment of the post at Yakutat became an immediate concern of Baranov, and he wanted to go there with the Rostislav, armed with only four cannon and 25 men, it is not certain that he did so, since affairs at Sitka were still serious. We are told only that Capt. Archibald Campbell, an American, was hired to take his vessel to Yakutat in the summer of 1806, “to punish the Yakoutat people for destroying the settlement there,” and to liberate the few Russians and “Aleuts” who were prisoners among the Indians (Tikhmenev, 1861, vol. 1, p. 171). Apparently Campbell did succeed in freeing either two Kodiak men, or one “Aleut” and his wife, and secured two hostages. The latter were taken to Kodiak and baptized Kalistrat and Gideon. Afterwards they served as interpreters at Sitka. Kalistrat died in 1832, and Gideon some years later, for in 1835, Baron Wrangell, then chief manager of the Company, was recommending a pension for Gideon because of his long service (Bancroft, 1886, p. 462, note 4). In 1807, the Myrtle, commanded by Captain Barber, which had been purchased by the Russians and renamed the Kadiak, was sent to Yakutat with orders to rescue the remaining survivors. Her captain raised a foreign flag to deceive the natives, and in this way lured two men on board. After negotiations, he achieved the surrender of Larionov's widow and children and several others. According to Yakutat tradition (p. 234), it was Tanu who voluntarily surrendered himself to the Russians, although his ultimate fate was very different from that of the hostages taken by Captain Campbell. We do not know what happened to those captured by Captain Barber.

Perhaps Baranov himself did go to Yakutat, because Tikhmenev (1861, vol. I, p. 240) informs us that: “The pardoning of the Koloshi by Baranov after the destruction of the Yakutat settlement, the acceptance of hostages and renewal of friendly relations with them did not have the wished for consequences,” since the Tlingit continued to plot against the Russians and murdered them whenever they had the chance. The passage is, however, ambiguous, and the Kolosh mentioned may be simply the Tlingit at and near Sitka.

Native tradition maintains that the Russians never restored their fort and colony at Yakutat. However, Captain Golovnin, writing about the Russian colonies in North America, which he had visited on a voyage around the world, gives a list of the Company's establishments in 1818, which ends: “…on Behring Bay, Yakoutat Cove, Nikolaïevsky, near Mount St. Elias, Simeonoffsky. At Yakoutat there had previously been a settlement called Slava Rossia, but in 1803 [sic] it had been destroyed by the Koloshi and had never been restored” (Golovnin, 1861, p. 5). This obscure passage contains one obvious inaccuracy, and I know it only in Petroff‘s poorly punctuated translation. Golovnin later refers to “Fort Nikolaevsky” in the “Gulf of Kenai” (Cook Inlet) which casts further doubt upon any post on “Yakoutat Cove.”

Okun (1951, p. 57) with careless disregard for geographical accuracy also reports that as of 1817: “There were three settlements on Chugatsk Gulf: ‘Constantine and Yelena’ [Nuchek], Nikolayevsk on the Bering Sea at Yakutat Bay, and Simeyonovsk on the Cape of St. Elias.” I have been unable to discover any more specific details, and therefore do not know the locations of Nikolayevsk and Simeyonovsk.

Krause (1956, p. 65) wrote in 1885 that: “No new stations were established in Yakutat Bay” after the destruction of the Russian colony in 1805.

Certainly when Yakutat Bay was visited by Captain Belcher in 1837 there were no Russian posts anywhere in the area, for he writes:

“The remains of Russian establishments were observed; a blockhouse on a cliff on the east side; and on the low point, where our astronomical observations were taken [Point Turner?], the ruins of another; also a staff, with a vane and cross over a grave.” [Belcher, vol. 1, 1843, p. 85.]

[In 1891, Russell noticed how the forest had reclaimed] “the old Russian post near the mission at Yakutat, which was burned and the inhabitants of which were massacred in 1804 [sic]. The cellars marking the site of the former houses are now occupied by groves of spruce trees, some of which are 2 feet in diameter. Were it not for the depressions left by the old cellars one could scarcely believe that this locality was inhabited less than a hundred years ago.” [Russell, 1893, p. 12.]

There is, however, evidence that the Yakutat were not completely isolated from the Russians. Thus, Boolingin in 1807 and Khromchenko in 1823 surveyed Yakutat Bay, even penetrating the “Icy River” in the northeast part of Disenchantment Bay. Boolingin gathered data on “Icy Bay,” and Khromchenko was apparently responsible for the Russian names which are still applied to the smaller islands in Yakutat Bay, as well as for official use of the name “Yakutat” itself. Tebenkov's maps, published in 1849, embody their work (Davidson, 1904, pp. 44–45, 47, 50–51; Dall and Baker, 1883, pp. 206–209; Baker, 1906, pp. 68–69). While these surveys seem to be the last made in this area, they could hardly have been carried out if the local natives had been irreconcilably hostile.

Khliebnikov, writing in 1833 (1861 b, p. 73), has also given a list of sea otter hunting expeditions in the area. These consisted of “Aleuts” (including Koniag and Chugach) in baidarkas escorted by an armed sailing vessel. Two parties, totaling 60 to 90 baidarkas, went to Yakutat and to Lituya Bay each year from 1822 to 1825, inclusive. On these trips, from 250 to 460 sea otters were taken. The cartographer, V. C. Khromchenko, seems to have been captain of the Rurik (for which the harbor north of Port Mulgrave is named), making such voyages in 1823 and 1825. These expeditions were eventually discontinued, for Tikhmenev (1861, vol. 1, p. 325) observed that:

“The experiment of sending (in 1832) hunting parties to localities where sea-otter had been abundant in former years., i.e. in the Bays of Ltoua and Yakoutat, proved entirely unsuccessful. [In a later chapter he adds (1863, vol. 2, p. 326):] Sea otters are found in the vicinity of Yakoutat and Ltua Bay to the present day, but not in such multitudes as in early days, and besides, the entrance to these bays is very dangerous so that the Company does not hunt there any more.”

The Russians continued to obtain a few furs from these areas through trade. These were from sea otter killed by the local natives and by those Tlingit from southeastern Alaska who were permitted by the Yakutat and Lituya Bay people to join in their hunts. Such privileges were accorded only to “the prominent chiefs and their relatives among the Kolosh living on Vancouver Sounds [southeastern Alaskan waters] where sea-otters are scarce.” These expeditions, which met in the spring at some predetermined locality, might consist of over a hundred canoes, which followed the Aleut method of surrounding the sea otters, but used guns, not spears (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, p. 347). The furs so obtained were apparently traded south, some passing through the hands of the southern Tlingit to be exchanged with the Kaigani or the Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands for slaves, some of whom had been captured as far away as the Columbia River. Other furs went into the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company's agents, and others were bought by the Sitka Tlingit for resale to the Russians at Novo-Arkhangelsk (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, pp. 349–350). In this way European goods such as Hudson Bay blankets and dishes, beads, pearl buttons, cloth, clothing, metal tools and utensils, guns and ammunition, dentalia and abalone shell ornaments (which even the Whites bought in the south for resale to northern tribes), came to Yakutat, as well as fine Haida canoes, Tsimshian carvings, and Flathead slaves.

The Yakutat people also maintained close ties with the Eyak to the west, and through the latter, traded with the Russians at Fort Constantine and Helen at Nuchek. According to my informants, they also had economic relations with the interior Athabaskans, including the Atna, from whom copper was obtained to trade southward. Furthermore, the Yakutat themselves made long voyages in their fine (imported Haida?) canoes to both Nuchek and Sitka, although I am not sure to what extent such direct traffic was carried on before the purchase of Alaska by the United States in 1867.

As we know, the Russians made little progress in winning the friendship of the Tlingit or in inducing the latter to become baptized, even though Bishop Veniaminov, “the Holy Innocentius,” came to Sitka in September, 1841. The Yakutat had never, as far as I know, been exposed to missionary teaching. According to Tikhmenev (1861, vol. 1, p. 253), there were in January, 1819, a total of 117 “Ougalentz” under Russian control (51 men, 66 women), but these were presumably Copper River Eyak.

The terrible smallpox epidemic of 1837–39 spread from California to the Arctic Ocean, first appearing at Sitka in November 1836. In the village near the Russian fort, 400 natives died within 3 months, representing half the population, for the Tlingit had refused vaccination. The epidemic was not of equal severity everywhere, being relatively light among the Stikine, but devastating at Angoon. According to native tradition, it wiped out many villages between Yakutat and Dry Bay. The epidemic finally died out in 1840. Veniaminov (1840, vol. 3, p. 29) estimates that in that year there were less than 6,000 living “Kolosh” in Russian America, “from Kaigan to Yakutat,” whereas in 1833, before the smallpox, there had been 10,000.

When the Tlingit and Koniag saw that the Russians and “Creoles” (halfbreeds) who had been vaccinated escaped the disease, they also requested vaccination, and their attitude towards the Russians changed. Not only did many Tlingit at Sitka lose faith in their own shamans, whose efforts had failed to save their stricken relatives, but a number were converted to Christianity. Thus, by Easter, 1843, 104 Tlingit had been baptized, including 2 “sorcerers.” The total number of Christians included 447 Tlingit, presumably all at Sitka or in the Company‘s employ, and 148 “Ougalentz” or Eyak (Tikhmenev, 1861, vol. 1, pp. 361, 264, 310–313). This conversion, we should point out, did not go very deep. Even at Sitka, the number of annual baptisms fell off rather sharply after 1844 (Golovnin, 1861, pp. 79, 147–151). No doubt the Yakutat people heard something of these doings at Sitka, but it is pretty certain that they received neither vaccine nor holy water during this period.

A severe measles epidemic in 1848 raged from the Aleutians to southeastern Alaska, and again in 1862 smallpox spread from south to north among the Tlingit, sparing only those at Sitka where the majority had been vaccinated. Presumably the Gulf Coast tribes suffered from these also, although we have no records.

Veniaminov gives a census of the Tlingit tribes as of 1840, in which 150 persons are listed for Yakutat, and 250 for Lituya or “Avetzk” (1840, vol. 3, p. 29), but we do not know upon what data this count is based.[63]

Tikhmenev (1863, vol. 2, p. 341) observes: “The exact number of the Kolosh is not known, some suppose that including the tribes in the interior [“SwampKolosh,” possibly Inland Tlingit], it would come to 40,000; others, and among them Veniaminoff [who included only the Tsimshian and Haida, not interior tribes], estimate them at 25,000. For our part we will only give the numbers of Kolosh in the well-known villages as we find it in the writings of Mr. Wehrmann [1861].” These are for Yakutat Bay: 163 free men, 168 free women, 25 male slaves and 24 female slaves; for Lituya Bay: 265 free men, 267 free women, with 29 male and 29 female slaves. (Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, p. 341). One suspects that such a guess must have been based upon a visit to the area.

In 1837, Capt. Sir Edward Belcher, in a voyage around the world in H.M.S. Sulphur, visited Yakutat Bay in September, on his way from Nuchek to Sitka. He was accompanied by Lieutenant Commander Kellett in the Starling. The Gulf Coast of Alaska was surveyed for the purpose of determining the position of Mount Saint Elias and for settling differences in longitudes reckoned by Cook and Vancouver. Although observations were made near Cape Suckling, Point Riou, and “Icy Bay,” no natives were met until the ships arrived at Port Mulgrave, which the Starling had reached three days before the Sulphur. Here the natives gave the British a cordial welcome.

“The principal chief of this tribe, Anoutchy [nū,’ci, ‘Russian,’ cf. Swanton, 1908, p. 144], paid us his visit of ceremony, accompanied by his lady. Better specimens of the improved state of the Indians I have not seen. Both were clean, and well-dressed; the chief by the aid of an old coat and trowsers bestowed on him by Kellett; and his lady in a dark-coloured cotton robe with blue and scarlet cloak, à la robe, over all. He had assumed the name of Iwan Iwatsky, probably in complement to one of the Russian traders, who frequently visit this port.

FIGURE 4.—A native chief of Port Mulgrave (Anoutchy) and a woman with mouthpiece (Port Mulgrave). (After Belcher, 1843, vol, 1, pp. 84 and 86.)

“Their manners were good, even in some degree polished; and although not particularly well-bred at table, they were evidently not unacquainted with the use of knife, folk, and plate.” [Belcher, 1843, vol. 1, pp. 83–84.] [I gather that the common people lacked such refinement.]

MAP 26.—Lituya Bay, 1849. (Tebenkov, 1852, detail of map vii.)

“The men are wretchedly clothed, in mats woven with the inner bark of the cypress [cedar], which is tough, flexible, and very soft. The women are very similar to the Esquimaux, differing however in the mouth-ornament, which is here worn in an aperture under the lower lip. It is of wood, and retains its place by the elasticity of the flesh contracting in the groove, substituting larger ornaments as they grow up, or as the aperture elongates. They are as filthy as such tribes usually are, beyond description, and use vermillion, and any paint they can get. I must, however, except the chief's lady and daughters, as not wearing these ornaments, or paint, and exhibiting a dislike to it. The latter I had not the pleasure of seeing, but I am told is very pretty,—I suppose we may add, ‘for the tribe.’ “ [Ibid. pp. 86–87.]

The lack of the labret seems to be characteristic of Yakutat clans that trace their descent from Atna or Eyak origins. However, the sophistication of the chief‘s womenfolk might suggest that the labret was beginning to be abandoned, even by those who formerly wore it.

“Kellet acquainted me that this chief possessed very high notions of territorial right, and had thrown difficulties in the way of wooding and watering, which he was glad that our presence would remove” (ibid., p. 84). This was apparently achieved by giving a few presents, which in themselves acknowledged the native claims to natural resources. These gifts also relieved the anxiety felt by the Starling's men, since she had been surrounded by an ever increasing crowd of canoes, necessitating continual vigilance. Now, however, “the utmost security was felt,” and the ships’ personnel did not hesitate to go ashore to hunt or to pursue scientific investigations. Belcher also noticed that the Indians “receive presents—as a due, not as a gift; and consequently no return is made for civility.” He was mistaken, I believe, in ascribing this to the example set by fur traders; it is characteristic of gift-giving between the natives themselves, when such “gifts” are really part of a complex and established system of reciprocities which everyone can take for granted. “Excepting in traffic, at which they are very keen, nothing could be obtained.” The English crews bought halibut and two kinds of salmon, but apparently game was scarce (ibid., p. 85).

On October 8, the Sulphur attempted to put out to sea, but though towed by canoes and her own boats, was prevented by the lack of wind, and so returned to her anchorage.

“The chief and his lady, who had come to secure the assistance of their tribe, as soon as they perceived my determination [to return], were quite delighted,—the only time I had seen them relax their features,—and haranguing the canoes, particularly her ladyship, they not only increased in numbers, but also in efforts, which had they applied earlier, we should have gained an offing. We were very soon at anchor. I think they gained a saw and hatchet for this manoeuvre. They well knew every hour of delay would enrich them. [Ibid., p. 87.]

“[At six the next morning, the ship sailed, escorted by most of the canoes,] but the chief and his lady, who had taken tea with us, and finished by asking for a little warm gin and water, were probably too sleepy to pay us a visit at this early hour.

“About nine the breeze giving us too great a velocity for the canoes, and their saleable articles being expended, one by one they gradually dropped off and left us to pursue our course.” [Ibid., p. 88.]

Further information about the Yakutat area until the latter part of the 19th century is meager, except for the descriptions of sea otter hunting as practiced by the natives of Yakutat and Lituya Bays. This was apparently written by N. M. Koshkin, secretary of the Governor of the Colony in 1860, and is included in Tikhmenev‘s work (1863, vol. 2, pp. 347–349; see pp. 378–379). However, we do not know that this is based on direct observation.

Tebenkov, cartographer and Governor of the Company from 1845 to 1850, visited the Yakutat area in 1847, as did a Russian named Vasiliev. Both are said to have made observations of the positions and elevations of Mount Saint Elias and Mount Fairweather, but we do not know whether they and their parties had any intercourse with the natives. “Since that time the coast has been annually visited by whalers and traders; but their observations, if any, have not been made public…” (Dall and Baker, 1878, p. 158).

Although fleets of from three to four hundred vessels used to gather in June and July on the Fairweather Grounds, between 1846 and 1851, because this was then one of the finest whaling grounds in Alaskan waters, the crews are said never to have landed, unless shipwrecked (Davidson, 1869, p. 47; Elliot, 1886, p. 72. For a summary of Alaskan whaling, especially by Americans, see Bancroft, 1886, pp. 582–585).

UNDER THE AMERICAN FLAG

The First Years (1867–80)

The purchase of Alaska by the United States in 1867 seems to have had no immediate direct effect on the natives of the Yakutat Bay area. Indeed, as the Tlingit here and in southeastern Alaska point out to this day, all the Russians could sell was the land on which their own posts stood or which they actually controlled. They had no such control over Yakutat Bay. The argument is now cited, of course, to support native possessory rights against the encroachment of White settlers and the imposition of United States laws on the Indians, and it was some time before these effects were felt on the Gulf Coast.

At Sitka, in contrast, the raising of the American Flag on October 18, 1867, seems to have been the signal for General Davis to seize the property of the Russian American Company in which to quarter his troups, turning the inhabitants out into the streets to find what shelter they could. Almost immediately pioneers, who unfortunately included a riffraff of politicians, traders, saloonkeepers, gamblers, and prostitutes, swarmed into the town. In consequence, Sitka at first suffered from a commercial boom followed by economic depression. For the natives, the new order meant economic chaos as they had to shift from commercial transactions based on barter with long term credit for limited kinds of goods to transactions in money, in which a bewildering array of imports were offered for immediate sale, or in which their own furs fetched high prices. Thus at first they “squandered large sums for useless articles without the least appreciation of the value of either goods or money” (Porter, 1893, p. 247). A large percentage of the new luxuries were destined for distribution at intertribal potlatches, demanding equal returns, thus spreading the desire to acquire these goods and ultimately dooming the Tlingit to real poverty while struggling to attain a higher standard of living.

In the streets of Sitka, and soon in other communities, “speculation and lawlessness were rife,” as Bancroft has expressed it (1886, p. 602), because in the whole Territory until 1883 there was no legal protection of person or property, no civil or criminal jurisdiction, no means of enforcing even the few laws that pertained to the collection of customs and to the sale of firearms and liquor. Indeed, the soldiers who were stationed at Sitka, Fort Tongas, and Fort Wrangell, ostensibly to protect the population, led a life of debauch, terrorizing the natives and the Russians who remained, provoking shootings, deliberate murders, and bloody reprisals. A subsequent Governor of Alaska, the Honorable A. P. Swineford (1898, pp. 63–65) has given a graphic picture of the oppressive and arbitrary military domination of Alaska. Soldiers were accused of arresting native men on trumped up charges so that they could violate the women.

Now the cheapest kind of strong liquor was freely sold to the Indians, despite Federal laws to the contrary, and far greater amounts reached them than had been available since 1843, when the sale of liquor to the Indians was forbidden both by the Russian American Company and by the Hudson's Bay Company. Moreover, before the American soldiers were withdrawn in 1877, they had succeeded in teaching the Indians how to make their own “hoochenoo,” or “hooch,” so-called because it was first, or most prolifically made at Xutsnuwu, ‘Brown Bear Fort’ (Admiralty Island).

The new luxuries and the art of distillation were soon spread to Yakutat. We know, for example, that Sitka Jack (pl. 210t), an important chief or wealthy native, gave a potlatch at Sitka on October 1, 1877, at which considerable liquor was consumed. This man, atsex, was the brother of ei, chief of the Tł’UknaAdi Whale House at Sitka (pl. 210z). Sitka Jack was the father-in-law of a Yakutat Kwacqwan man, known as Sitka Jake (AtAsin), and also “uncle” to the mother of one of our oldest Yakutat informants. It is certain that at Sitka Jack‘s potlatch, and probably on many similar, prior occasions, the new Sitkan way of life was taught to the people of Yakutat. We also know that natives went between Yakutat and Sitka on trading expeditions.

There were probably American traders who went to Yakutat in the decade following the Purchase, although we know practically nothing about their voyages. We may further assume that such ventures were stimulated by the very acquisition of Alaska. At first, commercial trips were undoubtedly undertaken with caution, for the Yakutat Tlingit still enjoyed the reputation they had earned in early Russian days as ruthless savages.

Thus Dall, writing in the Coast Pilot (Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 206) about the Tlingit villages between Yakutat and Dry Bays:

“One of these was visited about ten years since by the master of a whaling vessel at anchor in Port Mulgrave, and by him reported to be the largest, finest and most clean Indian village he had seen in all his experience of the coast. The population was large, the houses well built, solid, adorned with paintings and carvings of wood, and expressly adapted for defense. Most of these people remain in their villages, small parties going out on hunting and trading expeditions or to kill seal near the glaciers of Disenchantment Bay. They are treacherous and warlike and have committed a number of murders merely for plunder. Navigators in small trading vessels who may be visited by them should therefore be on their guard and never allow them to spend the night on board.”

Dall's information would appear to have been gathered on surveys undertaken in 1874 and 1880, which would date the whalers’ visit to the preceding decade. I had originally believed that the description applied to Gue on the Akwe, but now am more inclined to ascribe it to Diyaguna’Et on Lost River.

The warning in the passage quoted above also reflects what Dall and Marcus Baker themselves experienced in 1874 when surveying the Alaskan coast. They had visited Lituya Bay in the schooner Yukon, May 15 to 19, where they found LaPérouse's chart

“to be generally accurate. Here the party aboard the Yukon had much difficulty in preventing the persistent attempts of the natives to board the vessel, but fortunately were kept off without bloodshed. It is added in the report [of Dall and Baker] that these natives distill their own rum, and are well supplied with the best kinds of fire arms.” [U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1878, p. 64.]

The survey party then went on to Yakutat Bay, remaining in Port Mulgrave from May 21 to 26, where observations were of course made on Mount Saint Elias.

“Here a party in the Yukon found evidences of the murder of a boat's crew supposed in 1870 to have been lost at sea, but which in that year went ashore from a sailing-vessel commanded by Captain Herendeen, the present sailing-master of the Yukon. In regard to a small trading-vessel from Sitka, the arrival of the survey party was timely, in averting rough usage by the savages.” [Ibid., p. 65.]

Dall's brief sketch of the “Yk’tts” is based upon what he observed during this visit, as well as on information presumably obtained at Sitka. Thus, he notes that “The Yakutats in many respects…are differentiated from the other T’linkets, though they belong, without doubt, to the same stock.” At that time, five Tlingit tribes were recognized: Yakutat, Chilkat, Sitka, “Stakhin” (Strikine or Wrangell), and the “Kygani or Haida tribe;” but Dall correctly doubted that the last were Tlingit. He reports that the Yakutat, consisting of 250 persons, inhabited the coast

“from Bering [Yakutat] Bay to Lituya Bay, occasionally traveling in canoes farther west or southeast for purposes of trade. On my visit to Bering Bay in 1874, I endeavored to get their own name for themselves, but had no interpreter, and neither the natives nor myself spoke much Chinook, so that I do not feel sure that they understood my inquiries. At any event, I could get no other answer than ’Yakutat’, which is evidently the name they give to the country they inhabit, but must, in all probability, have some other suffix or termination when applied as a tribal name. Their principal settlement is on a large stream [Ankau Creek-Lost River system?], abounding with salmon, and emptying into Bering Bay or Yakutat. They fish and trade at Port Mulgrave in the spring before the salmon arrive, and hunt seal near the glaciers of Disenchantment Bay. The women do not wear the kalushka, or lip-ornament. They are said not to adopt the totemic system[!], so much in vogue among the other T’linkets, and eat the blubber and flesh of the whale, which the other tribes of their stock regard as unclean.” [Dall, 1877, pp. 36–37.]

It is also worth noting that Dall also published a “Vocabulary of the Yak′tat, A tribe of the T’linkit Nation (living between Port Mulgrave, Alaska, and Cape Spencer), obtained from his Excellency J. Furuhelm, Governor of the Russian Possessions in America, by George Gibbs” (apparently in 1862) (ibid., pp. 121–142). This vocabulary is certainly Eyak, not Tlingit.[64]

The U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey sent another party to Yakutat Bay in 1880. The following observations about the native settlement on Khantaak Island were largely based on this visit:

“About the middle of Point Turner peninsula is a narrow lagoon of half stagnant water. Between this and the beach north of it is a collection of rather inferior Indian houses, occupied during the time of their halibut fishery or when vessels are there for trade, but usually vacant. In the woods NW. of the port [Port Mulgrave] are the relics of a whale boat, hidden there by the natives after they had murdered the crew for their outfit—having enticed them away from their vessel by stories of gold in the (granite) mountains near by.” [Dall and Baker, 1883, p. 209.] [This presumably was the massacre of Captain Herendeen‘s men in 1870.]

No other settlement was noted on Yakutat Bay in 1880.

Two men attached to a small schooner belonging to James Hollywood were killed at Yakutat in September, 1880. Yet only one native seems to have been implicated in this crime, and certainly not all the Yakutat Indians at that time deserved the reputation ascribed to them of hostility and treachery, as we learn from the official report of Commander Edward P. Lull, U.S.N., captain of the U.S.S. Wachusett. This was written at Sitka, October 18, 1881, to the Secretary of the Navy, after he had been in Yakutat the month before to arrest the alleged murderer.

“On our arrival [at Yakutat] I sent for the chiefs of the village, two of whom came on board. These men had been particularly kind to Hollywood, protecting him during the winter after the occurrence of the murder. Keeping one of them on board as a sort of hostage, sent the other to arrest the murderer, who had gone on a hunting expedition a couple days’ journey from the village. I offered $50 reward for the arrest. On the fourth day the chief returned with the prisoner. I then took on board two women and a man, said by Hollywood to be witnesses in the case, though, thus far, I have not been able to get from them all that Hollywood states that they know, but I hope when removed from the influence of other Indians they will tell the truth. I send the prisoners and witnesses by mail steamer to Portland, Oregon, for trial.” [Report of United States Naval Officers, etc., pt. 2, 1882, pp. 48–49.]

The natives had to be sent to Portland because that was the nearest Federal court. It must also be remembered that the Naval Officer stationed at Sitka was the U.S. Government in Alaska. Later reports suggest that the White men killed in 1880—some give the date as 1881, or even later—had come to prospect the black sands for gold. Gold-bearing sands of this kind also occur at Lituya Bay where they had been sporadically worked before 1867 (Mertie, 1931, p. 117). The discovery of gold in British Columbia in 1858, and in the Cassiar area near the upper Stikine in 1872, undoubtedly stimulated prospecting which led to discoveries at Juneau in 1880, as well as to explorations at Yakutat.

The year 1880 marks the beginning of change at Yakutat. This was not simply because the murders resulted in the first of many visits by naval vessels, during which both natives and Whites took each others’ measure and came to a new understanding. The discovery of traces of gold was to bring later in the decade some 40 to 50 gold miners to work the beaches of Khantaak Island, and when the brief boom was over, a few were to remain with native wives. Mount Saint Elias, which had engaged Marcus Baker's skill as a surveyor in 1880, was to lure adventuring Alpinists from 1886 until its summit was conquered in 1898. By that time the glaciers at its feet and in Disenchantment Bay had established their claims to geological investigation. Above all, furs and native manufactures of Yakutat had a reputation which brought White and native traders, and finally in 1884 the first store. Then, as pelts and curios lost their commerical importance at the end of the century, Yakutat salmon were ready to take their place as the major source of wealth.

After 1888 we can rely to an increasing extent upon the memory of our oldest informants, and from what they report can gage the magnitude of the transformations that took place between 1880 and 1900. Native culture was directly affected, but it also reflected the changes that were coming in the White observers. These differences in attitude and understanding on the part of Whites were of themselves important factors in creating a new way of life for the Yakutat Indians, through which they, like all Tlingit, were drawn into a world which extended far beyond the aboriginal Łìngít-’àní, and were given a new understanding of themselves as Tlingit and as members of this larger social order.

For the White man, 1880 marks the beginning of a new period in which a serious attempt was being made by White Americans to understand Tlingit customs and culture, even though there had been some anticipations by Brancroft (1874), Dall (1870), and, of course, by Russian and German scholars. We have seen this serious interest in the case of Capt. L. A. Beardslee, stationed at Sitka in 1879–80, although he wrote only a report on his activities and on “Affairs in Alaska” (1882), not an ethnographic monogTaph (de Lagunah 1960, p. 160). Lt. George T. Emmons, attached to the U.S.S. Pinta that visited Yakutat in 1885 and 1886, was to begin his carefully documented collection of Tlingit artifacts, until by 1889 he was recognized as an authority, and his home in Sitka considered an ethnographic museum which everyone should visit if possible, although none of his observations had been published (Shepard, 1889, pp. 226–227). Ensign A. P. Niblack's report on the Northwest Coast Indians was to appear as the report for 1888 of the U.S. National Museum (1890), and was quoted in the U.S. Census for 1890. Although Petroff had included an ethnographic sketch of the Tlingit in the Census for 1880 it is significant that the data were drawn primarily from Veniaminov and Holmberg, not from American sources.

The Army also had its ethnographic observers, the most important of whom were Lt. C. E. S. Wood, who wrote about a trip with the Hoonah in 1877 (1882); Lt. Frederick Schwatka who led a military exploring party through Chilkat country and over the Chilkat Pass in 1883 (1893), and who came to Yakutat for the New York Times in 1886; and Lt. W. R. Abercrombie who described the Tlingit and Eyak in reporting a military reconnaissance up the Copper River in 1884 (1900).

Although the Krause brothers spent the winter of 1881–82 at Haines, studying the Chilkat for the Geographical Society of Bremen, and Dr. Aurel Krause published his report in 1885, this did not have much effect on general knowledge since it was in German (Krause, translated by Gunther, 1956).

It is hardly a coincidence, however, that the beginning of so much vigorous ethnological interest in Alaskan natives and in the Tlingit should have coincided with the founding of the Bureau of Ethnology in 1879 as a branch of the Smithsonian Institution.

Missionary work started at Wrangell in 1876 and at Sitka in 1877, at Haines in 1880, and at Hoonah in 1881. The first American Protestant church in Alaska was in fact established at Wrangell in 1879. These efforts were to have a double impact: through the writings of Mrs. Julia Wright (1883), Mrs. Eugene S. Willard (1884), and the numerous pamphlets and books of the Rev. Sheldon Jackson, which contained ethnographic information; and also through the mission schools, especially that at Sitka, which soon began to turn out native graduates who could act as interpreters for their people. In trying to explain native customs, these native converts, however much they may have disapproved of them, yet came to know their own people in a new way. And in this way, also, an understanding of Tlingit culture and social organization began to reach the White people who visited or lived among them. Before the end of the decade a mission was to come to Yakutat.

In 1879 John Muir and the Rev. S. Hall Young took their memorable canoe trip through southeastern Alaska, during which the magnificent glaciers of Alaska were discovered. Although Muir did not publish his first popular account of Glacier Bay until 1895 and his longer works until much later, word of the scenic beauties of Alaska soon spread. In 1884 the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, which made regular trips carrying the mail to southeastern Alaskan ports, initiated tourist excursions. From 1,650 tourists carried the first summer, the number had risen to over 5,000 by 1889 (Porter, 1893, p. 250–251). Not only did the glaciers attract the tourists, but they were wealthy, spending, it has been estimated, between $50 and $100 apiece for furs and native “curios.” By 1890 it is said that not only had all of the aboriginal carvings and other manufactures of southeastern Alaska made by the natives for their own use been bought up by the tourists, but there had been established a new native industry of making articles especially for the tourist trade. Several Indian villages specialized in producing “curios” that became “more gaudy and grotesque each year,” or “specimens of any degree of antiquity desired” (ibid., p. 250). It took, of course, much longer to drain off genuine ethnographic artifacts from Yakutat than from such regular steamer ports as Wrangell and Sitka, where the missionaries helped the process by discouraging the retention and use of heirlooms that had any connection with heathendom.

At the same time, the Yakutat natives in the late 1880's, as in Malaspina's day, began to respond to the insatiable White demand for their arts and crafts, especially since Yakutat basketry was recognized as the finest work produced by any Tlingit group. Most of the Yakutat products went to Sitka for sale. In fact, the White community of Sitka in 1890 was supported by the sale of furs and curios supplied by the Indians of Sitka and Yakutat, who in their turn were buying all of their clothing and an increasing proportion of manufactured goods, and even some foodstuffs, from the Sitka merchants (Porter, 1893, p. 237).

With interest in native crafts as “curios” and as mementoes of an exciting journey, there also developed some appreciation of native art and a great deal of curiosity about its meaning. The Navy and the Army and the missionaries had perhaps been driven through practical considerations to learn about native culture and society, but the tourists were simply avid for “totem lore.” They questioned, they learned, they wrote, and their travel books stimulated not only further tourist trips but expeditions sponsored by news papers and by magazines which had both scientific and popular aims. The World's Fair at Chicago in 1893 finally brought the Northwest Coast and Tlingit arts and crafts to the doorstep of the ordinary American.

A general interest in the Territory and its resources, as well as increased travel, settlement, and exploitation, led to further investigations by Federal agencies: Census Bureau, Coast Survey, Bureau of Fisheries, Geological Survey, all in addition to the military explorations already mentioned.

All of this brought new groups of educated observers into close contact with the Tlingit in southeastern Alaska and even in isolated Yakutat. These have given us a variety of sources upon which we can draw in reconstructing the history of that area.

The First Surveys (1880–84)

If we begin by consulting the U.S. Census for 1880, we find the population figures (p. 185) which had been compiled by Ivan Petroff for the Yakutat natives and their neighbors (Petroff, 1884, pp. 29, 32):

KADIAK DIVISION

Atnah villages

Copper river

250 Athabaskan

Ikhiak & Alaganu

Mouth of Copper river

117 Eskimo [sic!, Eyak]

Cape Martin

Mouth of Copper river

1 White, 7 Thlinket

Chilkhaat villages

Comptroller bay

170 Thlinket

Yaktag villages

Foot of Mount Saint Elias range

150 Thlinket

SOUTHEASTERN DIVISION

Yakutt Tribe

Scattered villages between cape Spencer & Bering bay

Coast of mainland

500

200 Thlinket

Yakutat

Bering bay

300 Thlinket

The number of women and children, and of slaves is not estimated.

That these figures are not to be trusted either as an accurate count of the Gulf Coast and Copper River populations, nor as proof that Petroff had actually visited the area, is revealed in the autobiography of the Rev. S. Hall Young (1927, p. 191), who was missionary at Wrangell in 1880. It was he, on trips in 1879 and 1880 with John Muir, who had made a count in beans of the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska, and who gave these data to Ivan Petroff, nicknamed “Hollow Legs” for his liquor capacity, when the latter came to Wrangell as census enumerator late in 1880. But neither Young nor Petroff had been to Yakutat, so that Petroff's data on this region must have been picked up from traders at Kodiak and Nuchek. It is significant that his report contains no information at all about the Gulf Coast, whereas there are descriptions of settlements, native customs, commercial undertakings, and natural resources for almost every other part of Alaska.

The lack of information about Yakutat, and Petroff's presumed reluctance to visit this area, are understandable in view of Capt. Johan A. Jacobsen's experience. In 1883 he had reached Kodiak from the north in the course of an ethnological collecting trip in Alaska. Here he chartered the Three Brothers, a schooner belonging to Captain Anderson and the Carlsen brothers, all from Sweden. The Three Brothers normally made voyages to and from Sitka, but when Jacobsen wished to visit villages between the Copper River and Cross Sound, he was dissuaded by warnings that the weather was too bad for the trip, that he would make only poor collections [!], and above all, that the natives had the worst reputation on the whole Alaska coast. “These northern Tlingit Indians,” he writes (1884, p. 379, my translation), “resemble to a hair in this respect the thievish Redskins in West Vancouver and British Columbia.” After visiting Eyak, Alaganik, and Cape Martin, he apparently gave up his plans for continuing farther along the Gulf Coast.

Fortunately Lt. W. R. Abercrombie, U.S.A., who followed Jacobsen the next year to the Eyak villages, has given us valuable information about Yakutat. This is so detailed that it seems based upon personal observations (perhaps not Abercrombie‘s); his mission in 1884 was to lead a military reconnaissance up the Copper River. His report includes a survey of the conditions, attitudes and military capabilities of all the coastal tribes. He accurately distinguished between the major southern and northern Tlingit groups. The latter include, among others, “the Chilcat tribe, on Lynn Canal; the Yukutat tribe; [and] the Chilcats, of Comptrollers Bay.” He discusses as a separate people the “Ugalentsi” of the Copper River delta, “who call their principal village Eyak, and designate themselves by the same name” (Abercrombie, 1900, pp. 393, 397).

He found the “Yukutat” living in two villages, probably on Khantaak Island and Situk River; the population comprising about 100 able-bodied males, not counting a few slaves, which their masters said they had owned for a long time. They had been apparently traded from the Kaigani, who until 20 years before used to raid the “Flathead villages” (ibid., p. 395).

“The village of Yukutat proper consists of six large houses built above ground in the form common to this part of the coast…. They are square structures of logs and slabs or roughly hewn planks, with a bark or thatched [sic] roof, leaving an opening in the center for the escape of smoke, and each will accomodate several families. Around the sides within are closet-like divisions used ordinarily for storage, but convertable to sleeping apartments, although too low to admit of standing up, and too short to admit of lying at full length. The floor is of hardened earth and, as may be expected, cleanliness is not an object of solicitude. A few miles below Yukutat are three similar houses.

“During the summer months these Indians wander along the coast in their canoes. They are governed in their movements by the running of the salmon, the presence of the seal and sea otter, the ripening of berries, and the necessity for visiting the trading post. Away from their permanent villages they occupy summer houses at the points where the length of their stay is considerable, or build temporary shelters of brush. In winter certain villages are regularly occupied, and travel except upon landlocked waters almost entirely ceases. The results, therefore, of our enumeration of these natives at any one village might differ greatly, taken at one time or another.” [Ibid., pp. 394–395.]

[Abercrombie also gives us information about the settlements to the west:]

“Between Yukutat and Copper River are the following villages, whose population includes 100 able-bodied men. [The description given of the Yakutat (see below) applies to these people also, since they differ in only a few details.] Each village has some man whose personal qualities or riches give him a certain amount of influence, but there are no chiefs in the full meaning of the term.

“Going west, after leaving Yukutat, two small villages of three houses each, not constantly occupied, are found at Cape Yukutago. On the south side of Comptrollers Bay, just north of Cape Suckling, is a permanent winter establishment of three houses, known as Buchta-lee [sic], at the upper end of the bay. A short distance up the Chilcat River is another permanent village of four house, Guch-la-togee [ùtc-na-?, ‘wolf-people-?’ ?]. Three miles farther up are three large houses, occupied only during the fishing season. At Cape Martin are eleven houses. The Alaska Commercial Company abandoned its post here a few years ago as unprofitable. A few families sometimes winter on Kyak Island.” [Ibid., p. 396.]

[In his description of the personal appearance of the Yakutat natives, Abercrombie offers insight into the degree of acculturation.]

“In personal appearance the Yukutats do not differ from their southern brethren. They are coal-black [sic], have coarse hair which is worn of moderate length, possess reddish skin, have high cheek bones, thick full lips, and are of medium stature. Ear rings are quite commonly worn, nose rings much less often. The hideous lip ornament formerly so much in vogue among the Thinklets living farther south has never [sic] been worn by the women of this tribe. The usual summer clothing of a man is a light cotton shirt, and a pair of drawers, supplemented in colder weather by a blanket or parkee. Over rough ground, boots made from the skin of the hair-seal are worn; some covering of the head is usual; it is either a hat obtained from the trading post or is made from mink, squirrel, or martin skins.” [Ibid., p. 394.]

[After describing their canoes (see p. 340) and food, Abercrombie has a few observations on religion and morals.]

“Christianity has made little or no advance among them. Some wore crosses which are recognized as being connected with the religion of the whites, but these are worn rather as ornaments than as religious tokens. The women are, as a rule, unchaste, provided they are paid for their lapses, and their male relatives often negotiate for the sale of their favors. [The totemic system, legends, the custom of giving potlatches,] although the latter is not carried to such extremes,” are similar to those of the more southern Tlingit. [Ibid., p. 396.]

[The Yakutat, Abercrombie believes, are the only coastal tribe] with whom trouble might reasonably be anticipated. [Ibid., p. 393.]

“Probably the fact that intercourse between them and the whites is almost entirely limited to occasional visits from trading vessels, and to the periodical trips to Port Etches, explains the absence of any disturbance in late years. The Russians were unable to maintain a trading post at Yukutat with any ordinary force, and finally abandoned the attempt after the destruction of their buildings seventy years ago. The Alaska Commercial Company [incorporated 1869] has made no effort in that direction, preferring to let the natives do their trading at Port Etches or, as it is commonly called, Nuchek,” [where the Alaska Commercial Company had taken over the old Russian American Company post]. [Ibid., p. 394.]

“The murder of a white man a few years ago, for which crime the native murderer was executed by the process of law, is not necessarily to be taken as an index of the general feeling of the tribe. It grew out of a quarrel between some prospectors and three Indian boatmen, and in revenge for a beating one of the white men was killed; active participation was limited to the criminal's own family. The visit of the ‘man-of-war’ upon which the murderer was taken away, and the exhibition of the power of her guns, particularly in throwing shell, produced a very salutary effect in checking any hostile tendencies. When the U.S.S. Adams subsequently visited Yukutat and landed a party of prospectors, the Indians received them civilly, furnished boatmen and canoes, and expressing the utmost anxiety lest some accident might befall them that would be attributed to Indian agency. The chief himself selected the Indians to accompany the party with great care, saying that all of his men were not to be trusted.” [Ibid., p. 394.]

Although Abercrombie refers to the killing of only a single White man, this is probably the same murder that Commander Lull had to investigate in September, 1881.

Abercrombie also reports that two trading schooners had touched at Yakutat, “during the past season,” (1883?), and though not very successful in trading, had no trouble with the natives unless the latter were

“excited with hoochenoo, of which they are exceedingly fond, and under the influence of which they become very quarrelsome. They can hardly be considered hostile, although they are not all to be trusted under temptation. [Ibid., p. 394.]

“To the behests of their chief, Vanduk, considerable attention is paid, although his authority does not extend much beyond the two villages above mentioned [Khantaak Island and Situk River?], and his influence and power is much less than that possessed by his predecessor, Skin-Yah, who died in Sitka five years ago, and whose authority was respected from Yukutat to the mouth of the Copper River. The present chief is well disposed toward white men, although not sure of his ability to control some of the unruly members of his tribe.” [Ibid., p. 395.]

It is necessary to remember that there was never one chief at the head of any Tlingit tribe. At any given time, however, a particular sib or lineage chief in the community might have the most prestige and so appear to the Whites as if he were the chief. This is the type of mistake which almost every American visitor to Yakutat was to make. Unfortunately, Abercrombie's report is so full of typographical errors that it is difficult to identify these names. “Skin-Yah” is evidently Skína, a Tł’UknaAdi and TłukwaAdi name at Yakutat, but not one ascribed to a chief by any of my informants. “Vanduk” may be YAnAcUkw, ‘Firing a Gun,’ a Teqwedi name, but again not one specified as a chief‘s. (However, see p. 200).

Of equal or more authority than this chief was the shaman, Abercrombie goes on to observe, referring to a particular man whom I would like to identify as TE-’ic, ‘Little Stone's Father,’ a Teqwedi shaman who is said to have lived on Khantaak Island at that time. Abercrombie describes the shaman as “a man of about 50, possessed of considerable natural ability, and not particularly well disposed toward the whites. He speaks a few words of Chinook, but no Russian.” He is supposed to have paralyzed a rival Tlingit who was living among the Eyak at Alaganik, and “although so heartily disliked by the majority [at Yakutat] that they once requested a white man to kill him, his opposition or favor might become of serious moment to small parties of white men visiting this part of the coast” (ibid., pp. 395, 397).

The Indians at Yakutat and on the coast farther west seem at this time to have had plenty of guns, the favorite being a combination 44/100-inch caliber rifle with a 14 or 16 gauge shotgun. They lacked breech-loading weapons, and sale of “fixed ammunition” for such modern guns to Indians was forbidden. “Therefore, for certain purposes, notably sea-otter hunting, the use of the bow and arrow is continued” (ibid., p. 395).

Knowledge of Chinook indicates trade relations, and these were also discussed by Abercrombie (ibid.).

“The trading is principally at Nuchek, to a lesser extent with trading schooners, and occasionally with canoes from Sitka. Tea, tobacco, sugar, powder, ball lead, percussion caps, calico, axes, a few blankets, and a small amount of clothing are the articles purchased. [This corresponds with reports of our oldest informants]. In past years they have been accustomed, on visiting Nuchek, to take posession of the settlement, compelling the Aleuts [Chugach], to take refuge at Port Chalmers, some 20 miles distant, during their stay, and causing considerable anxiety to the traders. Although this practice ceased seven or eight years ago, it, with the remembrance of troubles during Russian occupation, is not altogether forgotten, and a certain amount of unfriendliness occasionally shows itself between members of the two tribes.”

Abercrombie is doubtful that the Yakutat would or could present any serious military problem, and if they did cause trouble, “the destruction of their villages and canoes would soon bring these natives to terms.” This could be accomplished during the comparatively storm-free summer months by howitzers mounted on boats of light draft. The only allies of the Yakutat would be the “Uhgalentsi,” or Eyak, and these are “little to be feared as foes, or desired as friends” (ibid., p. 396).

This report must be understood in the light of the long period of anxiety and fear of trouble with the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska, and the misunderstandings there which had already led to the destruction of the Kake villages, and the towns of Wrangell and Angoon. At this time, too, the free-roving tribes on the Plains had not yet been crushed by troops and starvation; their despair had not yet led them to the last frightening manifestations of the Ghost Dance. More than most contemporary men, Abercrombie writes with understanding and with sympathy for the Indians, although his language was directed to and edited by higher authority in Washington for Congressional ears (see Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 11–13, for an appreciation of Colonel Abercrombie).

Schwatka and Seton-Karr (1886)

In 1886 the U.S.S. Pinta, commanded by Captain Nichols and including Lt. George T. Emmons among her personnel, brought to Yakutat the “New-York Times Expedition” to attempt the ascent of Mount Saint Elias. This was led by Lt. Frederick Schwatka, and included Dr. William Libbey, Professor of Physical Geography at Princeton College, H. W. Seton-Karr, a British Alpinist, Joseph Wood and John Dalton as cooks, and from the mission at Sitka a youthful native interpreter named Frederick or Kersunk. Of the last, Schwatka (1891, p. 866) says that while his English was imperfect, he was “throughly reliable,” and “also did good duty for us as a packer, an art in which all T’linket Indians are proficient.” Kersunk may be the Kagwantan man, known to my informants as Qasan or Fred, who married a Tł’UknaAdi woman from Yakutat, Stella, later known as Mrs. Pilot Jackson. She was the daughter of a Teqwediman, the assistant of the shaman, TE-’ic.

The writings of Schwatka and Seton-Karr give us considerable information about Yakutat and its people, and their relation to the Whites; unfortunately less was published by Libbey. The expedition was at Yakutat from July 12 to July 16, and returned again on August 2, after an unsuccessful assault on the mountain. Seton-Karr left on August 9 for Nuchek; Schwatka and Professor Libbey remained at Yakutat until some time in September when the Pinta brought them back to Sitka. During this period Schwatka made a canoe trip through the Ankau lagoon system and Libbey took over 200 photographs (pls. 62–63) and collected ethnographic specimens.

Schwatka, writing in the New York Times (June 21, 1886) before his departure, explained that little was known about the Yakutat Indians because of their isolation, but that this was an advantage for the expedition because it promised a rich field for ethnographic specimens. The rest of the Tlingit, he observed casually, had already been so thoroughly studied that “it is only in minute matters that anything new can be learned.” He did not, however, find the Yakutat as primitive as he had hoped. It is clear that they were no longer considered as thieves and potential murderers, even though he reports that they still need naval threats to make them behave. He had previously (1883) had experience with the Chilkat as guides and packers, he is ready to appreciate the Indian sense of humor, their stamina on the trail and their skill as canoemen, yet he regards them with condescension as a labor supply to be tapped at will, or inferiors to be ordered about, and is perhaps a bit shocked when they take advantage of him in commercial dealings. Although he, Seton-Karr, and Professor Libbey are all writing for a general audience who want to hear about the Indians as wild, superstitious, blanket-clad savages, there is nevertheless real ambivalence in the attitudes of these explorers towards the Yakutat people. The latter have certainly become more sophisticated than they were in 1880 or even in 1884.

Apparently the U.S.S. Adams had previously made a trip to Yakutat, and the U.S.S. Pinta had been there in 1885. In 1884, the Alaska Commercial Company had built a store (probably on the mainland at the site of the mission), but gave it up the following year as unprofitable. It had been managed by “the famous Dr. Ballou,” (Seton-Karr, 1887, p. 52), who was now replaced by some young Swedes, Louis Carlsen and his brother, and the Andersen brothers, Nils and Olaf. These men also owned the schooner, Three Brothers.

“Having a good understanding with the Alaska Commercial Company, they have set up a store at Yakutat Bay, and another at Kaiak [on Wingham Island, see p. 103], but the natives are not great fur-hunters at these places, and their most profitable trips are made on behalf of the Company.” [Ibid., p. 140.]

[The log cabin store and living quarters for the trader had been built on the mainland, opposite the native village on Khantaak Island,] “for exactly the same reason [Schwatka believed] that I pitched my camp 300 or 400 yards away from them [the natives]. They were seldom annoyed by Indians, except those who wanted to buy something, and this was surely annoyance enough, as I found out afterward, when I had an opportunity for witnessing some of their dickering.” [Oct. 20, 1886.]

[The Swedish traders were happy at the arrival of the Pinta. Carlsen] “expressed himself as very pleased to see the man-o’-war, because the Indians had lately become troublesome and threatening, but now they would do whatever was required of them. He had even been obliged to menace them with the visit of a man-o’-war if they did not behave. Our timely arrival had thus acted as a corroboration of his threat. The Yakutats have lately been distilling a good deal of the vile spirit like vodki from sugar, and have been so frequently drunk that the traders were glad their store was as far removed from the village as it was.” [Seton-Karr, 1887, p. 53.]

[The Swedish traders seemed to regard the U.S. Navy as a handy means of coercing the natives to do what they wanted. When Seton-Karr went with them to their post at “Kaiak” in Controller Bay they wanted him to put on a uniform to impress the Indians.]

“I was to parade as an officer from a man-of-war—the only thing that keeps the Indians in awe. Among the few trade articles calculated to take the Indian‘s fancy that remained was a gold-braided cap and military coat with brass buttons, exactly suitable, and fitting to a nicety.

“‘We were telling the Indians,’ said Olaf, who was one of the three [White people at “Kaiak”]…, ’that the war-ship was coming, and would punish them if they didn’t behave themselves. They wanted their big canoe to go to Oodiak [Eyak village], but they will let us have it now to take us to Nuchuk…. The squaws may clear out when they see the cap with the gold band, and are told that you come from the big war-ship.’” [Ibid., pp. 144–146.]

“Coming ashore, I found the natives evidently not deeply impressed by the presence in their midst of a naval officer; the two decrepit men [the rest were out hunting], the slovenly squaws, and half naked children did not ‘clear out,’ but merely pointed and whispered.” [Ibid., p. 147.]

It is not, however, clear whether the undoubted effectiveness of real naval officers in dealing with the Tlingit was due solely to the fear which their terrible military power could inspire. It may have been equally due to their prestige as chiefs, surrounded by military pomp, dressed in resplendent uniforms, attended by obedient subordinates, and controlling obvious wealth. Naval officers, as already pointed out, often took the trouble to learn something of native customs and could treat native chiefs with suitable protocol.

But if the Swedish traders were glad to see the Pinta put into Port Mulgrave, the explorers were not particularly happy to find them at Yakutat, for they had understood that the Alaska Commercial Company store was vacant and that the natives were still unaccustomed to money as a medium of exchange. They were afraid that they would have difficulty in using the trade goods which they had brought to hire Indian helpers. But as Seton-Karr observes (ibid., p. 54): “it made no difference in the end, except entailing a terrible amount of haggling, ‘chin-music’ as the lieutenant [Schwatka] styled it, with the Yakutat Indians.”

On their arrival, July 12, the party found the settlement on Khantaak Island deserted except for “a dejected wolfish-looking dog,” for the natives were almost all sealing in Disenchantment Bay (ibid., p. 50). Peremptory blasts on the Pinta's whistle, however, summoned a few canoes from houses on the mainland—evidently the move towards the “Old Village” had already started. In one canoe was a half-blind shaman, with long hair, who was told to send a messenger up the bay to get two large canoes and a crew of six. The shaman explained that this would take two days (ibid., p. 51). Seton-Karr (ibid., p. 56) suggests that the chief may not have been far away, “but on the sight of the war-vessel had hastily ‘vacated the situation’ and left for ‘parts unknown,’ until satisfied that she had not come to bombard his village.”

Now began an irritating wait for the eager explorers, which they blamed upon the dilatory tactics and prevarication of the natives. The expedition proposed to start for the mountain from “Icy Bay,” and needed a large Haida “war canoe” to go there, since this was considered the only type of craft capable of carrying the party and their equipment.

“Although the Yakutat clan [sic] of Thlinkets was about the furthest away from the Hydah Indians who manufactured these peculiar canoes—a distance equal to from about New-York to Savannah—yet it was pretty fairly known that these Yakutats had two or three of the Hydah craft by intertribal barter with the adjoining clans, mostly the Sitka clan, who, fitting out in Sitka among the white men there annually visited the Yakutats to barter for furs, skins, and any Indian handicraft that was salable among the white men.” [Schwatka, Oct. 3, 1886.]

But when Chief Yen-at-set’l (YAn-’At-eł’ ‘Tears It Up Completely,’ probably referring to the Bear of the Teqwedi sib) and a number of his men returned from the head of Yakutat Bay, there was no large canoe. One was, however, reported in a nearby lagoon, but since the owner was at the sealing camp, another messenger had to be sent to get his permission, entailing a further delay of a day and a half, before word came that it would be all right to take the canoe. Schwatka was to furnish his own men, “which I had supposed could be picked up at almost a moment's notice among those around. After much delay a crew was secured to send after the big Hydah craft.” But the latter returned to report it completely unusable, “and as if I had doubted their word each and every one brought a handful of rotten punk from the canoe's bottom to verify their doleful story.” Schwatka believed that these men had known beforehand about its condition, as did the messengers who went to see the owner. But what was worse, “at the very time they were at the head of Yakutat Bay there was another Hydah canoe that could have been had for the asking and paying of the usual price per diem or for the trip.” That this arrangement was not undertaken by the messenger, was because the canoe belonged to a man of the wrong clan (ibid.).

“Among the Yakutats, I understand, the highest of the high castes is the dogfish family [Teqwedi of Shark House]; to which the chief Yen-at-set’l belongs, and it was into the Semitic clutches of this aristocracy that I fell when I got to bargaining for my Hydah canoe for the Icy Bay trip, while it was to some other clan (probably the tadpoles or chipmunks of low caste) that the good canoe belonged, and the royal blood would not deign to negotiate with me for fear of contaminating their princely caste by having to associate with their plebian brethren.” [Ibid.]

Schwatka is, of course, telling a good story. The chief's or the messenger's reluctance to secure the other canoe could not have been due to the low position of its owner—in fact, he was probably a wealthy house chief if he could afford such a canoe—but because Yen-at-set’l probably saw no reason to promote any deal that might benefit a rival. Or else Schwatka had simply told the Indians too explicitely what to do, and they were following his wishes to the letter, avoiding as long as possible reports which would displease him. According to Seton-Karr (1887, p. 56), the chief was not only prevaricating, but was jealous of George, the “second chief,” whom he had sent as messenger.

Schwatka was also annoyed because, while the chief had advised a landing at “Icy Bay,” the owner of the canoe, who had hunted about “Icy Bay” and the foot of Mount Saint Elias, had freely expressed his opinion, “without being asked for it, however,” that the contemplated ascent was not only impossible from that side (as it proved to be), but that the attempt would be very dangerous. In consequence, the Yakutat men that Schwatka tried to hire as packers demanded three to six times the rate established for Indian wages in southeastern Alaska, harping upon the great hazards to be encountered. They professed to doubt Schwatka's promise that they would not be asked to go beyond the foot of the mountain. The Indians were certainly exploiting the situation. The deadlock was broken when Captain Nichols volunteered to take the expedition to “Icy Bay;” and when a party of Sitka Indians who had come to Yakutat to trade offered to go to “Icy Bay” for about two-thirds or three-fourths of what was demanded by the Yakutat natives, although that was still two or three times more than the usual rate of pay at Sitka. The Yakutat men promptly underbid the Sitkans, so that Schwatka finally was able to hire them at the regular rates, “they making, even then some slight concessions to ward off any offer that the Sitkas might make” (Schwatka, Oct. 3, 1886).

Accordingly the Pinta took the party to what was then “Icy Bay,” where Lieutenant Emmons landed them and their supplies through the surf. Schwatka and Seton-Karr were, however, far more impressed with the skill displayed by an Indian whom they called “Bear Hunter” in landing the small Yakutat canoe that Professor Libbey had purchased.

On their return, the party had great difficulty in launching their boat from the beach, for it swamped on their first attempt, even though a great deal of gear had been left behind to lighten it. The Indians, who were acknowledged as the only ones who really knew how to handle small craft, brought them off successfully on the second try, and confessed that they had been frightened before since the White men evidently did not understand the danger (Schwatka, 1891, p. 872).

We would admit that the Indian porters had earned their wages. Their packs weighed from 50 to 60 pounds (see also pp. 196,206), and they also carried the White men over the first main glacial river. The latter afterwards waded.

“[When on the glacier] The Indian frequently stopped and pointed to his moccasins, which certainly were worn through; but to an Indian accustomed to go barefoot over rough ground what did that signify? However, to induce him to follow, he had to be given a thick pair of woollen socks that I happened to have…. Meanwhile the Indians had been grumbling audibly. As translated by Kersunk, the boy interpreter, their mutterings signified that they would prefer to go no farther, for their moccasins were worn out…. But after a little persuasion there suddenly appeared, as if by magic, and from whence it was impossible to say, two new pairs of moccasins.” [Seton-Karr, 1887, pp. 90, 92.]

Seton-Karr gives us an interesting description of the Yakutat chief, whom he calls “Noearpoo,” the same man as Schwatka's Yen-at-set‘l, although “Noearpoo” is not a Tlingit name, since the language lacks both P and B. (Can it be YAnAcUkw?) Seton-Karr also mentions “George,” as “the second chief.” The titles of head chief and second chief had been created by the Russians and seem to have been taken over rather uncritically by the Americans. An attempt to identify these persons will be made later.

“Next morning [after the arrival of the Pinta] ‘George,’ the second chief, came on board, and was followed soon by Noearpoo, the chief of the Yakatats, dressed in a U.S.S. Adams riband and uniform, presented to him when that vessel came to arrest and bring to justice the murderer of two white men. It appears that the latter had come to ‘prospect’ for indications of gold, and that soon after their arrival the Indian or Indians, for some fancied grudge, had shot down both of them as they were landing from their boat.” [Ibid., pp. 54–55.]

[Seton-Karr may mistake the visit of the U.S.S. Wachusset in 1881 to apprehend the muderer of 1880 (see pp. 182–186) with a visit of the U.S.S. Adams on a later date; or were there two similar murders?]

“Meanwhile the chief, with his gorgeous coloured neckcloth and gold uniform, had been taken to the captain's cabin, where, with the two interpreters, we descended to interview him. After a long speech, which he had evidently prepared beforehand, about white men always speaking the truth and Indians sometimes [see what is probably the correct version, Libbey, New York Times, Nov. 16, 1886], he was asked for information,…

“After more talk the captain presented him with a U.S.S. Pinta riband to wear instead of the Adams one, and the interview was over.” [Ibid., pp. 55–56.]

[The chief, “Noearpoo” or “Yen-at-set’l,” had a flagpole in front of his house on Khantaak Island (pl. 69), on which he ran up the flag as soon as the expedition was seen approaching from “Icy Bay,” while the natives crowded the house tops to watch. Seton-Karr (ibid., p. 124) who describes the scene, is a little irritated.] “As we draw up on the beach, crowds of Yakuat Indians, men, women, and naked children, surround us. They have returned, since we left, from seal hunting. Most of them have their faces painted black or red, and stare intently and silently without one of them offering to help us.”

[Apparently the chief is waiting in his house to receive them.]

“We find the chief seated on a magnificent bear robe by the side of his wife and daughter, and wearing his uniform and the U.S.S. Pinta riband. The crowd fills the house and still pours in by the small circular opening called a door. The smoke ascends through a hole in the roof, across which are hung strings of dried salmon and salmon-trout.” [Ibid., p. 124.]

Later, Seton-Karr sketched the chief's daughter in oils.

“Several men were asked first to sit, and all showed some reluctance, so I was surprised to find the chief willing to allow his daughter to do so. She is about fifteen years of age, and came escorted by her husband and father-in-law, as well as by the chief and his wife. I had to make brushes out of bits of rope, the others being at Icy Bay. I kept her sitting an hour, and gave her a looking-glass.” [Ibid, p. 126–127.]

A photograph of “Yen-aht-setl, chief of the Yakutats,” taken by Professor Libbey, was published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, June 21, 1890 (p. 422). He appears to have been a fine-looking, vigorous and dignified man (pl. 62).

Yet Seton-Karr does not find the chief above begging from the Whites, for while the schooner, Three Brothers, on which he had started out for Kayak Island, was waiting for the wind only two miles from the Yakutat village, “a canoe shot out from the promontory containing the chief and his wife. They had come to beg! As the little schooner lay becalmed they thought it a good opportunity to do so, unobserved by the rest of the tribe” (Seton-Karr, 1887, p. 134).

We are also given considerable insight into trading customs at Yakutat, and in particular in the ties linking Yakutat with Sitka. As had been the experience of every navigator to Port Mulgrave, they found the Indians

“anxious to prolong the stay of the vessel [the Pinta, while waiting the return of the messenger from up the bay], for money soon began to be in brisk circulation. Many curios were brought to the ship‘s side and at once bought up by the officers who were making collections of native objects. The Indians too were now all the more desirous of money, as a disreputable Indian woman, known as Mrs. Toms, had made her way up from Sitka in a large hydah or war-canoe, and was busy trading, and supposed to be possessed of a large fortune amassed by doubtful methods. The greater part of the articles of native manufacture brought for sale consisted in baskets of a variety of shapes, neatly plaited out of roots, dyed different colours and designed in different patterns; charms, carved walrus tusks, bows and arrows, and horn spoons.” [Ibid., p. 59.] [The walrus tusks are puzzling; they must have been procured in trade from the north, if, indeed, identification of the specimens is correct.]

[Schwatka explains this trade with Sitka in more detail:]

“I have spoken of the fact that the Sitka clan of Indians sometimes fit out with trading material from the white stores at Sitka and visit the Yakutat clan for trading purposes, charging two and three prices for their wares—a mild form of extortion that one might think would justify the Yakutat in demanding proportionate wages. At the very time of our arrival at the Yakutat village there were two or three Hydah canoes with men and trading material from Sitka, bartering among the natives….

“Among the Sitka Indians—in fact, at the head of the trading expedition—was a character well worth a brief description. This character was a female with the Anglicized name of Mrs. Tom, a burley Amazon of the Northwest that had ten times more to say than females in those parts generally have; and throughout all Thlinket-land the consent of a squaw is needed by her husband to conclude any arrangements that he may want to make, unless of a very trivial and immediate nature, and even then the by far ‘better half’ can undo the contract. Mrs. Tom was reputed to be worth some $4,000 or $5,000, most of it in blankets (the Thlinket standard of commercial valuation instead of the 85-cent dollar,)—and with this at her bidding she more than lorded, or ladyed, it over all her sex—and the other sex, too, for that matter. She rejoiced in two husbands—if more than one husband can be a source of rejoicing to the average woman—and for the latter, who was an ordinary slave before he became one of extraordinary nature, it is said she paid something like $1,000 in goods and chattels—certainly a very low figure considering the usual market price for husbands in civilization. She was, in her youth, a Yakutat Princess, and this gave her influence in this clan, which she improved to the utmost for trading and bartering purposes. When she first arrived she gave forth that she was bent on missionary work to convert the Yakutats, but as she shortly after made some hoochenoo (vile alcohol made by the natives from sugar or molasses), from some of her trading material and got on a prismatic spree, in which one of her husbands blacked both her eyes, this line of attack was abandoned and she settled down to her trading with unwanted energy.” [Schwatka, Oct. 3, 1886.]

The important role played by Tlingit women in trading had already been noted in 1788 by Captain Douglas (Meares, 1790, p. 323). The high prices charged by Mrs. Tom at Yakutat are not to be equated with the extortionate demands made by Tlingit who enjoyed the monopoly of middlemen between the White man and some more remote interior people, although no doubt she charged extra to compensate for the risks and expense of the voyage. Mrs. Tom was a Yakutat woman, trading with her relatives, and as will be seen, the ties of kinship among the Tlingit necessitate the “payment” of especially handsome reciprocal gifts in exchange for initial presents (see pp. 481, 495). No doubt Mrs. Tom was shrewdly capitalizing on this situation. Already in 1893 she is described as “possessed of great wealth in silver dollars, and is one of the shrewdest and richest traders in the Territory, owning schooners and branch stores. Extensive advertising has made her famous and raised the prices of her goods, but few of the romantic histories current have any foundation in truth.” (Scidmore, 1893, p. 120.) “The wealthiest Sitka is the ‘Princess Tom,’ whose wealth in blankets, furs, and articles of vertue is estimated from $20,000 to $45,000. Her skill as a trader is freely conceded by all tourists” (Stevenson, 1893, p. 80, note 1). Although known as a “Princess,” she was not of high rank and has been identified as Mrs. Emeline Baker. She owned the schooner Active, which took cotton, blankets, sugar and flour to Yakutat, and there exchanged them for furs and curios, some of which had come from the interior. These were resold at profit to Sitka merchants (Knapp and Childe, 1896, pp. 103, 106–107).

According to Swanton (1909, p. 405), “Princess Thom, (Gadjî’nt)” was the sister of Q!’dustin, a Kwacqwan man from Yakutat who was living in Sitka in 1904 when he told Swanton the story of his sib's migration from the Copper River country to Yakutat (Tale 105; summarized on pp. 241–242). He was known to our informants as Sitka Jake, Q’atAsin. His sister, Qadjmt, was a paternal aunt of adane Johnstone, the father of one of our informants. Whenever this Kwacqwan woman came to Yakutat from Sitka she brought handsome presents to her Teqwedi relatives by marriage. Her husband, Thom, Swanton (1908, p. 439) mentions as “the Sitka chief,” that is, the ranking Wolf man invited from Sitka to a potlatch at Chilkat shortly before Swanton's visit in 1904. Was he therefore Anaxuts, chief of the Sitka Kagwantan?

FIGURE 5.—“Princess Thom,” sketched by John S. Bugbee. (After Bugbee, 1895, p. 190.)

Schwatka‘s party were certainly eager to acquire ethnological specimens at Yakutat, and we must remember that there were two important collectors on board the Pinta: Professor Libbey, whose material went to Princeton (pls. 109, etc.), and Lt. George T. Emmons, whose Tlingit collections with their meticulously detailed descriptions are now in all the major museums of the United States. Seton-Karr (1887, p. 125) reports that on the return of the expedition from “Icy Bay” to Khantaak Island:

“The last two days [August 3–4] have been consumed in bargaining with the Indians in trading material for curios (such as masks and arrows, spoons of wild sheep and goat horns, charms, carved bones, and baskets woven out of roots and grass), but in a manner tedious and trying to the patience. Besides salmon, and occasionally a small halibut, the Indian squaws have been daily bringing clams, cockles, crabs, and baskets of strawberries, salmon-berries, and blueberries.”

Prior to the departure for “Icy Bay,” while negotiations were still underway for the canoe, some one from the Pinta or from Schwatka's party went out in a conoe and found a shaman's grave, from which two sackfuls of objects were taken, representing his “outfit” (pls.170–177).[65] This was not regarded as grave-robbing or theft; it was justified by the consideration that the things had been left to rot, and that since no Indian would ever dare visit the grave (a misconception), the loss would never be noticed or lamented. Lieutenant Emmons is known to have acquired the contents of many shamans’ graves in different parts of Tlingit territory. Such activity was common during this period, but some “finds” were made by collectors that no one could condone. Thus, Niblack (1890, p. 337) notes that this same summer “white men robbed a cache of the Klawak chief Tin-ga-ate of all its contents to the value of over $2,000. The booty included five hundred blankets, fifty wash bowls [used as feast dishes], thirtysix mirrors, six valuable dancing robes, and many other articles.”

In this connection it may be significant that SetonKarr found all the native houses at Yakutat to be locked up while the people were at sealing camp. Mrs. Shepard in 1889 (1889, p. 278) tried to look into the chief's house on Khantaak Island to see if there were totem poles inside but found that “when he goes away he locks his door behind him with a padlock and takes the key, and was not at home when we called. Every nook and cranny through which we might have peeped was filled up in some way or other.” On a small island in the bay, she noted what was perhaps a shaman‘s gravehouse, evidently rendered as secure as possible against intrusion. It is described as “a deserted log hut, a canoe, and a small square enclosure, tightly boarded over, but into which we managed to peep. In it we saw a bundle of what we thought were skins, and a large chest or leathern trunk” (ibid., p. 230).

One hundred years has thus brought a great change in the relation between Indians and Whites, for it is the former who now have property that is irresistible, and it is the latter who have to be watched and against whom precautions must be taken to prevent the theft of tempting treasures that seem to have been abandoned. On the other hand, the Indians are, with few exceptions, to be trusted as honest. Although Schwatka (Oct. 20, 1886) warns that they should never be paid in advance, that even the small boys at Yakutat were “as shrewd and exacting in all the bargains they made as their elders,” and that: “Another salient point in their character is the perfect indifference with which they will break their contracts,” nevertheless, Schwatka and his men did not seem to hesitate to leave valuable equipment, including the goods with which his native helpers were to be paid, in the house of the Yakutat chief while the expedition was climbing Mount Saint Elias. The large tent, blankets, clothing, and so forth, were all safe on their return. Furthermore, on leaving “Icy Bay” they had to leave behind a great deal of equipment on the beach, to recover which they sent back two Indians. As Seton-Karr reports (1887, p. 127): “One of them, who owns a partly ruined hut there [at “Icy Bay”], is bold looking, with an honest and trustworthy as well as picturesque appearance. He is one of the only two men who hunt bears in this neighbourhood; the other is one of our Indians, ‘the hunter,’ as we called him.”

Others were also to pay tribute to Indian honesty (see Russell, 1893, quoted p. 203).

Although Schwatka's party sometimes found the natives’ curiosity in their doings to be annoying, especially when the children were constantly hanging around their tent on Khantaak Island, it is interesting that the Indians did not go near the “observatory,” a box of instruments which Professor Libbey had screwed to a tree. Seton-Karr (1887, p. 126) believed that this was because “they consider it must be ‘big medicine.’ “ Whatever the reason, we see here a great contrast with the behavior displayed toward Malaspina's instruments. It is clear, however, that as soon as the Indians come to regard the Whites as friends, they treat them as such, and this means entering the house or the tent of a friend with complete freedom, without knocking or announcement, since such respect for spacial privacy is not part of the aboriginal code of good manners. Thus when the chief visited the camp and was given some pilot bread and bacon, “Rows of brown naked children, with black beady eyes, sit round four deep and watch every operation with an intense and speechless interest” (ibid., p. 125).

Schwatka's party was offered the hospitality of the chief's house on their return from Mount Saint Elias, although they declined, and this seems to have been not an unusual kindness at this time, as we shall see from accounts of later expeditions.

That friendly relations were preserved to the end of Schwatka's stay at Yakutat is extraordinary, for a tragedy occurred which might have led to further deaths. While camped near the edge of the Malaspina Glacier, John Dalton had put some arsenic in a baking powder can or yeast can in order to prepare some poisoned bait for foxes or wolves. An Indian had found the can, still partly full, which Dalton had carelessly thrown away. Professor Libbey took it from the Indian, trying to explain the deadly nature of its contents, but gave it to Dalton to destroy. The latter simply hid the can, and the Indian, with what Seton-Karr called “his thievish propensities,” (1887, p. 130), had found and kept the tin, “concealing it this time in another Indian's bundle…. ” At any event, it was finally brought back to Yakutat where it was found and used by some Indians in baking bread. The man himself had meanwhile gone back to Icy Bay where he intended to trap all winter.

The Whites first discovered what had happened to the arsenic on August 7, only a few days after their return to Port Mulgrave, when some Indian women came to them, ostensibly to trade curios, but bringing the fatal can and wondering what was the matter with the “baking powder” since all who had eaten the bread made with it were sick. These were “Bear Hunter,” who had been with the expedition, his wife, their three children, and a Sitkan.

Professor Libbey recognized the can and immediately explained to the chief, through the interpreter, what had happened. According to Professor Libbey's dispatch to the New York Times (Nov. 16, 1886); the chief replied by saying “that white men lied, that Indians sometimes lied, but that he never lied.” He had promised Captain Nichols of the Pinta to take care of them and would do so. He realized, he said, that the Whites had been careful—we would surely blame them, especially if, according to Professor Libbey's own statement, the can was taken a second time from the Indian and still not destroyed! The blame was the Indian's, the chief admitted, but he was sorry to lose his friend.

The Whites did what they could to help the sick, who were all lying in the chief's house, although the Professor's medicine chest had been left at “Icy Bay.” One child apparently died almost immediately, and was cremated behind the village the next day. Meanwhile, Professor Libbey set the interpreter to making strong coffee and, to induce vomiting, gave each patient a feather from an eagle wing that was hanging in the chief's house. Although all drank the coffee, only the Sitkan and the two remaining children would use the feathers, perhaps because they had more faith in the White man's knowledge. They felt better after a few hours, so “Bear Hunter” and his wife agreed to follow the same treatment. Professor Libbey believes that this might have saved them, had not the medicine man been called in. His treatment, together with the fact that the other inmates of the house, including the couple's own son, were afraid to share their food or even the hot water from their kettle with the suffering man and his wife, resulted in the deaths of the latter on the third day. The callous behavior of the other members of the household was due to terror of contamination through anything shared with those who had been so mysteriously stricken. From what one informant told me about the death of an older brother who had eaten “poisoned seaweed” on Khantaak Island, I believe that there may have been another victim of this arsenic poisoning, one who died at sealing camp and whose fate was therefore not known to Schwatka's party. There was a suspicion of witchcraft in this man's death. This might explain the behavior of those associated with “Bear Hunter” and his wife.

Descriptions of the shamanistic seances written by Seton-Karr and Professor Libbey will be found on pages 720–722.

Even after these tragic deaths there seem to have been no threats or accusations leveled at Schwatka's party, not even a demand for indemnity, which the relatives of the deceased might have been expected to make. We gather that the Sitka man and the two children survived.

It was on August 14, only a week after the poisoning, that Schwatka, Wood, and Kersunk went with an Indian, “Yeet-shwoo-doo-kook,” also known as “Gums” [66] from his grin, on a five day canoe trip through the Ankau lagoon system to Lost River, and perhaps beyond. There was apparently no hint of unpleasantness from the two parties of Tlingit encountered in the Ankau lagoon (Schwatka, Oct. 26, 1886). Although fear of reprisal from the Pinta, which was due to return early in September, might have prevented any actual attack on the Whites, it would certainly not have suppressed bitter accusations, threats, or sullen behavior. There is no mention of this, although the Whites were evidently worried when the poisoning was first discovered, for the two Swedish traders hastened in their dory to stand by Schwatka and his men as soon as they heard the news (Seton-Karr, 1887, p. 131). Perhaps the shaman convinced the village that no ordinary human hand was to blame.

Topham (1888)

In July 1888, a new expedition came to attack Mount Saint Elias, but again without reaching the summit. This was led by Harold W. Topham and his brother, both British Alpinists, who were accompanied by George Broke, and by William Williams, an American; four Sitka Indians and two miners, Harry Lyons and Shorty MacConahy, served as porters. The party came up to Yakutat from Sitka on a rather unseaworthy fishing schooner, the Alpha, chartered for that purpose.

If in what Topham writes about Yakutat and its inhabitants we detect the condescending tones of the Victorian English gentleman, secure in his established position and conscious of his ablutionary superiority over the heathen, we must remember that he is addressing the Royal Geographical Society and the readers of the London Alpine Journal, not anthropologists. Williams, writing for Scribners, displays more sympathetic interest in the natives. Together, their stories amplify our picture of Yakutat in the late 1880's.

Thus according to Topham:

“Yakutat is an Indian village consisting of five houses, which afford shelter to 250 natives. That the place is extremely offensive to a white man's nose need not be stated. Provided that a government gunboat has been along the coast shortly before your visit the people will be friendly; if it has not, you had better keep away” (1889 b, p. 347).

When the schooner came into Port Mulgrave, “the chief had raised his flag, and all the inhabitants were congregated around the village…” (ibid.). Of this chief, presumably the same as “Yen-at-set‘l” and “Noearpoo,” Williams (1889, p. 389) observes: “The chief, Billy, is quite friendly, and will allow one, if without shelter, to spend several days in his house. If he expects anything in return, he will say so before hand.”

Nothing is said about the Swedish traders, so presumably they had left Yakutat; rather: “At Yakutat we found a Mr. de Groff, who was trading with the inhabitants, and acted as our interpreter for us in our negotiations with them” (Topham, 1889 b, p. 347). Edward de Groff was a leading merchant of Sitka. He was known at Yakutat as KEnisnu-’ic, ‘Killisnoo's Father,’ because he was in charge of the Northwestern Trading Company that had an establishment at Killisnoo near Angoon (de Laguna, 1960, p. 162). Later he also became President of the Chichagoff Gold Mining Company, and in 1900 U.S. Commissioner at Sitka. Minnie Johnson remembered him as the skipper for the Northwestern Trading Company who used to visit Khantaak Island when the village was there. Her father, who died in 1888, bought a big doll for her and an accordion for her older brother from de Groff. He is said to have photographed “Bear Bit Billy” (1862–1902), a Kwacqwan man of Fort House, while the latter was lying wounded after his encounter by the bear, although the picture is ascribed to Taber of San Francisco (pl. 81).

Since Topham wished to hire some local Indians, in addition to the four whom he had brought from Sitka, and to secure a canoe, the explorers and de Groff paid

“a state visit to the chief, who had donned his best clothes for the occasion. He had on an evening dress waistcoat and trousers, and a naval cap; and he stood, surrounded by his dirty family, at the foot of some feather mattresses, on which he requested us to be seated. He was much more interested in our clothes than in answering our questions about canoes and men; but he made great promises of assistance, more in fact, than he had the power to keep, and he made us promise, on our part, to give him, upon our return, so many of our clothes that we should have been reduced to a state of nature if we afterwards adhered to our word.” [Topham, 1889 b, p. 347.]

Topham is apparently not bothered by his own insincerity because he feels that the chief was also promising what he knew he could not perform (Topham 1889 a, p. 426), yet it is possible that the amiable chief was not so much trying to deceive his White visitors as to please them by saying what was agreeable.

Topham hired “Gums” who had been with Schwatka in 1886, but then encountered difficulties and delays. As he observed: “An Indian will not be hurried” (1889 b, p. 347). And further:

“Before deciding upon a thing Indians have to do a lot of talking. They talk the matter over with their families, and with the medicine man. Of these last there had been two in the settlement, but one of them, luckily for us, disappeared in a rather curious way. He went out in his canoe halibut fishing, and a very large halibut took his bait—and it took the doctor too. Neither fish nor doctor were ever seen again.” [Topham, 1889 a, p. 426.]

One reason for the reluctance of the Yakutat natives to settle quickly on Topham‘s terms was that the latter, while in Sitka, had hired and subsequently discharged a native from Juneau nicknamed “Dick the Dude.”[67] He was a “mission Indian,” who built what has been described as “almost the best house in Sitka,” at the northern end of the Indian settlement, giving for it a house-building potlatch in 1892 which cost about $500 (Stevenson, 1893, p. 82). This man had sent advanced word to Yakutat, via some Indians who came in a canoe to visit friends, that some wealthy “King George Men” were on their way, who were very anxious to hire packers and would pay good wages. Topham believed that it was partly in anticipation of his arrival that the Yakutat natives had delayed starting their annual sea otter hunt (it was then early in July). Although Williams (1889, p. 389) reports that: “The inhabitants evinced a sort of stupid interest at our coming…” yet they “stood out for three dollars a day for some time,” which was the wage for White men, not for Indians. Because his four Sitkans and his two white porters made him relatively independent of local labor, as the Yakutat realized, Topham finally got the latter to come to terms, but not before he had threatened to go away if they did not supply men and canoes at once. Thus, he was able to rent two large Haida canoes, bought a small forked-prow canoe “of the Yakutat pattern” (Topham, 1889 b, p. 348), hired four natives for two dollars a day, and two more White men for three dollars a day. This difference in rate prevailed despite the accepted dictum that Indians “are generally capable of carrying heavier loads than white men…” (Williams, 1889, p. 387), for they could not yet be trusted as equally reliable.

Now the party was ready to start for “Icy Bay,” but the Indians reported the weather unfavorable. Although admitting that he had to rely on their judgment in such matters, Topham ordered them to go. “…the village has turned out en masse to see us depart, and the chief, in his robes of state with his infant son in his arms, is standing at the edge of the water, so that he may be included in the photograph which de Groff is to take” (Topham, 1889 b, p. 348). The scene illustrated in Williams (1889, p. 391) is based on this photograph (pl. 70). Around the point, the Indians again prophesied what Topham understood was a storm, and demanded to return, just so they could be present at a feast in the village that night, Topham thought. Williams, while describing their conduct as “aggravating,” explains that they were waiting for a favorable breeze because they (understandably) preferred sailing to paddling 55 miles, although the Whites were more concerned to land while the surf was low than when whipped up by a southeast wind. Nevertheless, they did turn back, and the Whites spent a miserable time ashore, “surrounded by dirt and dogs. These dogs are everywhere; they are innumerable. They steal everything they can get at and are very clever in their methods of searching after food,” even digging under the walls of the tent if they could not force the door (Topham, 1889 b, p. 348).

Next morning, the expedition started in earnest. Although the Indians could not understand the White man's hurry: “We finally succeeded in making them do as we pleased by threatening to proceed in the Alpha” (Williams, 1889, p. 390). A favorable breeze gave the party the delightful experience of sailing, and of seeing the skill with which the Indians landed the canoes in spite of the surf (see Williams’ description on page 343).

Landing was made at the delta of the Yahtse (aé) River, whence one canoe and its crew were to return to Yakutat. The Indians wanted to stay to fish, and, moreover, Topham had promised that they would be paid so much a day until they reached home. Finally a compromise was achieved, whereby the Indians were to be paid for three more days; they could leave when they liked, but were not to depend on the expedition for food.

Now the party began to ascend the course of the Yahtse River, “Gums” leading the way by virtue of his prior experience with Schwatka. Topham complained that at first the Indians laid down their packs every few hundred yards. He ordered them not to stop until he himself did so. This seemed to work well until they came to an irresistable strawberry patch, where the natives (and I imagine the Whites, too) gorged for 20 minutes. That the Indians may have been glad of a rest is understandable, since Williams reports: “Our native packers carried from seventy to ninety pounds, our white men from sixty to eighty” (1889, pp. 390–392).

The party also had to cross glacial streams. “Curiously enough the Indians seemed to prefer wading to walking over dry ground. The first day out, they took us through deep water no less than ten times in the course of half an hour, much of which could have been avoided, as we subsequently found, by making a short détour through the woods.” (Ibid., p. 401.) The jovial “Gums,” in fact, apparently found it amusing to trick the Whites in this way, especially since he told the miner, Shorty, who used to wade barefoot, that they had passed the last stream, and as soon as the latter had resumed his boots, led him across three more! It is evident that the hardy conditioning which the native men had undergone since childhood enabled them to stand much more cold than the Whites could tolerate.

” ‘Gums’ was in his element. He thoroughly enjoyed the water, and sometimes he would stand half-way across a stream with the water up to his chest, with his arms folded, and with a grin of delight upon his huge gums, waiting calmly whilst the rest of us shivered across” (Topham, 1889 b, p. 352). On the return journey, when the river was very high and wading was so difficult that the shortest Indian had to be relieved of his load, lest he be swept off his feet, “Gums” crossed the stream, dropped his pack on the bank, “and returned to the deepest part where he literally took a bath with all his clothes on and seemed to rejoice in our unsuccessful efforts at finding a shallow place for crossing. The water coming directly from the glacier was so cold that we white men were only too glad to get out of it, but its temperature seemed to have no disagreeable effect on the Indians” (Williams, 1889, p. 401).

The Indians also proved themselves capable of negotiating the ice, for they helped to carry supplies up the Agassiz Glacier (a branch of the Malaspina) to a campsite at the base of the Chaix Hills.

“Most of our Indians had never been on ice before, yet they carried their loads of eighty or ninety pounds over rough and slippery places with comparative ease; more than once we took great pains to cut steps across an ice-slope to prevent anyone from slipping; but they generally disdained using them, crossing either just above or just below where we had prepared the way. They refused to wear the shoes with nails he had provided for them, preferring their moccasins; several reached camp one night with bleeding feet, but they nevertheless persisted in using their own footgear. We subsequently discovered that one of their objects in so doing was to avoid wearing out good shoes in our service.” [Williams, 1889, p. 393.]

Their concern to acquire or preserve White man's footgear reminds us of Schwatka‘s experience. Yet we must also recognize that stiff-soled leather boots would have been intolerable to feet that had never worn anything heavier than soft moccasins.

Nevertheless, the Indians did not like the glacier. Two were left at the upper camp with George Broke, who had suffered an accident, while the remaining Whites made their unsuccessful attempt to scale Mount Saint Elias. The two Sitkans were not happy that they had been chosen to remain because they were the most reliable, and envied those who had been sent back to the shore.

“They expressed a decided desire to go no farther; they said they were afraid, and spent the greater part of the time during our absence in chanting mournfully. When asked why they chanted, they answered, ‘Indians have sick tumtum, and want go home.’ The word tumtum means a variety of things, from a bootjack up to the soul. This time it meant ‘mind, spirit,’ and implied weariness.” [Topham, 1889 a, p. 429.]

There seems to have been no difficulty at launching the two canoes at “Icy Bay.” The large one carried 12 men, all the baggage, and the remaining food; the smaller Yakutat canoe held only 4 men. They reached Yakutat on the morning of August 8, after sailing and paddling about 14 hours. The Indians were glad to return, but we do not know if they were satisfied with their wages, or if the chief was satisfied with what Topham may have left him in fulfillment of the original bargain.

We should note that Topham‘s manner, which seems to have been rather autocratic and peremptory, may have prevented him from receiving information of value. Thus, after his return to Port Mulgrave, having failed to reach the summit from the south side:

“I was told subsequently by George, the second chief at Yakutat, that he had once made a journey after goats towards the north of the peak, and that the northern sides were much less steep than the southern, and were covered with snow. He landed further west than we did, near a river similar to the Yahtsé-tah [Duktoth River?], and made three days’ journey inland over ice. It is characteristic of the Indian character that he never said a word of this till our return to Yakatat. Until the Indians are sure of your good intentions, they will give you no help.” [Topham, 1889 a, p. 432.]

Of course, it is possible that Topham neglected to ask George for his advice. However, the latter did tell Topham about the ancient village which was overwhelmed by the glacier in Icy Bay (see p. 286).

Williams sums up the character of the Yakutat as follows:

“The average Indian is a competent being, though it takes some time to discover his good points. He is quick at grasping ideas, and is especially good at imitating what others have done. But it requires great patience in dealing with him, the more so since he deals with the white man at arm‘s length. He is exceedingly distrustful, nor does he cease to be so until he has become thoroughly convinced of the honest intentions of the stranger.” [1889, p. 393.]

Skill at imitation is probably a result of the native methods of education, that stress watching and doing on the part of the child, rather than following purely verbal instructions. Quiet listening is also better than asking questions (see pp. 508–514).

Since the Alpha, which was supposed to pick them up, was delayed, the expedition split up for the return to Sitka. Williams took advantage of the unexpected chance to go back on the Active, “a small schooner which was already crowded with miners” (Williams, 1889, pp. 401–402). A week later another member went in a native canoe, the voyage taking 7 days. At Sitka, the Leo, a schooner with auxiliary engine, was chartered to fetch the remainder of the party. This vessel sprang a leak in a gale and had to return to Yakutat for repairs, so did not reach Sitka until September 17.

Miners, Missionaries, and the U.S.S. Rush (1888–90)

Although members of Topham's expedition were in and out of Yakutat over a period of 2 months during what is reported to have been the height of the gold excitement, we hear little about it from them, other than that two miners were extracting $20 a day in gold from the black sands of Khantaak Island (Topham, 1889 a, p. 426). In reviewing the events of the preceding decade, the Census of 1890 (Porter, 1893, p. 230) reports that these gold-bearing sands had been discovered in 1887 and that the next spring some 40 to 50 prospectors went to Yakutat. They staked out many claims that summer and the next, then all but abandoned the ground. This was because a storm piled the beach with dead dogfish, the oil from which saturated the sand and prevented the use of mercury to extract the gold, and soon after another storm washed away most of the beach. Still, in July 1891, three miners were working the sands, and sluiced out about $3,000, getting as much as $90 in 10 hours’ work.

There is also a report of gold-bearing sands found earlier, resulting in a flurry of excitement in 1886–87. This may have been at Logan Beach above Knight Island, or at Black Sand Island off the mouth of the Situk (Porter, 1893, p. 53; Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 165). Seton-Karr had visited the black sands on Khantaak Island in 1886, and reports that the prospectors who had previously come up on a naval vessel became discouraged when some of their party accidentally drowned shortly after their arrival, so that the rest simply returned to Sitka (1887, p. 55). If sluicing gold during the summer of 1888 had seemed very profitable it is unlikely that Topham could have hired four miners as porters. We should note that already by August 15, the schooner that took Williams back to Sitka was filled with miners leaving the area. The boom was evidently over.

John Dalton who had served as camp hand for Schwatka had either remained in Yakutat or had returned, for Topham mentions (1889 a, p. 425) his discovery of coal fields up Yakutat Bay in 1887. These were above Esker Creek near Bancas Point, where Dalton and his partner or partners sank several shallow shafts to reach the veins of lignite, before abandoning the project. Russell in 1891 was to seak shelter in the cabin which these miners had built and abandoned (Russell, 1893, p. 67).

Prospectors were evidently moving freely about the country, for Topham (1889 a, p. 425) met a miner who had traveled alone from Dry Bay to Yakutat. Dalton and a companion, while prospecting for gold, had gone above Haenke Island to the head of Disenchantment Bay, and apparently into Russell Fiord, the first White men to do so (Russell, 1893, p. 84).

The miners at Yakutat certainly produced effects on the native population at Yakutat, even though we cannot specify these exactly. One of the prospectors, Steve Gee, stayed to marry a Kwacqwan girl, Annie (1877–1915), and this same man, in 1917 or 1918, is said to have built the first jail at Yakutat for the Reverend Axelson, who was also U.S. Commissioner. Other miners doubtless established relations with native girls; in fact, it was not long before White men came to have the reputation of falsely promising marriage, or a permanent alliance, only to abandon their child and the mother, even though there were men with more sense of responsibility. Some of the native women on Khantaak Island apparently earned something by washing the prospector's clothes.

Not all intercourse between the Indians and the miners was on an amicable basis, even though Topham and Williams give no information about this. However, Mrs. Shepard, visiting Yakutat in the fall of 1889 on board her husband‘s ship, the U.S. revenue cutter Rush, reports that two White men had been murdered in 1887, if indeed, she is correct about the date and is not confusing this incident with the murders of 1880.

“Two years ago [1887] there were two white men wantonly murdered a few miles from Yakutat. They, with two Indians, had gone out on a hunting expedition. Their wood gave out and the two white men went a short distance from their camp, together in a boat, to procure some, leaving their guns behind them. On returning they were met by the two Indians, who fired upon them with their own guns, killing one of them instantly, the other, still partially alive, was finished with the stab of a knife. One of the Indians was caught, taken to Portland, tried and hanged; but the principal one, it is rumored, is still at large. The second chief of the Yakutat tribe (I did not learn his name), of the smiling countenance, went to Portland and testified against the murderer who was hanged. It was an event which forever afterward raised him to pre-eminence in the eyes of the rest of the tribe.” [Shepard, 1889, p. 232.]

The Reverend Albin Johnson, missionary at Yakutat from 1889 to 1905, tells almost the same story but without giving any date (Johnson, 1924, pp. 115–116). The murdered White men had been prospecting for gold when they were killed, and when the two natives were seized by the U.S. warship they confessed their crime. The chief who went to Portland, Oregon, to see them hanged was George “Naa-kaa-nee,” i.e., nakani, ‘sib brother-in-law.’ This is not a proper name, but denotes a chief's relative who, by virtue of his marriage to a woman of importance in another sib, is chosen to act as go-between, peace-maker, ambassador, or chief of protocol, in some ceremony involving his own sib and that of his wife (see pp. 494–495). My informants identified him as the Kwacqwan chief, known as Yakutat Chief George Yaodaqet (pl. 64), who became the most important man in Yakutat after the death of the Teqwedi chief Yanatcho, or Minaman (see p. 201). Yakutat Chief George Yaodaqet is evidently “George, the second chief,” of other writers, although the natives gave the name “George Second Chief” to his younger brother, Qa’A, who is said to have died “crazy from too much religion.” His older brother died about 1903. Reverend Johnson reports that Chief George was noted as a friend of the Whites and especially of the missionaries, a brave and skillful hunter.

It is surprising that no mention is made by Topham and Williams of the beginnings of the Mission at Yakutat. According to the Reverend Hamilton, whom I knew at Yakutat in 1949 and 1954, the Covenant Mission was started by one of two men from Sweden who had originally wished to go to Siberia as missionaries. Unable to enter Siberia from Sweden, they came to Alaska, but also failed here to get the necessary permission to go to Siberia. One, the Reverend Axel Karson, went to Unalaklik, an Eskimo village on Norton Sound, while the other, Reverend Adolf Lydell, came to Yakutat. This was in the spring of 1887. The sect which they represented had been founded in 1878 in Sweden by a number of congregations in revolt against the State Lutheran Church; it spread to the Swedish colonists in America, and became established with headquarters in Chicago in 1884–85, as the Evangelical Mission Covenant Church of America. It emphasizes individual religious experience leading to salvation, the supreme authority of the Bible, and the relative independence of each congregation. Services are characterized by individual testmonials and public confessions volunteered by members of the congregation.

Lydell remained at Yakutat through the summer of 1887 and went outside in the fall, returning the following summer. He had to leave again for reasons of health. Apparently the Reverend K. J. Hendrickson had come with him, but remained behind.

Minnie Johnson reported that Mr. Lydell purchased the log trading post from “Doc” (i.e., Doctor Ballou, the trader). There is further evidence that this trader was in Yakutat during the summer of 1888, for her father, who died of tuberculosis that year, sold his sea otter bow and arrows to “Doc” in exchange for a pair of copper-toed shoes for his little daughter.

On May 11, 1889, the Reverend Albin Johnson arrived in Yakutat to take the place of the ailing Lydell whom he had met in Portland on his way north. Johnson was to stay in Yakutat for 17 years, the longest period of service for any preacher attached to the Mission, yet I judge that Hendrickson, because of his skills as carpenter and his energy, made more impression on the natives. Others attached later to the Mission and remembered by our informants were Gustavensen who helped Hendrickson build the church, Miss Selma Peterson who came as cook and teacher, Mrs. Albin Johnson (Agnes Wallin), who came all the way from Jankaping, Sweden, in May, 1891, and who “couldn’t speak a word of English.” Miss Carlsen is also mentioned as a teacher, and Paul Page, a native trained at the Sheldon Jackson school at Sitka, for a time acted as interpreter (Jackson, 1894, pp. 15–16; 1903, p. 47).

Johnson's first impressions of Yakutat were not favorable, for, as soon as the little schooner arrived that had brought him from Juneau, “the savages—copper-colored, dirty, and badly clad—climbed aboard in swarms, begging “Thlinket, Häete, Nowu, Häete, Nowu; Häete Kunse, Häete Kunse—Give us liquor [ha ’At nauwu], [ha ‘At antcI]” (Johnson, 1924, p. 21).

The missionaries began at once to improve their quarters, and when Mrs. Shepard visited Yakutat the following year she found a small garden in which beets, turnips, potatoes and carrots were thriving (Shepard, 1889, p. 230). Later, quite a few of the converts, according to my informants, had similar garden plots, although Johnson complained (1924, p. 51) that they did not really take to agriculture.

The two “kindly looking, noble men,” Johnson and Hendrickson, had had, according to Mrs. Shepard,

“much trouble in establishing their mission; there was a scarcity of lumber and their house was too small. At the time I was there they were able to accomodate only five Indian boys. The only way to do the Indians any good was, as has been proved, to keep them entirely under their supervision…. I could not but admire those humble good men, so far from their native land, staking their very lives for the salvation of these poor degraded beings. I asked one of them, ‘Mr. H—, do you feel safe among these Indians?’ ‘Hardly safe,’ he replied, ‘though I do not fear them. One day not long ago,’ he continued, ’one of them came to me and wanted to use my grindstone; it was Sunday, so I refused him, whereupon he said he would kill me. He had an axe in one hand and a knife in the other. I told him he could kill me, I was helpless; and he walked away. They are like dogs; had I shown fear he would have killed me.’” [Mrs. Shepard recalls that Dr. Duncan of Metlakatla had told of a similar experience.] “These Indians admire courage and will seldom kill but the craven or coward, right out in the broad light of day. Their usual method is to steal upon the victim unawares and shoot from behind and ambush.” [Shepard, 1889, pp. 231–232.]

Before the church and mission buildings were finished, meetings were held in the big native houses on Khantaak Island, using each in turn, and an effort was made to train children who could serve as interpreters.

According to the Census of 1890, the Swedish Free Missionary Society had at Yakutat a church worth $1,200, with 17 native and 3 White communicants (Porter, 1893, p. 183).

“In 1890 this institution reported 2 male teachers and 28 pupils, 17 boys and 11 girls, with an average daily attendance of 20 for 312 days of tuition. The new mission and school building built in 1891 is 45 by 35 feet and 2 stories high [housing the church, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor, with the boys’ dormitory and teachers’ room above]. The chief obstacle which confronts the teacher of native children is the indifference of the natives and the very irregular attendance of the pupils, and these difficulties are very hard to overcome in the Yakutat school.” [Ibid., p. 189.]

Albin Johnson describes a number of events, such as the first conversion, that of a cripple named Satshrook, who was baptized Ned Swanson; the first Christmas at the mission; a potlatch on Khantaak Island in 1890 (?, see p. 650) given by the chief “Jana-Shoo” (see “Yanatcho” of Mrs. Shepard, below); adoption of a 6-year old orphan girl, Datt-sherke, baptized Esther; an outbreak of religious hysteria or “shouting” in the winter of 1890 (see pp. 724–725); the establishment of the sawmill and the native reaction to this. However, because these and other incidents occurred during the last decade of the 19th century, they are remembered by some of my informants, and it seems more appropriate to combine Johnson's accounts and descriptions with those of the natives.

I have already had occasion to quote from Mrs. Shepard who visited Yakutat in 1889. In September of that year, her husband's ship, the U.S. revenue steamer Rush, on which she had just made a trip to the Aleutian Islands, was ordered to Yakutat. This was because the schooner, Alpha, was overdue at Sitka and was feared wrecked. This was the same schooner that had failed to pick up Topham's party the previous summer. The delay in 1889 had been caused by a shortage of provisions, and by disputes between the captain, the trader on board, and Mr. H., a photographer from Taber‘s in San Francisco. Since Captain Shepard found the schooner to be also unseaworthy, she was left behind at Yakutat, and the Rush took all on board back to Sitka. Mrs. Shepard has given some spirited descriptions of Yakutat, although probably not all her information is accurate. She was the first White woman to come to this area, unless we except the mysterious woman that native tradition reports as the sole survivor of a wreck west of Icy Bay (see pp. 233, 256).

It is clear that the visit of a Government vessel was still not an event to be welcomed without reservation by all of the natives.

“We were told by a person who understood Thlinket, that when the Rush first appeared at Yakutat there was great alarm among the Indians for fear of punishment, the making of liquor being prohibited. Their consciences troubled them. Some little time before a party of Copper River Indians had come on a visit: they had made a great deal of ‘hoochinoo’ (the native liquor) and had had a grand time. Each chief was anxious to lay the blame on the other.” [Shepard, 1889, p. 228.]

[The natives soon overcame their timidity, however, and hardly gave the people on board the steamer any privacy, behavior which naturally Mrs. Shepard found very trying.] “I will mention here that the Indians in the village spent all of the time we stayed in the harbor aboard the Rush. On more intimate acquaintance they grew bolder and would follow us into our private apartments in a most provoking manner.” [Ibid., p. 224.]

[The personnel on the Rush were eager to purchase Yakutat baskets, since these were considered to be the finest made by the Tlingit, and Yakutat was also known as a source of mountain goat and bear skins.] “We found some good basket-work, but at high prices. These Indians seemed as shrewd as those at Sitka at bargaining. Several of the lieutenants [from the Rush] found some pretty baskets at the small store just opened, three mountain-goat skins, and one of them a blanket of eagle‘s breast-feathers, which made the rest of us green with envy.” [Ibid., pp. 220–221.]

[Although there was no regular service between Yakutat and Sitka,] “trading schooners [come] up once in a while. The Pinta, the naval vessel stationed at Sitka, runs up occasionally, that is all.” [Ibid. p. 231.] [However,] “A branch store from Sitka had been opened recently at Yakutat and was doing well…. We inquired of the storekeeper if he could trust the Indians? he said ‘Yes.’ and added, ‘in almost every case where he had allowed them to have clothing with an agreement to pay when they had money they had faithfully fulfilled their promise.” [Ibid., p. 230.]

“The Yakutat Indians, like those at Sitka, all understand what ‘How much?’ means, and never by any chance make a mistake and confuse two and three dollars. They dislike to change money, the greater the number of small pieces the more they imagine they have.” [Ibid., p. 227.]

Trade was certainly brisk, and the natives came continually to the ship. “We were surrounded by a whole fleet of canoes, going and coming all day, after our first raid on the village, in search of baskets.” Among the curios they brought to sell “the most unexpected and amusing of all were half a dozen hair switches” (ibid., p. 224). Although Mrs. Shepard assumed that these were for use as false hair, it is far more probable that they were intended for decorating regalia, ceremonial costumes, and totemic carvings, and they may very well have been made from slaves’ hair (Keithahn, 1954).

Mrs. Shepard was also concerned to see children, mostly boys, running around in the cold, wet September weather, dressed in nothing but a cotton shirt. She was told that for “recreation” they plunged into the breakers in winter or slid barefoot on the snow, not realizing that this was part of the severe hardening training for children. (This was a practice which universally horrified the Whites; in some communities it was forbidden by ordinances.) Mrs. Shepard noted that, despite this “terrible exposure,” some Yakutat natives live to old age, and reports that the missionary said that two Indians, both over eighty, could remember when the Russians were massacred (Shepard, 1889, p. 225). In addition to the men from the derelict Alpha, the Rush was to take back to Sitka

“a distinguished couple and their family…Yanatcho, chief of the Yakutat clan and his wife. His ‘Boston’ name…being ‘Billy Merryman,’ named after a captain in the navy who had once been here. [Commander E. C. Merriman, captain of the U.S.S. Adams, in 1882.] Yanatcho was a haughty looking man, who spoke as one having authority. He begged, or rather expressed, his desire to go to Sitka in a somewhat peremptory manner. He first asked my husband to take him down to Sitka. Captain S—said, ‘All right.’ Next he asked him if he could take his wife.” [And then in turn, separately asked for permission to take his son, a box of seal oil, and finally three children, at which the captain exclaimed] “‘No more!’ However, at the time appointed for their embarkation, just before our departure, three canoes, full of men, women and children, with all their goods and chattels, a most incongruous mixture, appeared. It was too late to single them out. Two canoes full were bundled aboard and off we started. [One wonders whether hardships resulted from separation of families.]

“The next two or three days must have been trying even to them[!], for the poor creatures had no shelter but such as they could get under the ‘fo’-castle,’ and an awning put up to keep the rain off. For, besides the rain, we had a heavy gale on our way back to Sitka. The ship thrashed about most unmercifully. Mr. D—played the good Samaritan and took the chief, with his wife, and children, under his protection in the engine-room, where they were at least warm. Yanatcho made his tribe believe the ‘gunboat’ had come after him especially, so we learned from those that understood the Thlinket aboard the schooner.” [Ibid., pp. 221–223.]

“Yanatcho” is evidently the Teqwedi name, YanAcUkw, ‘Firing a Gun’ (perhaps yÀ-nA-cI-Ùkw). This name was later borne by B. B. Williams, son of the Kwacqwan house chief, Bear Bit Billy. “Yanatcho,” “Jana-Shoo,” is, I believe, the same man as Williams’ “Billy,” Schwatka's “Yen-at-set’l” and Seton-Karr's “Noearpoo.” The various Tlingit names which he bears would appear to be honorable titles, assumed in succession as he gave new potlatches; the last which he gave was apparently that witnessed by Reverend Johnson in 1890. He was evidently the ranking chief of the Bear House-Shark House lineage of the Teqwedi, and the same man that my informants remembered as “Chief Nelemen,” or “Chief Minaman,” evidently mispronunciations of “Merriman.” In the old graveyard on the hill above the mission, where perhaps the Russian blockhouse once stood, are the collapsed remains of what was once a large wooden gravehouse, in the midst of which is a stone shaft with the names: “JACK SHA-KOO-KAWN, 1831–1899,” and “CHIEF MINAMAN, KAWH-DA-WHEALH, 1810–1980.” The latter was identified as Kaaéł, chief of Shark House, and is evidently the last title assumed by this chief. He is said to have been originally chief of Shark House at Diyaguna ‘Et at Lost River, from which he brought the carved house posts to his new residence on Khantaak Island. His last title was later assumed by his nephew, Sitka Ned, drowned 1926, who collaborated with Jim Kardeetoo (1862–1937) in building Shark House in the “Old Village.” Sitka Ned married the daughter of Jack Sha-koo-kawn. “Sha-koo-kawn” is properly Cà-kuwakan, ‘Mountain Deer,’ referring to his title as ‘deer’ or peace-hostage. All of these men were Teqwedi of the Shark House-Bear House line, the last chief being Jim Kardeetoo. Chief Minaman of Shark House was usually called Daqusetc by my informant (MJ), who identified him in the picture of Chief Yen-at-set’l taken by Professor Libbey (pl. 62). Daqusetc and his daughter died of bad whiskey in Sitka, and it is interesting to speculate that it may have been on the trip to Sitka, described by Mrs. Shepard, that he met his death. A potlatch was given for him in Sitka “about 1900 or 1901,” but my informant was poor at remembering dates. The photographs taken by Chase and Draper in Sitka, December 9, 1904, (pls. 210–211), were identified as showing part of the “seven tribes” who were entertained at the potlatch given when a tombstone was put on the grave of “Wan-a-chook,” i.e., “Yanatcho.” The chief and his daughter were buried at Sitka (p. 536); the shaft at Yakutat was simply a memorial to him.

The so-called “second chief” at Yakutat in 1889, whom we have already identified as Yakutat Chief George Yaodaqet, ranking chief of the Kwacqwan, Mrs. Shephard found to be “as amiable a looking person as one could wish to see,” with a round, moonlike countenace, and a huge smile from ear to ear that exhibited his strong white teeth, and which he perpetually maintained except when yawning (Shepard, 1889, p. 223).

The Yakutat Indians had certainly learned the value of writing, if not from the Americans, then long ago from the Russians who used to pass out receipts for tribute collected or other documents intended both to impress the natives and to serve as warnings to any foreigners that might read them that the holders were subject to the Tsar and the Russian American Company with whom trade was forbidden. As in the case of the inscription on the portrait given to Yelak by Ismailov and Bocharov in 1788 (see p. 135), these documents also indicated something of the experience of the writer with the native recipient, and thus served as a testimonial or warning.

“Both Yanatcho and the second chief had letters of recommendation from one gentleman and another who had strayed to that far northern port on business, or for pleasure, which they presented to my husband. It was customary among the Indians to ask for these. Unable to read, but confident of their flattering contents, they presented them with a great deal of pride to the person whose favor they wished to secure.” [Shepard, 1889, pp. 223–224.]

It was all too common for wags or disgruntled Whites to write derogatory bits of doggerel, jokes, or condemnations, instead of the expected testimonial. Similar examples of frontier humor were exhibited in the signs painted for Tlingit chiefs to hang above their house doors. We sense that the Yakutat natives are no longer savage antagonists to be feared or hated, shrewd and powerful controllers of the territory and its resources whose monopolistic business acumen commanded respect, but were becoming second-class citizens in their own homeland.

Of particular interest in tracing the history of Yakutat, is the statement by Mrs. Shepard that indicates that the presence of the store and the mission on the mainland had already attracted native settlement to the site now called the Old Village. “Yakutat consists of an Oakland and a San Francisco. On one side of the bay lives one chief and part of the clan, and on the other side the other; communication is entirely by water.” [Shepard, 1889, p. 228]. The Teqwedi chief Daqusetc or “Yanatcho” was probably still living in Shark House on Khantaak Island (pl. 71); perhaps it was Chief George who had already established the Kwacqwan Raven's Bones House on the mainland.

The Conquest of Mount Saint Elias and the End of an Era (1890–1900)

On June 25, 1890, the U.S.S. Pinta returned again to Yakutat, commanded by Lt. Comdr. O. F. Farenholt, bringing Mr. Henry Boursin, census enumerator, the Honorable Lyman E. Knapp, Governor of Alaska who was simply along for the ride, and a third expedition to climb Mount Saint Elias. This was led by Israel Cook Russell, and was sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Geographic Society.

Russell describes the two settlements at Yakutat as follows:

“At Port Mulgrave there are two small Indian villages, one on the southeastern end of Khantaak Island, the other on a point of the mainland a mile and a half east” [1891 a, p. 872]. “The village on Khantaak island is the older of the two, and consists of six houses built along the water's edge. The houses are made of planks, each hewn from a single log, after the manner of the Thlinkets generally…

“The village on the mainland is less picturesque, if such a term may be allowed, than the group of houses already described, but it is of the same type. Near at hand, along the shore to the southward, there are two log houses, one of which is used at present as a mission by the Reverend Carl J. Hendricksen and his assistant, the other being occupied as a trading post by Sitka merchants.” [Russell, 1891 b, pp. 79–80.]

“The native inhabitants of these villages number about fifty and call themselves Yakutats.” [Russell, 1891 a, p. 872.]

“The Yakutat Indians are the most westerly branch of the great Thlinket family which inhabits all of southeastern Alaska and a portion of British Columbia. In intelligence they are above the average of Indians generally, and are of a higher type than the native inhabitants of the older portion of the United States. They are quick to learn the ways of the white man, and are especially shrewd in bargaining.” [Russell, 1891, b, p. 80.] [They are] “of fine physique, have well-built houses of their own design and workmanship, and live by hunting and fishing.” [Russell, 1891 b, p. 872.] “They are canoe Indians par excellence, and pass a large part of their lives on the water in quest of salmon, seals, and sea-otter.” [Russell, 1891 b, p. 80.] “The catch of sea otters, whose furs are the most valuable of all, during the summer of our visit numbered thirty, and they were sold at from seventy-five to one hundred dollars each. The money derived from this source, and from the sale of bear, goat, and hair seal skins, and from baskets woven in large numbers by the women for the tourist trade in Sitka, brings a comparatively large revenue to the village and enables the natives to live in comfort.” [Russell, 1891 a, pp. 872–873.] [He also indicated, however, that the Indians do not use this cash income wisely.] “Improvident, like nearly all Indians, the Yakutat villagers soon spend at the trading post the money earned in this way.” [Russell, 1891 b, p. 81.]

The Census of 1890 gives a count of 7 male Whites at Yakutat, one female halfbreed, and 300 natives (146 male and 156 female). However, these data include also the native villages at Dry Bay and Lituya Bay, with a total of 20 houses counted, sheltering 75 families (Porter, 1893, pp. 3, 161, 163). “The Yakutats are the darkest colored and most primitive,” and have “been little visited hitherto by whites, but the establishment of a mail route from Sitka to Unalaska gives Yakutat regular communication with the outside world for 7 months of the year” (ibid., pp. 54, 53). Not only are they linked to Sitka by a “considerable trade” in furs and curios, and especially in baskets, “at making which they are more expert than the women of any other tribe,” but it was also predicted that “the extension of tourist travel to the foot of Mount St. Elias is one of the certainties of the future that will greatly improve the fortunes of the place” (ibid., pp. 230, 53). The spectacularly beautiful glaciers of Disenchantment Bay first became known in 1890, when Capt. C. L. Hooper of the U.S.S. Corwin, who had come to Yakutat to bring Russell's party back to Sitka, took them into Disenchantment Bay, to the very face of the ice, and “So far as is known, the Corwin was the first vessel to navigate those waters” (Russell, 1891 b, p. 100).

As might have been anticipated from the tone of these passages, Russell's relations with the Indians were friendly. Mr. Hendrickson acted as interpreter for him in hiring some natives and their canoes; another canoe was purchased from the trader. Russell did not attempt to reach Mount Saint Elias from “Icy Bay,” but because his mission was also geological, he went up Yakutat Bay to approach the mountain from the east, via Esker Creek, Blossom Island, Pinnacle Pass, and Seward Glacier.

On the evening of June 30, while at the first camp on the mainland east of Knight Island, Russell‘s party was joined by

“Indians returning from a seal hunt in Disenchantment bay. They brought their canoe high on the beach, and made themselves at home about our camp-fire. There were seven or eight well-built young men in the party, all armed with guns. In former times such an arrival would have been regarded with suspicion; but thanks to the somewhat frequent visits of war vessels to Yakutat, and also to the labors of missionaries, the wild spirits of the Indians have been greatly subdued and reduced to semi-civilized condition during the past quarter of a century.” [Russell, 1891 b, p. 84.]

After eating some wild celery, the Indians went on to Yakutat; the expedition then ate their own supper, and evidently did not offer to share it with the hunters. One of Russell's party had been taken sick and was sent back with “an Indian who chanced to pass our camp in his canoe” (ibid., p. 83). Not only did this man arrive safely, but Russell further seems to have had complete confidence in the Indians’ reliability in caring for the sick man, as well as in their ability to land and take off through the surf on the west side of the bay.

The following year Russell returned for a second but equally unsuccessful expedition. This attempt was made from “Icy Bay,” by ascending the Agassiz Glacier to its junction with the route previously taken from the east. Again, the party was forced to give up just below the summit. On this occasion, Capt. M. A. Healy had brought the party to Yakutat on the U.S. revenue steamer Bear. On board was the Rev. Sheldon Jackson en route to purchase Siberian reindeer for introduction into Alaska. In trying to land Russell's party at the mouth of the Yahtse River, one of the ship's boats, less skillfully handled or perhaps less seaworthy than the natives’ canoes, was swamped. Lieutenant Robinson and five seamen were drowned. Some of the bodies were recovered at the time, and when Russell finally returned to the mission in late September, he learned that “a party of Indians, while sea-otter hunting, found the two remaining bodies and gave them burial” (Russell, 1893, p. 11). From this we may infer that not only was inhumation familiar to the Indians, but that the White man had been adopted into the Tlingit's social and moral world.

The White man‘s possessions are secure. Thus, Russell had left a cache at “Icy Bay.” On returning from the mountain, the party saw tracks of animals and human footprints, but the contents of the cache were intact.

“On a board nailed to a tree was a rude charcoal sketch of two men, which we understood to mean that two Indians had visited our encampment and left this sign as their card. On several other occasions we left food, tents, etc., unguarded, where they would be sure to be seen by Indians, but in no instance was a single article taken or the caches in any way disturbed. Everyone who has had experience on the frontier will understand from this that the Yakutats are to be classed among the ‘good Indians.’ “ [Ibid., p. 54.]

In September, 1891, Russell with two companions made a boat journey through the whole of what he called “Disenchantment Bay,” but which includes that long fiord which is named for him. On his return he also visited “an Indian village known as Setuk, about 15 miles east of the mission, but space will not permit my giving an account of that interesting excursion” (ibid., p. 91).

Fortunately, we learn a little more about Dry Bay from the account written by E. J. Glave, who descended the Alsek River from its headwaters to Dry Bay, and from there came along the canoe route to Yakutat. Glave had been previously with Stanley in the Congo. He had gone into Yukon Territory in the spring of 1890 with a large party of explorers, led by E. H. Wells, and financed by Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper of New York City. At Lake Kusawa, the headwaters of the Yukon, the expedition divided, one party going down the Yukon on a raft, a second heading for Forty-mile Creek and the Copper River, while Glave crossed to Klukshu Lake at the very head of the Alsek. He was accompanied by John Dalton, who not only proved himself an excellent canoeman and woodsman, but who now could speak Tlingit fairly well. Their guide was an Indian named “Shank,” whose services had been engaged at the Southern Tutchone village of Wesketahin on the upper Alsek. Here, “ ‘Sitka Jack,’ a well-known Indian trader, who speaks fairly good English,” was met with a party of Chilkat Indian traders, and interpreted for Glave and Dalton (Glave, Nov. 19, 1890, p. 310). A Tutchone medicine-man also went with Shank and the two White men down the river, although this man was too terrified of the dangerous rapids to be of any help in handling the canoe.

As Glave writes: (Jan. 10, 1891, p. 438):

“We arrived at the mouth of the Alseck at seven in the evening. There we met two Indians who invited us to their village a few miles from the seashore, and we put up for the night in the house of old Shata, the Alseck medicine-man, a powerfully-built but wrinkled old fellow, and straight as a gun-barrel. This antiquated being of magic extended to us all hospitality, which consisted of a small nook in his smoky hut and a dried salmon, both items being truly acceptable. Our provisions had now almost run out.”

“Shata” was probably Cada, a Kwacqwan name, although this sib is not associated with Dry Bay. A Cada was, however, reported as the son's son of DEwUdu’u, the Tł’uknaAdi chief at Gue, who was involved with the war on the TłaayIk-Teqwedi in which the latter were exterminated. In fact, according to one informant, the trouble really began with a dispute between DEwUdu‘u and his Teqwedi son (p. 262). A later Cada was the chief of Fort House on Khantaak Island, who died a very old man in 1908 or 1909.

“During the evening, [Glave continues his account,] Shank, the Indian guide, narrated to the attentive villagers our trip down the Alseck River, coloring the scene with fetching tints reflected from his own fertile imagination. His story was evidently an interesting lecture for his audience, who listened throughout without the least interruption. Shank, flattered by his sudden popularity and fired with his own importance, assumed a tone and presence quite oratorical.

“Old Shata's hut was twelve feet square; here all the occupants of the other dwellings ‘rounded up’ to hear the recent news from the interior. There were about thirty Indians, men, women, and children, crowded into the little place, which, to say the least of it, rendered the atmosphere rather ‘close.’ As the Indians squatted and lay around the fire listening to Shank, shadows and light from the flickering blaze playing over the swarthy group, their eager bronzed faces formed quite a study. It was past midnight before Shank had exhausted his subject of our Alseck journey, and the party retired to their several habitations. The most of them, I found, were lodging in our present quarters, some in rudely-built compartments of heavy planks which were built on the side of the dwelling; others had small cotton tents, while a few contented themselves with rolling in their blankets on the hard wooden flooring. A corner of the hut was reserved for us, but mosquitoes and the atmospheric defects were hardly conducive to pleasant sleep, and we were right glad to be out in the fresh air again at early morn.” [Ibid.]

[Glave and Dalton were anxious to push on to Yakutat as soon as possible.] “Shank and the Gunena [Unana] doctor decided to remain where they were with old Shata and their other coast friends; they had only engaged to accompany us to the sea, and they had faithfully and devotedly fulfilled their promise. They were both of excellent character, willing, energetic, and good-tempered. The Gunena had had but little experience of the dangers of rough water, and felt considerably more at ease on terra firma; but Shank was thoroughly conversant with canoe work, full of pluck and dash, and possessed of a keen and rapid judgment, qualities which, combined with his strength of limb and river experience, fitted him admirably for the dangerous duty of steering a canoe down the Alseck River.” [Ibid.]

It is never quite clear to what tribe Shank belonged; he was descended from the extinct “Nua Qua,” coastal Indians who had settled in the interior, yet he might be taken as typical of the TłukwaAdi who so often made this dangerous journey.

Of the medicine-man, Glave had earlier observed (Jan. 3, 1891, p. 414): “The Gunena doctor was of but little use on the water; he became easily scared and lost command of himself when we were in the dangerous places.” Yet Glave does not blame him. “He was a willing and genial-hearted soul, but he was more at home with a horn spoon and a dried salmon than in a boat.” Glave was also enthusiastic about the cottonwood canoe in which the descent had been made.

We should note that he was continually impressed with the fine character, intelligence, and splendid physique of the natives he encountered on his journey. It is no wonder that he seems to have established the most cordial relations with all of them.

“Among the Indians staying in old Shata's house, were two Yakutat natives, who had come to this river to catch salmon. We succeeded in obtaining the services of these men and their canoe to take us back to their own village, and started off the morning after our arrival” (Glave, Jan. 10,1891, p. 438). The Indians took the White men's belongings in their canoe through the inland channels, while the latter, who were tired of boat travel, walked along the shore, carrying only their guns.

“At eight o‘clock in the evening we arrived on the banks of the river Ar Quay [Akwe], and shortly afterward our Indians came along and ferried us across to a small unoccupied village on the opposite bank. There were only three houses—all ramshackle old places in a dilapidated and tumble-down condition—though formerly strongly built structures. They contained an odd miscellany of property—old boxes, native and imported, salmon-poles [spears? or drying racks?], snow-shoes, pots and pans, skins, traps, etc., everything grimy and blackened by the smoky fire always burning in the center of the dwelling.” [Ibid.]

Unfortunately, it is impossible to identify which village on the Akwe this was (see p. 83).

The next morning the two White men again set off on foot, and “after six hours’ hard walking…arrived at the edge of a small stream on which one solitary house was standing quite unoccupied.” Two hours later the Indians came in the canoe and told them that unless they went on at once to catch the high tide in the lagoon, they would have to portage the canoe over 10 miles of sand flat. Consequently, they boarded the canoe and went downstream. This river was apparently the Italio, for Glave calls it the “Thetl Wor” (qéłhwa) (ibid.).

Rough water was encountered at the lagoon, and there was still a portage of a mile and a half across a sandbar. The two Indians shouldered the canoe, while Glave and Dalton carried all their own belongings as well as the Indians’ blankets and dried salmon. After reembarking, they paddled again, until at eight o’clock in the morning, they reached “Setuk, a small village on the banks of the river of that name.” They had been on the way from Akwe River for 24 hours, out of which they had rested only 2. “Arriving at Setuk we partook of a little more salmon, and lay down in our blankets on the floor of the hut.”

The next day another portage of a mile was necessary before they reached the Lost River-Ankau lagoon system.

At Yakutat they were “hospitably received by Mr. J. W. Johnson, of the trading firm of W. P. Mills, who has his headquarters at Sitka” (ibid.). We can assume that Johnson was the trader occupying the store at Yakutat.

The Census of 1890 also gives us some information about the Gulf Coast tribes between Yakutat and the Copper River. Their numbers are obviously dwindling and their culture already doomed.

Going west from the meridian of Mount Saint Elias, the first people are met in the vicinity of “Cape Yaktag,” or Yakataga.

“The settlement here consists of single dwellings scattered along many miles of coast. The houses are now occupied only during the winter season. With the advent of spring the whole population embark in their large wooden canoes, and, passing by the inaccessible ice cliffs of the Bering glacier, they make their first camp at Cape Suckling. Here they fraternize with another branch of their tribe, who have their homes and winter hunting grounds on the lakes and streams of the level strip of land between the St. Elias alps and the coast of Controller bay. [This suggests a distinction between the ałyI-Kagwantan to the east and the Tcicqedi to the west.]

“After spending a few weeks together hunting and feasting, the Yaktag people paddle or sail across the wide but shallow strait which separates Kaye, or Kayak, island from the mainland. This is another favorite hunting ground, where until a few years ago a party of Norwegian hunters and traders maintained a station, which fierce competition from stores connected with canning enterprises forced them to abandon.” [Porter, 1893, p. 65.]

[The traders were the Swedish Andersen and Carlsen brothers whose post Seton-Karr had visited in August, 1886. At that time two Norwegian hunters had just settled at Cape Suckling (Seton-Karr, 1887, p. 150).]

[There had formerly been a salmon cannery on Wingham Island.] “The whole plant, together with the trading store, was subsequently removed to one of the many mouths of the Copper river for the greater convenience of fishing. [This was to Kokenhenik Island.] This cannery, which employs between 40 and 50 white men and 50 Chinamen, also offers to the Yaktag tribe an opportunity for remunerative labor throughout the fishing season. They come here each successive season, bringing with them their families and most of their household goods, to sail homeward again in August or September, laden with the proceeds of their labor, to enjoy a season of ease and plenty.

“The Yaktag people, who have also been known by the local name of Chilkhat [from the village on Bering River, Controller Bay], were still quite numerous 10 years ago; now there are scarcely 100 of them left.” [Porter, 1893, p. 65.]

At the Kayak Island village, Seton-Karr had noted the squalor of the native huts, in one of which a man was dying of consumption (Seton-Karr, 1887, pp. 156–159).

Under the heading “Wingham Island,” the Census noted a population of 150 natives, composed of 15 families living in 15 houses (Porter, 1893, p. 163). “Wingham Island includes Cape Martin station and Chilkaht settlement on Controller bay” (ibid., p. 161). It is at Cape Martin, where “a small trading post has been located here for many years,” that the “Yaktag” and Chilkat of Controller Bay meet the “Ugalentz” or Eyak of the Copper River delta (ibid., p. 66).

There are only a few more observations about Yakutat before 1900 where we will abandon this historical survey.

In 1896, A. P. Swineford, Governor of Alaska (1885–89), visited Yakutat, and described it as follows:

“Mulgrave Harbor is a small indentation setting off to the right of the entrance to the bay, and on the north side is the native village of a dozen or more houses, in which live some two hundred people. There is also a trader's store and a Swedish Lutheran mission and school, and of late years the population has been augmented by a number of white men, intent upon amassing fortunes by washing gold from the ruby sands found on the beach.” [After mentioning the Russian colony which had been established] “on an inlet which sets off from the east side of Yakutat Bay” [he notes that:] “Except for a few Creole families, nothing is now left of what was once a busy and flourishing settlement.” [Swineford, 1898, pp. 101–102,]

Although a number of Yakutat people had mentioned the possibility of Russian blood in their own ancestry, citing the clear complexions of their parents and grandparents as possible evidence, this admixture has not so far been discussed by any writer.

“The natives are not unlike those of Sitka, speak the same language and live in houses similarly constructed. They maintain themselves by fishing and hunting, and are more cleanly in their persons and houses than those of most other native villages.” [Ibid.]

We may gather from this description, as well as from the photograph in Albin Johnson's memoirs (1924, p. 51), that already the Tlingit had largely moved from Khantaak Island and had built frame houses at the “Old Village” near the Mission with lumber from the Reverend Hendrickson's sawmill.

In 1897, two more expeditions made an assault on Mount Saint Elias. That led by H. G. Bryant of Philadelphia failed, while the very large, well organized and well supplied expedition of Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of Abruzzi, was successful. The latter's party included the Prince‘s aide-de-camp, the president of the Italian Alpine Club, an Italian photographer, Dr. Filippo de Filippi who wrote the official narrative (1900), 5 Alpine guides, 10 Americans of whom C. W. Thornton contributed a popular account (1898), and 4 natives from Yakutat. Among these was Peter Lawrence (1871–1950), a Kagwantan man born in Sitka, named Qatiti or Kàdjàtí (pls. 214p, 216), the son of a Decitan (Raven sib) man from Angoon. He had apparently served on a number of trading schooners, and came to Yakutat in 1888 as interpreter for Chief Jeff King, a trader. On this voyage they took 600 sea otters for which they obtained $70 apiece, and claimed to have discovered gold on Yakataga beach. I met Peter Lawrence as a crippled old man, in 1949, living in dire poverty and neglect, but still treasuring among his few belongings a photograph of the Abruzzi expedition which the Prince had signed for him.

Among the Yakutat people, Peter Lawrence had the reputation of being a wag and a good joker in his younger days, and this trait he also exhibited on the expedition. The quality of his humor seems to have been typically Tlingit, without malice. He could take a joke equally well. The expedition had landed at Cape Manby and had reached, by hard backpacking up a stream, a campsite at the edge of the Malaspina Glacier, the “Bean camp,” some 3 miles from the shore. As related by Thornton:

“A funny thing happened here. Four Indian guides had been hired to help us as far as the snow line. They were an intelligent lot of fellows, strong and reliable. They were a jolly lot, too, but some of us thought it strange that they laughed and joked among themselves so frequently. They were even ‘kittenish’ at times, and even when we knew about the propensity of one of them for ‘joshing’ it did not seem to be sufficient explanation. This fellow's name was Peter Lawrence. I believe he had the greatest sense of humor of any one I have ever seen. He would not only joke on all possible subjects, but could laugh as heartily as anyone when the joke happened to be on himself. We soon called him ‘Peter the Josher.’ But, as I have said, even his well-known propensity for making fun was not sufficient to explain their behavior on this occasion. At last the explanation came.

“After we had moved a certain portion of the outfit to the Bean camp, it was decided to begin moving it to the edge of the snow on the Malaspina, four and a half miles farther, giving the Indians ten dollars for moving up to the Bean camp that portion of the outfit which was left at the beach, and which was considered necessary for the trip. The remainder, a large supply of provisions, had been cached as a reserve. After making one trip to the snow line and returning about noon, what was our surprise to see the Indians come in with the last of the provisions, having accomplished in a half day what we had expected them to do in something over a day. When asked how they did it, Peter laughed and said, ’Injun git contract; do ’em up quick.’

[Upon investigation it was discovered that the Indians had a canoe hidden on the river.]

“Those rogues had brought all of that stuff up in their canoe, one of them staying in the boat to steer it and keep it off the bank, while the others pulled it upstream with a rope. We felt cheap then, to think what time and energy we had wasted during the last two days.” [Thornton, 1898, p. 294.]

[Again, as in leading Topham‘s party through the cold glacial streams, the Indians amused themselves by demonstrating their superior hardihood.

Filippi praised the natives as porters.]

“The Indians, although undersized, carried heavier loads than our own men could manage—i.e., from 60 to 68 Ibs.—without a word of complaint. They did not use the [pack] frames, but preferred to fasten the loads on their backs by means of two straps coming over the shoulders and crossing over the chest, a system that compelled them to walk in a stooping posture. They were shod with moccasins of undressed sealskin, with the fur inside, unfitted for tramping over this waste of sharpedged stones, which bruised our own feet in spite of our heavy boots.” [Filippi, 1900, p. 75.]

[The pack straps are like those described by my informants.]

“Our four Indians, small, thick-set men, are so exactly alike that they seem turned out of the same mould. The development of arms and chests is exaggerated in comparison with the rest of the body, owing to the constant work at the oars entailed by their life on the water.

“They either sit together in a contented group, patching their moccasins, or loaf around in the camp with contented, smiling faces, peeping inquisitively into the tents and speaking incomprehensible words to us in their gutteral tongue, full of l's and k's. One of them, however, knows a little English, and acts as interpreter to the rest. Their language has nearly all lost its special characteristics. Owing to frequent contact with French and Russian travellers, sailors, trappers, and whalers, these Indians speak a jargon known as ‘Chinook,’ now common to all the aborigines of the region and long used as the language of commerce on the coast of British Columbia, Oregon and Washington State.” [Ibid., p. 78.]

[I certainly never gathered the impression that Chinook Jargon was ever well or commonly known at Yakutat, but the men who might have been most familiar with it had all died before my visits.]

“One honorable trait of the Indians’ character is honesty. They steal nothing—not even food; and this verdict is confirmed by everyone who has employed them. All expeditions, such as our own, have had to leave stores of provisions, tents, etc., in spots easily to be discovered by the Indians; yet these caches are always found undisturbed and with no single article missing.” [Ibid.].

In June of 1899, the year of the Klondike Gold Rush and of the earthquake at Yakutat, the Harriman Alaska Expedition came to Yakutat Bay, and, as we have already noted, visited the village, the sealing camps above Point Latouche, and cruised through Russell Fiord, to which they gave its name. On board were such naturalists and scientists as John Burroughs, John Muir, George Bird Grinnell, Charles Keeler, B. E. Fernow, and E. Hart Merriam. Yakutat was now a modern town of some 300 natives, with a permanent store and a post office, as well as the Mission school and church. Apparently the site on Khantaak Island had been abandoned. And if Keeler (1902, p. 217) thought the Indian village was “composed of houses built in the most hideously modern fashion with clapboards and paint,” Burroughs (1901, p. 54) saw them as “eight or ten comfortable frame houses.”

Pictures in Albin Johnson's book, dating from this period, show the natives—or at least the members of his congregation—wearing the ugly, uncomfortable but stylish garments affected by prosperous Americans at the end of the century. The people pose with a stiff, self-conscious pride in their best Sunday clothes, just as do Reverend Johnson and his family. The mission living room is dark and cluttered with Victorian draperies, heavily printed wallpaper, and shelves overflowing with mementoes. The great Indian “tribal houses,” facing the beach, stark but impressive, gleam with white paint (Moser, 1899, pl. 4); each has its flagpole on which the American flag could be flown on great occasions, such as potlatches and Sundays (pls. 82–84). They were probably cold and drafty after the stoutly built, smoky houses on Khantaak Island, but inside (to judge from photographs I have seen) faithfully copied the splendid decor of the mission. On the beach in front rested a fleet of canoes, many the valuable imported Haida “war canoes.” At the W. W. Mills Company store, Dick Beasley (for whom Beasley Creek at the head of Russell Fiord was named) had cookies to sell that some informants still remember from their childhood.

Despite these obvious outward changes, much of life was still as it had always been. The people deserted the village when it was time to go to the sealing camps or to the salmon streams. There, the free life could still be lived, in the comfort of old clothes, even though the Harriman expedition found that: “The Indian women frowned upon our photographers and were very adverse to having the cameras pointed at them. It took a good deal of watching and waiting and maneuvering to get a good shot. The artists with their brushes and canvas were regarded with less suspicion” (Burroughs, 1901, pp. 60–61). In 1954, copies of the photographs made at the sealing camp in 1899 by Merriam (pls. 72–80) were examined with eager pleasure by the people who had been children there.

In the hearts of those who went regularly to church the earnest preachings of Johnson and Hendrickson had not been able to erase the deep-grained fearful confidence in the shaman, or terror of the witch and Land Otter Man.

Although the herring and salmon had not yet been commercially exploited, Captain Moser, of the U S.S. Albatross, had stopped at Yakutat to make investigations for the U.S. Fish Commission. On his return in 1901, he was to find that F. A. Fredericks Company of Seattle had just built a large herring saltery at the head of Monti Bay, while A. L. See and A. Flenner were building another inside the mouth of Ankau Creek. Already there were plans for the cannery at the head of Monti Bay with a railroad running to Dry Bay (it never went farther than Johnson Slough just beyond Situk River), and the cannery wharf was to be built the following year (Moser, 1901, p. 390).

In September, 1899, occurred the great earthquake which some of my informants remember very well. This shook down so much snow from the mountains onto the glaciers that these began once more to advance, and this phenomenon again attracted the attention of geologists to Yakutat. Of more immediate concern, however, was the question of the International Boundary; indeed title to Mount Saint Elias was in doubt, so surveyors from both the United States and Canada began to explore the ranges above Yakutat and Dry Bays.

Just as the first sight of Mount Saint Elias by White men in 1741 began our long history of Yakutat, so the determination of its position astride the Alaskan-Canadian Boundary shortly after the end of the century (1906) should bring this story to a close. Let us turn now to the Yakutat people themselves. Let them tell their own history, and describe how their ancestors came to these lands, guided by the beautiful mountains.

Myth, Legend and Memory: The Native Histories of Yakutat

SETTING THE STAGE

Myth and History

Yakutat, like any Tlingit community, has a large body of oral traditions, even though there are only a few persons who can tell the old stories in all their rich detail. These tales include solemn accounts of a religious nature, dealing with the creation of the world, of fabulous adventures, and of the feats of shamans; there are stirring histories of wars fought long ago and of the glorious deeds of the ancestors; there are also stories explanatory of customary usages, often capped by a proverb, or illustrative of the consequences of moral and of immoral behavior, and so told to instruct the young. Idle hours are enlivened by humorous stories, both mythical and trivial, or by a wealth of personal reminiscences, anectodes, and current gossip.

Tlingit stories are essentially “historical” in character; that is, they deal with what are believed to be true events. Even though the main function of a tale and the purpose for recounting it may be entertainment, there is no category of story corresponding to our “fiction.” To tell a “made-up” story, like fabricating a claim or making an unfounded boast, is ‘telling a lie’ (Ati-‘Ik; Boas, 1917, p. 131, a-łI-iyeł). For the Tlingit, the English word “story” carries the connotation of falsehood, and is often applied to beliefs or practices which the missionaries have labeled as “superstition.” A respectable narrator does not “tell stories.” My Tlingit friends were, in fact, much concerned that the versions of tales told to us be the true and correct ones, warning us against statements made by misinformed persons. Sometimes an interpreter would even refuse to translate part of a story because he felt that the narrator was confused, or another might be unwilling to tell a story that he did not know thoroughly, for fear of mistakes. Even a well-informed person might hesitate to tell the traditions associated with a sib not his own, just as he would refuse to record a song that belonged to another sib, unless a member of that sib specificially requested him to sing. Other informants were evidently loath to speak of old troubles between sibs, especially of wars, since the very retelling of these stories is apt to rouse long-dormant enmities.

In general, it was usually the oldest persons, even though partly senile or able to speak only the most broken English, who were cited as the authorities on native traditions. This was because they were old and had learned the histories in their youth from equally venerable relatives. On the other hand, many apparently well-versed middle-aged or younger persons might be disparaged as “too young to learn,” and indeed they were sometimes too diffident to tell a story when their elders were present. This is because a “mistake” or deviation from an approved version could be interpreted as a deliberate falsehood or slanderous remark. This did not mean, however, that I did not actually record several different versions of the same tale, nor, paradoxically, that the Tlingit themselves do not recognize the existence of several versions. The degree of toleration of such differences seems to depend upon the personal relations between the listener and narrator. Sib loyalties and enmities are recognized as accounting for conflicting versions, and of provoking bitter accusations of untruthfulness.

In order to appreciate the significance of these “historical narratives,” it is necessary to understand how the tales and their events are categorized, and also what the actors or characters in the stories are supposed to be, for only in this way can we come to see how all these various folkloristic accounts are “history,” and therefore “true” in different ways.

First, the Tlingit distinguish a special category of stories as ‘of the long ago’ (tłagu). These are true, but refer to a time so remote that one does not expect events to have the realistic qualities of the present, nor can one expect to understand clearly how or why things happened. The most important of these myths are those concerning Raven, and how his activities led to the establishment of the present world: that is, to the presence of the stars, moon, and sun in the sky, the distinction between men and animals and their arrangement in the totemic order, the occurrence of fresh water on land, the movements of the tide, and the appearance of special landmarks (particularly in Dry Bay and Controller Bay). Raven was also indirectly responsible for the Flood, since this was produced by his jealous uncle in order to drown him. Although the Flood clearly does not come at the end of the Raven cycle, when these myths are considered together, nevertheless, since the Flood is held accountable for the dispersal of the various human groups, it may be taken in another sense as marking the transition from myth time to the human era. “It's just like the Old Testament, and after that it‘s New Testament again,” explained an informant in referring to sib migrations after the Flood.

I am not sure, however, how most sib origin and crest origin stories are classified by the people. Some of these have the character of myths, and apparently deal with events in the remote past; others would seem to belong more logically to a recent historical period. While the Yakutat people recognize a distinction between myth (tłagu) and history (ckAłnik), individuals may draw the line in different places. Thus, some versions of sib histories were criticized as “mixed-up” by one informant, because they included what were essentially episodes belonging to ‘myth,’ in this case involving a giant seagull. The same man was equally careful to point out the anachronism involved in the alleged use of a gun long before the first contact with Europeans. On the other hand, I believe there is some uncertainty as to how other informants would classify Raven‘s encounter with the Russian captain who tried to get him drunk on whiskey. Indeed, Raven can hardly be relegated entirely to mythology when one old man speculated that he might be still alive, living in a cave “in the Aleutians”!

Because myths belong to the shadowy past, these stories of long ago form a kind of “prehistory” for the Tlingit traditions that belong to “history” (ckAłnik), ‘it really happened.’ In the latter category, of course, belong the accounts of sib migrations, of wars, of the coming of the Russians and of their eventual expulsion, as well as of more recent events. As one comes forward in time, such history obviously includes personal reminiscences of the narrator, as well as accounts of events witnessed or experienced by his parents or grandparents. While the careful teller will usually make clear the source of his information if it were obtained from an eyewitness or a participant, or will specify from whom he heard the account, I do not know whether the Tlingit make any distinction between what we might call “living history” and the more traditional and older accounts belonging to “ordinary history.” Obviously, personal anecdotes may range in character from the trivial, humorous, or scandalous, to serious narratives of important events. It is the latter which acquire through repetition a standardized form and which gradually pass into the category of family or lineage tradition, and eventually may become part of the history of the people or of the sib.

Because a considerable number of stories were collected, I have had to make a more or less arbitrary selection of those to be included in this chapter dealing with the native history of Yakutat. Thus, myths and sib origin stories of a mythical nature have been excluded, especially if their locale is vague or does not belong to the Yakutat area. Such tales will, however, be found elsewhere. Excluded also are historical traditions referring to events which did not clearly involve the Yakutat people. Because the latter were often told us to illustrate some point concerning war and peace, or shamanism, for example, these stories are appended to the chapter with which their subject matter is most clearly connected. A complete listing of all stories and anecdotes, together with page references, can be found in the Index.

What follows in this chapter has been selected to exhibit what the Yakutat people think about themselves as Yakutat people, and how they understand the events that took place in their home territories. In reading these stories we must also remember that the Yakutat people think of themselves as linked by recent events and by very ancient happenings with other groups in other parts of the native world. Here, however, I would like to concentrate on the native history of Yakutat itself so that this can be compared with the accounts recorded by alien observers.

These White visitors were conscious of their national origins in distant lands and remote times; they acted and recorded their experiences in terms of what they conceived to be their origins, their national destinies, and their own human roles. This is equally true of the people they met at Yakutat. The history of the latter, like their mythology, is only fully understandable if we recognize that their moieties and sibs, established at the beginning of time, are the fundamental units of history. These were not only the groups that commanded native allegiance, and with reference to which people acted, but they had for their members a significance perhaps deeper than did the nations of Russia, Spain, France, England, or the United States, for their citizens who came to Yakutat. To the native, the “nations” or sibs of the Tlingit are not only deeply rooted in the mythical past, they are the embodiments today of the very origins of the world and of humanity, reflecting the natural order and linking men to it by totemic bonds. The sibs constitute the eternal and unchanging order of the Tlingit people, fixed because no individual can exchange or lose his sib identity, and because a sib can never, in theory, be changed except through the total annihilation of all its members.

For these reasons it is clear that to exclude the mythical past from the native history of Yakutat is to present an incomplete account. Also, it is evident that to understand Yakutat history, even in our sense of history, means that we must first attempt to identify the sibs that were the real actors in that history. For the native, however, there is no single history, but rather the traditions of the several sibs, even though that of his own is the “correct” version.

Tribe and Sib

In earlier sections the tribes along the Gulf Coast of Alaska were listed (pp. 17–21), and their present and former settlements and their traditional territories described (pp. 58–106). It is now necessary to identify these groups more closely.

The five regions of Lituya Bay, Dry Bay, Yakutat Bay, Controller Bay, and the Copper River delta, could be considered as the territories of as many different tribes. Thus, the territory south of Cape Fairweather, including Lituya Bay and Cross Sound, “belongs to” the Hoonah of southeastern Alaska. The mouth of the Alsek River, Dry Bay, and the Akwe River were occupied by a separate group, the Dry Bay people. From Italio to Icy Bay was Yakutat territory proper; beyond, from Cape Yakataga to Cape Martin, including Controller Bay, was the home of the Kaliakh tribe; in the Copper River delta country lived the Eyak. However, to designate these groups as “tribes” and the areas they utilized as “tribal territories” would not reflect either the actual situation or native thought. Thus, while the ‘inhabitants’ (-qwan, contracted from qu-han) of each geographical district were to some extent united by feelings of local pride, local sociability, and ties of affinity, they still did not constitute a tribe in the sense of a politically organized and autonomous group. Rather, a sense of community identity definitely took second place to the “patriotism” felt by the members of each sib for their own matrilineal exogamous kin group.

Sib members recognized their common kinship even though they might be scattered in distant villages in different tribal areas, for only a few sibs were restricted to one region. It is the sib (na) that is commonly called “tribe” or even “nation” by the English-speaking Tlingit, who follow the vague use of terms employed almost a hundred years ago by travelers and missionaries. Today, the Tlingit still insist on equating “tribe” with sib, and this inaccurate or special usage has caused endless confusion when they have had to deal with official Governmental or legal documents in which the word “tribe” is used with its ordinary (primarily territorial) meaning.

Although the sib is certainly independent of the local community or tribe, native traditions do suggest a real link between the unilinear kin group and the locality. Thus, the origin stories of many sibs suggest that each of these groups was associated with a specific place, as if at one time sib and tribelet had been one and the same (disregarding, of course, the affiliated spouses). The names of such sibs usually reflect that of the locality where the sib originated or of some spot with which it was particularly associated. Other sibs, however, bear names appropriate to lineages or house groups, even though they may be just as numerous and widely dispersed. Traditions of most sibs usually refer to the locality that was the site of their ancestral house.

A sib of any size is composed of several lineages or house groups (hIt-tan), and the latter in turn may consist of a single house line or a cluster made up of “mother” and “daughter” houses. Again, while some sibs are found only in single tribal districts, most sibs are established in several areas where they own house sites and territories for hunting, fishing, and gathering. The local segments of such a widespread sib may or may not be felt to form distinct subsibs, perhaps depending upon the recency or circumstances of their dispersal. On the other hand, a single sib in one locality may exhibit two (or more?) fairly independent lineages or clusters of houses, perhaps reflecting the process of splitting into separate sibs, or the incomplete fusion of two formerly distinct groups. The relative independence of these subdivisions may be seen in their historical traditions, in their sharing or exclusive use of totemic crests and other prerogatives, and in whether or not they form rival groups at local potlatches. (At Sitka, for example, the Box House Kagwantan danced opposite the Wolf House Kagwantan and the Eagle's Nest Kagwantan, and the first were usually called simply “Box House People” (Swanton, 1908, p. 435.))

It is natural that these subdivisions should be of most concern to the residents of the local community. To the Tlingit in another district such lineage divisions are of little significance, and indeed they are temporarily ignored in intertribal affairs, when the lineages of a sib are always grouped together in a cooperating unit. Similarly, the exact sib or subsib involved in some legendary or historical event may be ignored by a narrator who is not related to the group in question and who is apt to apply the familiar designation of the larger parent sib to its subdivision. Futhermore, in a distant place, even the name of the sib may be forgotten so that it may have to be called by the name of the tribe, as when some Yakutat informants told me about the war between the Sitka Kagwantan and the CAtqwan (Wrangel people, actually Nana‘ayi sib). It is hardly to be expected that a northern Tlingit should know the names of southern Tlingit sibs. And when a non-Tlingit group is concerned, any consciousness of their internal social divisions is usually masked by their overall foreignness. Nevertheless, in recounting Tlingit history, the sibs (na), and the geographical groups (-qwan) or villages (‘an) which may be involved should be specified. A complete account will also include the house (hIt) or houses of the protagonists, as well as their personal names. Since the latter, as we shall see (pp. 781–790), are inherited within the lineage or sib, mention of the name alone is often sufficient identification.

The histories told at Yakutat show how the fortunes of the different groups have fluctuated, how some became prominent through prowess and wealth, or how misfortune or internal dissension might weaken a group through schism. The emigration of one branch might lead to the establishment of a separate group. We can also see the conduct of intersib relations, in potlatching, trade, and in friendly intermarriage. The last often leads to the eventual establishment of a sib in far lands, as the children and brothers of married-in women found their own house in new territory. Or, warfare can lead to the extermination of a sib, with its surviving members enslaved by their conquerors. In other cases, a sib simply seems to disappear; perhaps, reduced in numbers, its members have merged with some related stronger group. Finally, the fortunes or misfortunes of a sib or of a whole community may turn upon a supernatural event, an incautious word to a powerful spirit, or the violation of some taboo. In fact, the destinies of each sib are to some degree determined or set by the original supernatural encounters which endowed the group with its totemic affiliations and character.

Foreign Peoples

A number of foreign tribes and peoples have figured in Yakutat history, or were mentioned by informants. In identifying these I shall begin with the native peoples who live to the westward.

ALEUTS AND ESKIMOS

The Chugach of Prince William Sound, the Koniag of Kodiak Island, and the inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands are all popularly known as “Aleuts” to Alaskan Whites and natives alike. Few bother to distinguish between the Pacific Eskimo and the Aleut proper. The Yakutat and Eyak had contacts with the Chugach in Prince William Sound and in Controller Bay before the Russians brought fleets of Aleut, Koniag, and Chugach sea-otter hunters into Indian territories. The native word for Aleut, more properly applied to the Chugach, is Eyak, and we heard this variously rendered as Goe, (goe, goe, oe, and gue). The copper River Eyak word for a Chugach Eskimo is GòDÉIyÀq or GòDEI (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 543) or Adi. (Krauss). They were the traditional enemies of the Eyak and Yakutat. A number of place names in the Yakutat area, as far east as the Situk River, were said to be “Aleut,” and some informants believed that they were the original inhabitants of the area. Others said that they came to Yakutat in pre-Russian times only to hunt sea otter and to raid. Still others believe that the Aleut hunters brought by the Russians were the first to come to Yakutat Bay. There are traditions that Fort Island near Knight Island was fortified as a protection against them, that they used to camp on Dolgoi Island and at other places in the bay, where they lurked in ambush to capture the local Indians, and that an Aleut camp was massacred near Knight Island. They are also mentioned as making war on the village of ałyA on the Kaliakh River, and of attacking the Yakutat when the latter went to trade at the mouth of the Copper River. The Indians had to drive them out of Yakutat Bay and out of Controller Bay, and some of the Yakutat people in their turn even went to Prince William Sound to fight them (pp. 158, 163, 164, 169, 172, 175). At a later period, the Yakutat used to trade with the Pacific Eskimo at Nuchek in Prince William Sound and at Kodiak, and liked to imitate their dances. Even now the traditional enmity is not forgotten, although a few Yakutat natives in recent years have taken Aleut or Koniag spouses.

The Yakutat were also aware of the Eskimo of the far north, people who live where it is cold, wear fur clothes all the time, etc. During World War II, some of the Yakutat men met Eskimos in the Army or on construction jobs at Nome or Fairbanks. We recorded no native name for Eskimo (except for one evidently given in error).

Jack Ellis called the Eskimo “haa dAnaa, ‘outer-edge-of-the world people,’ “ and George Johnson agreed that they could be called “haadaa-khwaan, ’way-out people.’” The former specified that the southeastern Tlingit call the Aleuts “kiyÁk-khwaan,” which he and an informant from Kake admitted to Harrington was an attempt to say “Kayak-people,” but at Yakutat they were called “ ’AnA’úut [’Aleut’ with the usual substitution of n for l], or khuthée.” George Johnson [an Eyak-speaker] pronounced this “Utthèe or kUtthee,” and evidently applied it specifically to the Chugach, for the true “westward, further-up Aleuts” he said might be designated as “naakkhii-’ ‘aa-Utthée.” (Harrington, MS., 1939–40).

ATHABASKANS

The Athabaskans were called Unana, ‘strange people’ (Boas, 1917, p. 158, unaná, Swanton, 1908, p. 414, o’nana ‘strange or different nation;’ Harrington, MS., 1939–40, “kUnAnaa means merely ‘different Indians,’ though was generally applied to all interior Athapaskans”). This term was specifically used at Yakutat to designate the Athabaskans living up the Stikine, Taku, Chilkat, and Alsek Rivers, and also the original inhabitants of Dry Bay (TłukwaAdi). It was very seldom used in referring to the Atna of the Copper River, although they were known to be related to the other interior Athabaskan groups. Although George Johnson, in talking to Harrington used the common English designation “Stick Indians,” apparently with its usual somewhat derogatory connotations, we found that the Yakutat people, in contrast to the more southern Tlingit, did not look down on the Athabaskans as inferior peoples to be exploited in trade whenever possible. Rather, they admired their fine looks, their open grassy country, their rich furs, and their beautiful skin clothing and beadwork. They learned their songs and imitated their style of dancing; and they envied them the tribal regalia which the more conservative interior peoples (Tlingitized Athabaskans and Inland Tlingit) have preserved. There was active intermarriage and trading up and down the Alsek until about 40 or 50 years ago.

The Yakutat people also distinguished between different interior tribes, in addition to the Atna (see below). Thus, these Athabaskan tribes were categorized as “some good, and some bad,” the former being those who acted as trade partners to the coastal Indians. Thus, the Southern Tutchone of Klukshu (tł‘Ukcu) at the head of the Alsek, were the partners of the CAnkuqedi of Dry Bay (see p. 355). A CAnkuqedi informant, Frank Italio, mentioned the TagIcqwan (Tagish, Athabaskans), Nuqwaqwàn (a former Tlingit group on the upper Alsek, cf. pp. 89–90), and the Aiyan (Northern Tutchone of Fort Selkirk on the Yukon). These were all apparently friendly with the Dry Bay and Chilkat Tlingit.

Tàsnáqwan is the name given to the people living in the far north on the Tasna, “the biggest river in the world.” My informant believed that the river was the Yukon and hazarded that the people might be the Eskimo. I would suppose they were more likely to be the Tena. George Johnson told Harrington that “in 1909 [he had] met a Stick Indian man in Valdez who said he came from Thaasnàa, was well-dressed,…[and] had lots of money [because he] had worked for the Government for years…. ” These natives, “like the Copper River Indians, are all slim and tall fellows like me [Harrington].” Mr. George M. Grasty identified the river as the Tanana.

The Copper River Atna, although Athabaskans, were “not Unana,” but were specifically designated as ‘copper-diggers,’ ‘Iqkahaqwan, abbreviated as ‘Iqaqwan (Cf. Boas, 1917, p. 123, ‘eq’ copper’; p. 134, À-sI-hÀ ’to dig.’) Harrington renders the name as ’IIk-khAAhAA-kkhwâan ‘copper-digging people,’ or ’IIkh-kaa-kkhwáan for short. They might also be known as ‘iikkhAhAnaa. The Eyak called them yáanÀhk (Harrington).

These people, at least those on the lower river and its tributaries near Chitina, are felt to be closely related to the Eyak and the Indians at Yakutat. They have matrilineal sibs and moieties like the coast-dwellers. The Eagle sib at Chitina is known as the Tcicqwedi, and the Raven sib as the GIneqwan or łdaEnqwan (Łtahinqwan), both names derived from the rivers where they lived.[68] The latter were the ancestors of the Yakutat Kwacqwan, and, according to some, of the Raven sibs among the Eyak (anAtedi and Qusedi). The Atna were recognized as speaking a different language from Eyak, from Tlingit, and also from Dry Bay Unana, although it was more like the last.

The Gulf Coast Indians seem to have been on friendly terms with the Atna, and the Atna we met on the Copper River were full of friendly respect for the coastal Indians, especially the Yakutat Tlingit. The latter formerly used to travel to the mouth of the Copper River, and during the last century to Nuchek in Prince William Sound, in order to trade with the Atna who descended the Copper River to meet them. The Copper River Eyak, I believe, were traditionally the middlemen in such trade. The overland route from the Chitina River to the Duktoth River near Cape Yakagata was presumably used at an earlier period. From the Atna, the Yakutat obtained copper, furs, and spruce gum. More recently, a small group of Atna are said to have lived on the Bering River at Controller Bay. Both the Yakutat Tlingit and the Atna were very much excited when work on the Copper River railroad in the first quarter of the present century reintroduced them to each other, and they could exchange songs and versions of their common history.

The “McCarthy Indians,” probably the Nabesna who came over the passes from the Upper Tanana valley to the McCarthy area on the Chitina River, were among the former enemies of the Atna. They were called Nakiqwan, ‘way-up-above people,’ by my Yakutat informant. Those invited to the potlatch at Chitina (see p. 898) were assumed to be TłáInedi, that is, to belong to the Raven moiety. (It is doubtful, however, that the Upper Tanana Indians had completely comparable moieties.)

Harrington's informant used the term “Stick Indians” especially in referring to these inhabitants of the “upper Copper River country,” although we may infer that he was not very careful about distinguishing between the various groups. He said that they used to come down the coast to Dry Bay, which was in consequence called “kAnnaaúu…. This name means ‘Stick Indians’ place.” We know that there were former trade routes linking the copper country of the Nabesna and White Rivers with the upper Alsek (map 12, p. 88), so that even if the Nabesna-Upper Tanana Indians themselves may not have traveled to Dry Bay, their copper and furs evidently did. The same informant also reported that these Stick Indians used to come frequently to the coast at “KAłyAx” near “Yakataga Beach,” and as a matter of fact, they could do this as easily as could the Atna from Chitina. It is interesting that he did not associate the latter with this route, nor the Southern Tutchone with that to Dry Bay.

As Harrington reports:

“The Stick Indians wanted continually to come out to the coast, and followed down these 2 rivers, but after the whites came in the Stick Indians found in Cordova a nice place to “come out,” [with] stores and [a] place where they could trade their skins. The Stick Indians used to come down the Copper River railroad to Cordova, and informant was surprised how they could speak English. Once informant saw a white fellow…in 1916 take 6 Copper River men to the States and back again on a trip.

“There is one big bunch of Copper River Indians at the very head of Copper River which bunch is called by the Yakutat naakkhii khwâan, lit. way up the river people. Those 6 were from there, had long hair, their hair reached to bottom of thorax. These stuck close to the white people who [were] taking them on the trip. They talked poor English.

“They early cleaned up all the whites who came in there looking for gold, the Indians having only bows and arrows, but were quick fighters. 20 prospectors went up there and were pretty near all fall asleep when the Copper River Indians came quick and attacked the camp, killing 19, while only one old Irishman named Mike…[D] escaped with one ear cut off. Mike lived for years at Cordova….

“They say there is lots of game among the Stick Indians up there at the head of the Copper River, and they come down in a moose skin canoe made with alder ribs, coming through the boiling rapids where the Copper River comes between the 2 mountains there. And they will not let any Cordova Indians go up there to hunt unless the Cordova Indian got permission from the Stick Indian chief—they wanted the hunting for the Stick Indians themselves. If you go up there without permission they will kill you right there, you can’t get away, informant's maternal uncle told informant. And the white people when they first came in there had a hard time. And the Stick Indians give a time limit to Cordova Indians hunting there and if you don‘t go away they kill you right that minute.” [George Johnson to Harrington, 1939–40.]

EYAK

The Eyak of the Copper River delta were not really foreigners; rather they were friends and relatives of the Yakutat people who were a trifle old-fashioned and backward. They were usually called Yátqwan, an expression meaning ‘local people, original inhabitants’ (cf. Boas, 1917, p. 95, yá ’here’). Their speech is called yatqwan enA. This is because the Yakutat people know that they once spoke Eyak, like those at Cordova. The same expression was used by a Dry Bay man to designate the language of the original Athabaskans in that area. Harrington renders the name yáat khwaan, ‘here-people.’ One of my informants, however, believed that originally the Cordova people spoke like the Chitina people (Atna), but later changed their language to Eyak, although he did not know why or how.

In referring to the Eyak, the particular subdivisions (town or sib) are designated just as they would be among the Tlingit. Thus, another term is ’ì.yáqqwán, ‘people of Eyak,’ for their former village on Eyak Lake, while others might be called ‘Alaganik people,’ or ‘AnAAnÁ.qqwan (cf. Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 543–545). The Copper River Eyak sibs, one Eagle (utcgalAq) and two Raven (or Crow, tílè), were fitted into the Yakutat and Tlingit system. The Tlingitized people of ałyA formed a connecting link between the Cordova Eyak and the Yakutat.

TLINGIT

Whereas łÌngít (cf. Boas, 1917, p. 129) means simply ‘human being, man,’ the Yakutat people in using the English word “Tlingit” may mean by this only the “southeast Alaska Tlingit,” or may also include themselves, depending upon the context. The attitude of any given resident towards the Tlingit of the southeastern Alaskan panhandle apparently varies according to his own derivation, since quite a few people have moved to Yakutat, especially from Sitka, or are the children of such a southeastern man or woman. Or, his attitude may depend on the traditions of the sib to which he belongs, or of that of his father, as well as upon his own personal experiences. Thus, for a man from Katalla, the southeastern Tlingit as a whole were evidently rather alien and to be distrusted when visited in their own country. Most of my other informants however, traced their descent on one or both sides from Tlingit immigrants who had come long ago to Dry Bay or to Yakutat, and they distinguished clearly between the Sitka or Juneau sibs to which they could claim affiliation, and those with which they had no ties or which were perhaps traditional enemies or rivals of their sib. Yet perhaps all felt somewhat on the defensive, ready to resent any remark which might be interpreted interpreted as a slurring reference to the backwardness of Yakutat in general, and quick to praise the superiorities of Yakutat, while stressing their own personal connections with the more aristocratic and sophisticated south.

The Yakutat people were familiar with all the Northern Tlingit tribes—most had been to Sitka or Juneau, some to Hoonah and Klukwan and Angoon—but when they came to speak of the groups living south of Frederick Sound, their knowledge was less secure. All the Southern Tlingit might be lumped together as “Kake.” Few persons knew the names for even the major geographical features, or were content to designate a locality as vaguely “below Ketchikan.”

Farther south, beyond Tlingit territory, live the Haida and Tsimshian, with whom the Yakutat people had commercial dealings.

HAIDA

The Haida, Dekína, (Swanton, 1908, p. 414, Dekî’na, ’Nation-far-out [at sea]’), were sometimes included in the vague expression “West Coast Natives” by the Yakutat people. They were known to make excellent canoes, highly prized by all the Tlingit. Some of the Yakutat people had such canoes 50 years or so ago, and some of their slaves had been purchased from the Haida. Harrington was told by a White man at Yakutat that at one time the Haida, as well as the Sitka Tlingit, used to come in big canoes to the Copper River to trade for native copper. The Cordova Eyak demanded high prices for their bars and knives of copper, but the Haida were rich and could offer many goods in return. These voyages were not mentioned by our informants. Rather, we gather that it was the Yakutat themselves who sometimes journeyed south to meet the Haida. A type of song, usually a love song addressed to sib-children (pp. 571–572), is called a ‘Haida mouth song,’ because it is composed in Haida style. These and Haida love songs with Haida words were sung at Yakutat.

The term, Dekina, however, is not applied exclusively to the Haida. It was used (primarily?) for the people of Dall Island: Henya and Klawak Tlingit, as well as the Haida Kaigani. One of our informants, in fact, spoke of the “Tekina—’people way out,’ maybe Klawak,” and again as “Klawak people, almost the same as Haida.” The word may originally have designated the Tlingit of Dall Island, before the Kaigani settled there, rather than the Kaigani or Haida. This is suggested by the fact that when Kuskov, in reporting to Baranov the Indian plot against the Russians (July 1, 1802, pp. 171–172), used this name, he seems to have been referring to a Tlingit group, probably the KIkSAdi sib of the Henya. Harrington's informants were also uncertain as to the exact use of the name. Jack Ellis reported that “Teek-khiinaa” meant “the outermost tribe,” specifically the Haida, “since the Haida were on the islands that lay way off the coast.” Peter Lawrence from Sitka said that “Téekkhiinàa,” or “way out,” meant a “Haidaburg Indian,” and he called the Masset Haida “Téekkhiikkhwωn.” While others of Yakutat agreed that “Teekkhiinaa, way-out people” were the Haida, they felt that “Téekkhiikkhwàan” [’way-out dwellers’] were more properly the coastal Tlingit from Juneau to Sitka (Harrington).

TSIMSHIAN

The Tsimshian, Tutsan, (Boas, 1917, p. 10, tutsAn; Swanton, 1908, p. 414, Ts!utsa′n), were regarded by the Yakutat people as the smartest, best carvers, and the best painters. “Tsimshian made” was an expression indicating the finest workmanship. A great deal of the carved regalia, including headdresses (cAki’At), dance batons, and rattles, used at Yakutat had evidently been made by the Tsimshian. Swanton (ibid.) reports that, for the Tlingit as a whole, the Tsimshian were “esteemed as a people of high culture from whom new ideas and customs reached them.” Thus, many persons at Yakutat are said to know and sing Tsimshian songs; some are dancing songs with “old-fashioned words,” purchased from the Tsimshian when they used to come to Yakutat in the 1880's and 1890‘s to hunt sea otter, and would sing and dance. Other songs are shamanistic, with Tsimshian words because the spirits have come from shamans of that tribe. Probably many ceremonial and religious elaborations reached the Northern Tlingit, including the Yakutat, from the Tsimshian. The Yakutat people used to go to Metlakatla to trade with them, especially since the Tsimshian, like the Haida, could supply big husky slaves. The Tsimshian parties that came to Yakutat had to obtain permission to hunt sea otter from the “Yakutat Chief,” the leading chief of the Kwacwan sib who controlled the hunting grounds at Icy Bay. On one occasion there was almost a fight between the Tsimshian and the Yakutat Indians.

Harrington gives the name “Tuutz-Án” for the Tsimshian; the people of Nass River would be known as “Nâaskhwâan.”

WAKASHAN AND SALISH

“West Coast Indian” is the English expression applied to the Kwakiutl, Nootka, Makah, and Coast Salish, who have flattened heads. They are called T’awyat or T’oyat in Tlingit, although this name does not mean literally ‘flat head.’ In former times a number of Yakutat chiefs had some of these “Flathead Indians” as slaves; the last were freed at a potlatch in 1910; others are said to have attempted an escape in a canoe perhaps 50 or 60 years before that. In the last century a few wealthy people at Yakutat also had Nootka-type ‘goose canoes,’ obtained from the “West Coast Indians.” These were purchased from parties of flat-headed Indians who used to come to Yakutat on a schooner to hunt sea otter. Every night they and the Yakutat people danced “against” each other; one night the West Coast or “Washington Indians” danced onboard their schooner, the next night the Yakutat people danced on shore. They also bet against each other in the stick game. The Yakutat people learned many of their songs. West Seattle and Victoria were specifically mentioned as their homes. The heads were said to be flattened in order to “fit their head pieces”!

Swanton (1908, p. 423) applied the term “T!awiy’t-q!a” to “the Flatheads (i.e., Kwakiutl).” According to Harrington, Jack Ellis equated the term “T’owya·t” with “Siwash,” a derogatory term. “The Tlingit get mad if you call them Siwash,” it is said. “They come to blows.” The true T’owya·t or Siwash were “far-south Indians who were the source of slaves, notably, but it was mostly the Haida who captured or got them, and sold them to the Tlingit. It was the Coast Siwash who got made slaves, the inland Siwash naturally could not be gotten.” GJ rendered the name as “T’uuyyáat,” but knew only that they had flat heads. Peter Lawrence called them “T’áwyaat,” and specified that they came from Neah Bay, i.e., were Makah. “They used to come here fur-seal hunting; twenty schooners would put in at Yakutat to get water, and sometimes a Japanese schooner.”

“OUTSIDE INDIANS”

A number of Cordova and Katalla Eyak and some Yakutat people had evidently had some contact with “States Indians,” expecially at the native school at Chimawa, Oreg. As George Johnson told Harrington, when he was a boy, “they took 12 boys from Katalla to Chimawa, Oregon, school. Only two came back alive, two girls. Ten died there.” They wanted the informant to go, but he apparently refused. “The State Indians and the Alaska Indians never get along so good at Chimawa, for the State Indians are wards of the Government and the Government has never declared the status of the Alaska Indians…. ” The informant's maternal grandfather made two trips to Portland (called “łU-wáatł‘An”). “That used to be a risky trip, for these State Indians used to attack these Tlingits. The Tlingits had to be on the watch all the time.”

EUROPEANS, AMERICANS, AND ORIENTALS

White people are sometimes called Gù-Ayí-qwan or Gu-iya-qwan (the old pronunciation), or Gu-A-qwan (the newer, faster form). Many variants were recorded, such as Gut-kiya-qwan, etc. The name was translated as “people from the other side of the world,” literally ‘cloud outside-of people.’ (Cf. Boas, 1917, p. 155, gU, ’cloud.’) Harrington (MS 1939–40) recorded the forms “KUt ii-khwaan” from GJ, and “Xuu [u] iyi khwan” from JE, meaning ‘horizon people,’ ‘people from where the sky, or clouds, meet the ground,’ or ’horizon-end-of people.‘

This was apparently the older name for all White people, but used at Yakutat now to designate the Russians. A White person is now commonly called TłEd (or Tłet)-qa (cf. Boas, 1917, p. 164, tè, ‘snow’). Jack Ellis told Harrington that it was not until after 1850 that this translation of the English term, “White man” (“01C;Tłeet-khwan,” ’like snow people’), began to be used. “And now the school youngsters distinguish between English, German, French, etc,” he added. This was in 1940, before World War II brought so much knowledge of foreigners and distant parts. Swanton (1908, p. 414) writes that “t qoan (white or snow people)” or even “G’tsk!Î qoan (people from the place where the clouds reach down to the earth—i.e., horizon people)” are terms used by the Tlingit for White people in general, but that the Russians were “n’ci,” while the British were “GÎ’ndjÎtcwân, a corruption of the ‘King George Man’ of the Chinook jargon.” We also recorded Gandjitcwan or KIndjidjwAn for the “King George Men of Prince Rupert” (Canadians and British). This was said to be the newer term, the older name being NAngInAn. Americans were WactInqwan, or ’Boston Men.‘

Other nationalities known to the Yakutat people because of their visits or residence in the area were Swedish (missionaries) Norwegian (seamen, fishermen), Finnish (missionary), German (prospectors, traders, etc.), Italian (Alpinists), Japanese (cannery workers, seamen, photographers), and Filipino and Chinese (cannery workers). The last were called TcanwAn, ‘Chinaman.’ A number of Americans, foreign Whites, and Orientals have married native women. Despite the fact that a number of Yakutat boys served in the Army overseas, there seems to be no enmity felt toward the Germans or Japanese. The Russians are still remembered, however, with hatred. Two Yakutat natives were at first suspicious of my name and questioned me closely to make sure that I had no connection with the Russians.

Sibs Among the Gulf of Alaska Peoples or Important in Their History

A list of sibs among the Yakutat and their neighbors has already been given on page 20, but it may be repeated here with some modifications. These groups are identified and their history briefly sketched in the following pages:

ANATÉDI

The “anAtédi” were an important Raven sib at the mouth of the Copper River, said to “own” Cordova and Alaganik, and also to live as far east as Katalla. They are said to have been part of the original group that emigrated from Chitina on the Copper River, but became lost in the fog and so were separated from those who went on to Yakutat and became the Kwacqwan. The first settlement of the anAtédi on the Copper River delta was at Sawa, ‘Behind the Cockles.’ atgawet, a prominent Teqwedi trader from Akwe River and Yakutat married one of their women and gave her “brothers” the name anAtedi in imitation of the famous Chilkat sib at Klukwan. Those from Cordova used to come by canoe to Yakutat in June, presumably to trade. Swanton (1908, p. 400) recognizes groups at Chilkat and Yakutat whom he calls “nAXA’dÎ.” However, when one of our informants said that long ago there had been anAtedi or anAAdi at Yakutat, I believe he was referring to visitors from Chilkat, like those encountered by Ismailov and Bocharov at Yakutat in 1788 (pp. 134–135).

The anAtedi or anAAdi of Chilkat are associated with the early history of the Tł’UknaAdi (Ravens) and the CAnkuqedi (Wolf-Eagles) of Dry Bay (see below).

TłUKwAADI

Although a group called “TłukwaAdi” were said to have lived at Alaganik, nothing further is known about them, except that they were distinct from the people of the same name at Dry Bay. They may have been given this same designation, however, to imply an Athabaskan origin.

QUSK‘ÉDI

A branch of the “Kosedi” of Yakutat and Dry Bay, or more probably an entirely different group, since they are usually called Qúsédi or Qúskedi, was one of the Raven sibs at Cordova, said to have been named by the much-marrying atgawet.

TCICQÉDI

The Tcicqédi or TcIcqwedi are an Eagle sib of the Eyak, especially associated with Katalla and Cape Martin, although they also lived at Cordova and on Controller Bay. They had settlements at Kokenhenik on the Copper River delta, at Cape Martin, on Salmon River near Katalla, at Katalla, on Wingham Island, at Chilkat on Bering River, and on Bering Lake. The Tcicqédi are reputed to be a branch of the ałyI-Kagwantan, who followed the latter “after the Flood” to Kaliakh River. Finding that the only dry land was already occupied, they had to settle farther west in a swampy area, where they were given lands by their “fathers,” the Eyak anAtedi. However, the latter took back some of their territory when they found that the Tcicqédi were getting too many furs. The latter event is said to have taken place when the grandfather of a man born in 1892 was still alive. The ałyI-Kagwantan are said to consider them rather low class.

The version of their origin as told by another informant is simply that they branched off from the ałyI-Kagwantan because there were too many people in one house. For a time they seem to have been on good terms with the latter, for the two groups are said to have had houses side by side on Bering Lake. These were destroyed by a flood. More recently, during the lifetime of the father of a man born in 1912, the Tcicqédi attempted to build a house at Chilkat on Bering River and at Strawberry Point on Controller Bay, but were prevented by the ałyI-Kagwantan, who also claimed territory as far west as Strawberry Point, and a fight ensued. The “capital” of the Tcicqedi was at Katalla. One Tcicqédi man has an Eagle House at Yakutat, but there are no other representatives of his sib here. Several Kwacqwan individuals had fathers in this sib.

Because the Tcicqédi were considered to be a western branch of the ałyI-Kagwantan, their name is sometimes used to designate the eastern branch, or TłaayIk-Teqwedi, although the latter were a separate group.

Emmons (MS.) reports that the “Tschisqwaytee” women did not wear the labret.

The name, Tcicqédi, is evidently synonymous with Tcícyù, ‘red paint people,’ a matrilinial sib widely distributed among the Atna, Tanana, Yukon Tena, Tanaina, etc. Among the Atna who have moieties, the Tcícyù are ranked as “Seagull,” as opposed to the “Crow.” Our Yakutat informant specified that the “Eagle” sib at Chitina was the TcIcqwédi, which is thus in agreement with what McClellan and I found among the Atna (1954). Possibly a branch of these people did come to the coast via the overland route to the Duktoth River near Cape Yakataga, and from there spread westward. The tradition of their move to the Copper River is probably that recorded at Cordova in 1935 as the adoption of a people called “qatłiya da laqEIyu,” which should probably be translated as “people from Kaliakh” (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 124, 544).

AłYI-KAGWANTAN

The ałyI-Kagwantan (or ałyA-Kagwantan) are an Eagle sib, once very large, which claims territorial rights from Strawberry Point in Controller Bay to Williams Creek west of Icy Bay. The first part of their name refers to their principal village, ałiyA or ałyA, which was formerly at the mouth of the Kaliakh River. They were also one of the groups named by atgawet, who married their chief's daughter and called his father-in-law‘s people “Kagwantan” after the famous sib at Chilkat and Sitka and Hoonah. These people, together with their Kwacqwan or Eyak Raven wives, make up the tribal group called “Guth-le-uk-qwan” by Emmons (1903, pp. 231 f.).

According to one informant, the ałyI-Kagwantan were the group who became lost in the fog when emigrating from the Copper River, but this story more properly applies to the Raven anAtedi of Cordova. According to a Tcicqédi man, the ałyI-Kagwantan were originally Sitka people who came in Haida-built canoes to the Copper River to trade for copper and who settled at Katalla. But this story is evidently inspired by an attempt to link his own people and the ałyI-Kagwantan to the Sitka Kagwantan.

Their own version is that “after the Flood,” when they were drifting on the ocean, they saw a beautiful mountain (Kulthieth) and so were attracted to the Kaliakh River, where they preempted the dry ground for their houses. Here they repulsed an attack by the “Aleuts” on ałyA, when atgawet fought beside his father-in-law. Later(?) they spread westward, and established themselves in the Controller Bay area. The site of their original(?) Beaver House was on Bering Lake, and it was also in the vicinity of Bering River that they acquired the Beaver as their crest. They had other settlements at Strawberry Point, at Redwood Bay, at Chilkat on Bering River, on Wingham Island, at the base of Okalee Spit, on the Kaliakh River above ałyA, and probably also a camp or settlement at Cape Yakataga.

One of the groups “organized” for purposes of trade by atgawet were the WUłIxac-Kagwantan, or ‘drifted-away Kagawantan,’ who originated at Katalla. It is not clear whether this term should be applied to the ałyIx-Kagwantan as a whole, since they once drifted on the ocean, to a branch living on Controller Bay, or to the Tcicqedi who claimed Katalla as their “capital.”

The ałyI-Kagwantan are associated with the history of Yakutat proper, for the Raven emigrants (GIne-qwan or Kwacqwan) from the Copper River encountered at Icy Bay a group of ałyI-Kagwantan who had moved east after a quarrel with their kinsmen. These people were traveling in big skin or wooden canoes. They intermarried with the Copper River Ravens, and moved with them across Yakutat Bay, when, according to some, they became known as the TłaayIk-Teqwedi. According to others, they were the first to reach Yakutat. When the Copper River Ravens acquired Knight Island and the Humpback Salmon Creek in Yakutat Bay, some informants said that one or both of these properties were purchased by a ałyI-Kagwantan chief for his Raven children.

The ałyI-Kagwantan claim to have found the wreck of a Russian ship (on the coast west of Icy Bay?), the first Russian ship seen, and one of their number married a Russian woman, the sole survivor.

The members of this sib are proud of the reputation which links them with the Sitka Kagwantan as being fierce warriors. The territory is admitted to be rich in furs, and they were traditionally wealthy in copper.

The ałyI-Kagwantan have traditionally intermarried with the Kwacqwan. Emmons (MS.) reports that they had a house at Khantaak Island, but this could not be confirmed. In any case, a number have more recently moved to Yakutat. Here they formerly owned a lineage house, still standing, but no longer in the possession of the sib. The ałyI-Kagwantan are today represented at Yakutat by two women, their children and grandchildren; a few others live at Cordova or in the States below Alaska.

ORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF THE YAKUTAT AREA

The original inhabitants of the Yakutat area have been called “Aleuts,” and one informant reported that the immigrants from the Copper River purchased their lands from them. According to others, the group that sold their territories to the Copper River Indians were the Kosedi (Ravens), the HInyedi (Ravens), or YEnyedi (Eagles). Other names applied more specifically to the original occupants of the lowlands east of Yakutat Bay are the Ł‘uedi (Eagles), who may or may not be the same as the TłaayIk-Teqwedi, and the StaAdi (Ravens). Farther east, in the Dry Bay area lived the TłukwaAdi (Athabaskan Ravens) and the Kosedi. It is possible that at an early time there were only various groups scattered along the coast that lacked formal sib or moiety organization, although informants now assign such status to all the peoples mentioned.

HINYEDI

One very well-informed Kwacqwan man said that his people, on coming from the Copper River, purchased their lands at Yakutat from the Raven HInyedi. After selling their territories, these people emigrated to southeastern Alaska; most are believed to live near Ketchikan, but there are a few in Juneau. The HInyedi are not mentioned by Swanton. Although the name suggests that it may refer to a ‘river’ (hín), this etymology was rejected by my informant. He also told me that these people were called StaAdi, after the eastern branch, Staéya, of the Arhnklin River, the last of their territory to be sold, and which was acquired by the Drum House Teqwedi. However, most of my other informants said that StaAdi was only another name for the Kwacqwan, although a derogatory one, and no one else used the term HInyedi.

KOSEDI

The Kosedi (Ravens) were among the names given by two Kwacqwan informants to designate the original inhabitants of the Yakutat area. According to their version of the tradition, these people sold their land to the immigrants from the Copper River (the Kwacqwan), and then moved to southeastern Alaska, being now found at Sitka. Swanton, who recorded such a version (1909, Tale 105), lists them both at Sitka and at Hoonah as Kosk!’dÎ, ’people of Ks′x or Kos!′x.’ He considers them to be Athabaskan in origin, and to be one of the Tlingit groups that originated in the Dry Bay area. Some of his informants said that they were a branch of the Tł’UknaAdi, “though others state that they came from the coast farther west from the StAxa’dÎ of Copper river, who appear to have been Athapascans” (Swanton, 1908, p. 413; cf. pp. 399, 400). Swanton's “Kos!’x” is apparently the famous town, Gue, on the Akwe River just west of Dry Bay, the “capital” of the Tł’UknaAdi. One of my informants said that the Kosedi did in fact live with the latter in Frog House, and that they used to accompany the Tł’UknaAdi on summer trips to Yakutat. This group of Kosedi apparently moved to Sitka when Gue was abandoned, but apparently still feel that they are a part of the Tł’UknaAdi. It is not at all evident, however, that these Akwe-Sitka Kosedi were ever the original inhabitants of Yakutat.

Swanton (1909, Tale 32, p. 161) also records another version of the origin of the Kosedi. According to this story they were a branch of the Tł’UknaAdi at the time the latter moved north from southeastern Alaska to Dry Bay, but acquired their name from the place at which they camped in order to obtain roots to make into a dried pressed food called “t!AganÎsk!êx.” Swanton doubts this etymology. According to this story, the Kosedi built a house which they roofed with moose hide, becoming the Moose House People (s! hÎt tn, cf. Swanton, 1908, pp. 407, 409, 413).

Emmons (MS.) writes that the “Kuse ka di” were an offshoot of the Tł’UknaAdi (“01C;Thluke nuh ut di”), and came with them from Dry Bay to Yakutat, where they were mentioned as among the first people. However, they continued westward, and “while a few remain [as of 1910?], none have houses here today and only a few are found married in the other families [sibs], so they do not constitute a family of the tribe today.”

As already mentioned, one of the Raven sibs of the Cordova Eyak were called “Kosedi” or Qusedi, but are probably a different group.

It seems doubtful that the name, Kosedi, should properly be given to any Raven group west of the Dry Bay area.

STAADI

The StaAdi are also difficult to identify. One informant said they were named for the eastern branch of the Ahrnklin River, the last piece of territory sold by the HInyedi before their emigration. Others apply the term to the Kwacqwan, especially to the Moon House lineage. However, it is said to be a name used by the TłUknaAdi when “they want to be mean to the Kwacqwan.” I do not know why it should be resented, unless itimplies assimilation by the Kwacqwan of an inferior autochthonous group. This designation, however, but without the derogatory implications, is accepted by several members of the Kwacqwan.

Swanton (1908, p. 413) identifies the “StA′dÎ” as Athabaskans of Copper River, and says that the Kwacqwan are called by the same name because their dances are similar to those of the true “StA′dÎ.” It is true that the Kwacqwan are accustomed to dance in Atna style.

A Kagwantan informant told me that when the Tł‘UknaAdi used to come to Yakutat to trade, the StaAdi or Kwacqwan would hide in the woods, until a “great man organized them” into a trading relationship. This is undoubtedly a reference to atgawet.

YENYEDI

According to three more Kwacqwan informants, the original inhabitants of Yakutat Bay were the Eagle YEnyedi or YAnyedi. After selling their lands, the last of which was the Ahrnklin region, the YAnyedi went to Taku, where they now live. They walked into the interior up one of the glaciers at the head of Yakutat Bay (probably via Nunatak Glacier), and went to Tcanukwa on the headwaters of the Alsek, to “Taku Lake” (Atlin Lake), and came eventually to Klukwan and Taku.

A Kagwantan informant said only that they had separated from other Eagle groups “after the Flood.” Swanton (1908, pp. 399, 412) calls them the Yên′dÎ, ‘mainland people’ or ‘place of hemlock people,’ and believes them to be a branch of the Nana’Î, a prominent Wolf sib among the southern Tlingit. The latter are said to have come from the Tsimshian coast to the south, but Lieutenent Emmons is quoted as suggesting (more correctly) that they were originally an interior group (Swanton, 1908, p. 411 and footnote). Garfield (1947, pp. 447, 449) quotes Angoon informants who identify the YEnyEdi as the ancestors of the Daqł’awedi and WUckitan (Wolf sibs represented at Angoon), who had moved down the Stikine and Taku Rivers to the coast (cf. de Laguna, 1960, pp. 137–140). The name, therefore, may be one which is used rather loosely to designate any Eagle-Wolf mainland or inland group.

Some 70 or more years ago, a number of YEnyedi from below Wrangell came to Yakutat. Their descendants are today among the Yakutat people, but while there are also more recently married-in YEnyedi, the sib as such is not established in the area.

Ł‘UEDI

The Ł’uedi or Tł’uedi (Eagles) are also reported to have been the original owners of Yakutat. They spoke Eyak. Their name refers to the muddy glacial waters (ł’u or tł’u) of the Situk River which formerly drained an ice-dammed lake at the head of Russell Fiord, (Harrington renders ‘muddy water, glacier water’ as tł’uu, but give no names for the sib.) This group is particularly associated with the Situk and Lost Rivers, east of Yakutat. A few persons even assign them to the Humpback Salmon Creek or to the Ahrnklin River. They are sometimes equated with the TłaayIk-Teqwedi, or even with the ałyI-Kagwantan, although one person said that the latter “just called themselves Ł’uedi.” The same informant reported that the Ł’uedi had just come up from southeastern Alaska, when the ałyI-Kagwantan crossed Yakutat Bay from the west and discovered their presence from the peeled stalks of wildcelery which the former had dropped. Her husband, however, reports that this was the way the Kwacqwan discovered the HInyedi. According to Swanton‘s version of the Kwacqwan migration from the Copper River (1909, Tale 105), the “L!uq!oe′dÎ” and the “Kos!dÎ,” both Athabaskans, were then living together at Yakutat, but the L!uq!oe′dÎ emigrated with the latter when they sold their Humpback Salmon stream.

Most of my informants, however, spoke as if the Ł’uedi were either the same as the TłaayIk-Teqwedi, or had merged with them. They built the Eagle Fort on the upper Situk River after they had expelled the Russians. Other towns of theirs were NEtIłhuwA-wÁt’an on Aka Lake (destroyed by the southeastern Alaskan Teqwedi), Diyaguna’Et on the west branch of Lost River (also acquired by the latter), and ‘Shallow Water Town’ on Little Lost River (acquired by the Teqwedi and given by their chief to the Kwacqwan). The Teqwedi (Bear House lineage?) do not like to hear the name Ł’uedi, we are told, because the latter killed so many of them on Situk and Lost River that they were never able to even the score. The Drum House Teqwedi, especially, do not like to be reminded of the Ł’uedi. (Is this because they were enemies, or because the Drum House people merged with them ?) There are now no Ł’uedi at Yakutat, and it is not known what became of them. If they were the same as, or were closely allied with, the TłaayIk-Teqwedi, then they were probably wiped out by the Raven Tł’UknaAdi (see pp. 261–270). Chief Daqusetc, the leading Teqwedi chief at Diyaguna ’Et and at Khantaak Island, had a Ł’uedi woman slave. She was liberated at the potlatch after his death (about 1901?) and, like other freed slaves, was considered a low-class member of her owner's sib. It is probable that other Ł’uedi have been absorbed in like manner by the Teqwedi.

[According to Emmons (MS.), the Eagle or Wolf] “Tlu qua di were a very early people before the Tlingit who originally spoke the Interior tongue [Athabaskan, not Eyak?], who came down the Alsech from the Interior. From Dry Bay they went north and became an important part of the Yakutat tribe and are mentioned as among the original settlers there. Their principal village was on the Situk River where they had a stockaded fort Chak nu (Eagle Fort) [see page 79]. They were defeated in wars with the Thluke nuh hut di [Tł‘UknaAdi] and their fort destroyed. They are said to have led the attack on the Russian post at Yakutat, and fearing reprisals, they afterwards returned to the Alsech. They are no longer represented in this tribe and the name only is remembered.”

In this connection, we should note the traditions and evidence concerning the movements of coastal groups up the Alsek River, and the eventual disappearance of these settlers at ‘Eddy Fort’, or ‘Kinnikinnik Leaves’ (pp. 83, 89). The YEnyedi or Ł‘uedi or TłaayIk-Tekwedi may have been the parent group for the “Nua Qua” (Nuqwaqwan), whose last chief, TInna ati, died on the upper Alsek about 100 years ago.

We should also note that a different sib, also called the Ł’uedi, are associated with Sitka. According to Swanton, (1907, vol. 2, p. 766) they are the L!′q !oedÎ, ‘white people,’ an almost extinct Eagle sib, named for the color of white water. Garfield's Angoon informants (1947, pp. 466f.) said that they were a branch of the Teqwedi which had settled at the foot of Mount Edgecomb on the southern end of Kruzof Island, a place which my Yakutat informants also called Ł’u. (de Laguna, 1960, p. 144). Here the name seems to refer to the stormy waters encountered in that locality, which figure in the early history of the residents (Swanton 1909, Tale 17). My informant who traced the Yakutat Ł‘uedi back to southeastern Alaska was probably relying upon this similarity in the descriptive names, for other persons indicated clearly that the Yakutat group was distinct from any branch of the Teqwedi from Sitka.

TŁAAYIK-TEQWEDI

The TłaayIk-Teqwedi, commonly regarded as a branch of the ałyI-Kagwantan, were the most important Eagle sib in the early history of Yakutat. They spoke Eyak, and their name is derived from the Eyak name for Yakutat Bay, tła’á’, plus the Tlingit suffix -yIk, ‘inside.’ (Harrington, MS., 1939–40, tłhaaaatthÁ, ‘the whole great Yakutat Bay,’ -yÍk ’inside.’) As already suggested, the TłaayIk-Teqwedi are probably the same as the Ł’uedi, or these two names may designate two branches of the same people living on the bay and on the rivers. Both names were, moreover, given by different informants to those who defeated the Russians, built Eagle Fort on the Situk, and were finally crushed at WuganiyE above Point Latouche. At an earlier period, the TłaayIk-Teqwedi are said to have lived on Knight Island, and, under atgawet's (?) leadership, fortified adjacent Little Fort Island against the “Aleut.” The people of Knight Island were also embroiled with the TłukwaAdi of Dry Bay. This probably represents an early phase of the enmity between the Yakutat Eagles and the Dry Bay Ravens which led to the destruction of the TłaayIk-Teqwedi by the Tł’UknaAdi. The TłaayIk-Teqwedi are no longer found at Yakutat; probably the survivors merged with the Teqwedi from southeastern Alaska, or, as suggested, fled into the interior. Some of their great names are now borne by ałyI-Kagwantan and Teqwedi individuals at Yakutat.

KwACK’QWAN

The Kwacqwan (Swanton, 1908, p. 400, Kâ′ck!eqoan) are named for the Humpback Salmon Creek on the east side of Yakutat Bay. The name for the stream, kwac, is simply the Eyak word for humpback salmon, whereas the Tlingit word is tca. This Raven sib traces its origin to Chitina on the Copper River, which they left following a dispute over the inheritance of a dead chief‘s property. The original group was called GIneqwan or GInEqwan after the Bremner River, or ŁdaEnqwan or Łtahinqwan after the Tana River. At the time of their emigration they spoke the Copper River language, i.e., Atna Athabaskan, and some songs in this language are still preserved at Yakutat, and some personal names are Atna words. Part of the emigrants became separated from the others and became the Eyak anAtedi. The rest of the group traveled overland, past Mount Saint Elias, which they therefore claim as a crest, and at Icy Bay married a group of ałyI-Kagwantan. They later crossed Yakutat Bay and eventually obtained possession of that area, including the stream from which their present name is derived, through purchase from the original inhabitants. Swanton (1909, Tale 105) gives one version of their story, indicating that their first lineage house, Mountain House, was built at Icy Bay. This was perhaps the settlement destroyed by the glacier long ago. Their territory includes Icy Bay and the east shore of Yakutat Bay as far as the site of the Yakutat airfield.

One of their earliest villages in the Yakutat area was on Knight Island, with the founding of which some informants would associate the ubiquitous atgawet. Although the latter is said to have married several Kwacqwan women, he is not credited with assigning a name to their sib, although he named the village on Knight Island TłAkw-’an, ‘Old Town,’ after the famous Chilkat town. The Kwacqwan woman who was captured by the Tł’UknaAdi of Gue is said to have been his sister-in-law; at any rate she was the sister of the Kwacqwan chief of Knight Island. A member of this sib played a part in the defeat of the Russians at Yakutat, and there is also a vague suggestion that they may have aided the Tł‘UknaAdi when the latter fought the TłaayIk-Teqwedi, in order to obtain a share of the Russian loot. The Kwacqwan were also involved in wars or fights with the “Aleuts,” including both the Chugach and the sea otter hunters impressed by the Russians. They also fought with people (unidentified, ałyI-Kagwantan?) living at Icy Bay, who attacked the Kwacqwan when they came from the Copper River, and who tried to keep secret their sealing canoes (gudíyE).

The village on Knight Island was apparently abandoned in pre-Russian times, and after the expulsion of the Russians the principal village of the Kwacqwan was Nesudat on Lost River, where three of their four houses were Raven's Bones House (the residence of their ranking chief), Fort House, and Moon House. They also had Aka on Aka Lake, south of Yakutat, and ‘Hill-Top Town’ on Summit Lake a little farther east, both wiped out by smallpox. The site of ‘shallow Water Town’ on Little Lost River had been given by the Teqwedi chief to his Kwacqwan brother-in-law, but at that time it was only a garden for native tobacco. Later the Kwacqwan had houses at Khantaak Island, before they moved to the Old Village and the modern town of Yakutat near the cannery. They are today the most numerous sib in the area.

Until fairly recently, the Kwacqwan used to travel every year to the mouth of the Copper River, to meet and trade with their Atna relatives, but these journeys may not have been begun before White exploration of the Copper River. The Kwacqwan are particularly noted for their Copper River style of dancing and singing.

[According to Emmons (MS.): The] “Quash qua kwan came from the upper reaches of the Copper River across the Mt. St. Elias range and reached Disenchantment Bay. Later they crossed to the southern shore where they met the Tlingit who at first turned them back. But later they purchased a humpback salmon stream, Qwash heene, on the mainland shore across from Knights Island [sic] in Yakutat Bay, from which they took their name, and in time were accepted into the tribe. They are found at Yakutat and on the numerous waters of Ankow, and constitute the most numerous family of the tribe, but socially are looked down upon by the older Tlingit. Their women never adopted the labret.”

It will be remembered (see page 76) that Emmons was told that a single household of the QaùshÍttan, a Wolf sib of Henya from Prince of Wales Island, once lived among the Kwacqwan at Nesudat, but even at the time of his first visit (1884?) none remained.

TŁUKWAADI

The original inhabitants of Dry Bay were the Raven TłukwaAdi (Swanton, 1908, p. 400, Łuq′xAdÎ, ’quick people’). The daughter of a TłukwaAdi man described them as Unana (Athabaskans), but speaking a different dialect from that of the Taku Unana, although like all “inside people” they used “sharp words.” They are swift, just like an arrow, and other people were afraid of them because they could not catch up with them. Another informant described their language as something like that of the Copper River Indians at Chitina. It was definitely not Atna, and not Eyak. The name for Dry Bay is Unao, contracted from Unana-o, ‘among the Athabaskans.’ The TłukwaAdi made regular trips up the Alsek River into the interior to hunt, fish, gather berries, and to trade with their more inland neighbors who also came down the river on visits. In style of dress, in the use of cottonwood dugouts, in their greater reliance upon land animals and their somewhat inept and limited hunting of sea mammals, the TłukwaAdi (or Dry Bay people in general) were more of a river than a coastal people.

They are said to have raided the TłaayIk-Teqwedi on Knight Island, and later, in fear of retaliation, built ‘Eddy Fort’ up the Alsek. After peace was declared they moved back to found a village at its mouth. (Possibly my informant confused a movement up the river by the TłaayIk-Teqwedi with the history of the TłukwaAdi.) Other settlements have been at or near Easting River on the east side of Dry Bay, and on Stuhinuk Creek on the west side. The TłukwaAdi also lived at Gue on the Akwe River farther west, a town chiefly associated with the Tł’UknaAdi, although probably originally a TłukwaAdi settlement. They are, in fact, said to be “pretty near the same” as the Tł’UknaAdi. Since these two Raven sibs have married into the same Eagle sibs (CAnkuqedi, Kagwantan) at Dry Bay, the Tł’UknaAdi are said to be “descended from the TłukwaAdi,” and vice versa, meaning that each group has the other as their fathers’ fathers.

The houses especially associated with the TłukwaAdi were Far Out House at Gue and Canoe Prow House at Dry Bay. With the abandonment of Dry Bay, the TłukwaAdi have almost ceased to exist as a separate sib, and their original language is now forgotten. It is exceedingly difficult to identify any specific individuals as TłukwaAdi rather than Tł’UknaAdi, or to discover which sib owns the present Far Out House at Yakutat, even though my informants recognized the importance of the distinction.

The TłukwaAdi among the Chilkat presumably came from Dry Bay as a result of intermarriages linking the two areas (cf. Swanton, 1908, p. 413). Although a group sometimes called by this name is said to have lived among the Eyak at Alaganik, it was quite distinct from the Dry Bay and Chilkat groups, and, as already suggested, the term probably refers only to their Athabaskan affiliations.

CANKUQEDI

The remaining sibs in the Yakutat and Dry Bay areas are all (or all but one) supposed to be immigrants from southeastern Alaska. First (?) among these were the Eagle CAnkuqedi (or CAnkukedi; Swanton, 1908, p. 410, CAnkuke’dÎ, named for a place near Kake called Cn or Caya’). According to one of my informants they were separated from other Eagle groups “after the Flood.” It should be recognized that their name, CAnkuqedi, is that given as a designation of the Wolf-Eagle moiety as a whole. One old man of the sib, Frank Italio, said that his people came from CÁndà in southeastern Alaska. Their original home was near the Nass River, where they were nearly exterminated by the Tsimshian. It was a CAnkuqedi woman who then married the Sun (see the myth, “Children of the Sun,” pp. 873–875). The CAnkuqedi came north, some going to Chilkat where they intermarried with the Raven anAtedi. This man also asserts that they were the first to become acquainted with the Athabaskans above Chilkat, and that the anAtedi who like to claim this distinction only followed the CAnkuqedi. The latter traveled to NuqwayIk (NuqwayIk), the Tlingit-speaking settlement on the upper Alsek, passed by Glave (p. 89). They went to Klukshu and to Hutshi Lakes (tłukcu or tł’Ukcu, and hutcai, both Southern Tutchone). At he latter place, CAnkuqedi women married Unana men. From here the CAnkuqedi went to Tagish (taqIc), where they hired the Tagish as guides. Their farthest journey was to Aiyan-’ani (probably Fort Selkirk on the Yukon), but many were drowned when attempting to cross the river at what appears to be Five Finger Rapids. Here the local chief gave them a number of songs.

The CAnkuqedi became established at Dry Bay because a TłukwaAdi man went to Chilkat to get a CAnkuqedi wife. The CAnkuqedi in their turn married the TłukwaAdi and Tł’UknaAdi at Dry Bay. Eventually a better route was discovered down the Alsek, and this was later followed by the Teqwedi from southeastern Alaska.

Although the CAnkuqedi are said to have been living with their spouses at Dry Bay long before the Russians came, they were not very numerous then nor at the time when the Tł’UknaAdi were at war with the TłaayIk-Teqwedi. They were living at Dry Bay when the Tł’UknaAdi took some Kwacqwan captives, including the noblewoman said to be atgawet‘s sister-in-law. Although the CAnkuqedi obtained their Thunderbird crest from an incident which involved a boy of their sib during a journey down the Alsek River, and although they built a Thunderbird House at Dry Bay in 1909, they do not dispute the prior claims of the TłukwaAdi in that area. In fact, they do not seem to have acquired any formal territorial rights at all. Their real home is at Haines and Klukwan on the Chilkat River.

The CAnkuqedi are sometimes known as the DAqEstina, or TaqEstina (Swanton, 1908, p. 413, Taqêstina’). According to one of Swanton's informants, they were a branch of the Nste’dÎ of Kuiu Island, who, in migrating north to Chilkat, became lost in TAqsĪ’t, the channel inside Wrangell Island. (This name is probably dAq ‘inland,’ and sit ’channel.‘) We were told simply that “at the time of the Flood,” some of the CAnkuqedi went “way outside,” while others went “way back inside.” The name referring to the “inside” group is, however, felt to be derogatory, perhaps because it calls to mind their Unana connections, for which they were looked down upon by the anAtedi of Chilkat. Some relationship to the Kagwantan (see p. 228) is implied by the fact that their song to the Thunderbird Screen (1952, 2–1–F, p. 1171) is said to be also a Kagwantan song.

The CAnkuqedi moved to Yakutat when the Dry Bay area was abandoned. Although they had a Thunderbird House in Yakutat itself, this fell down about 1950. The sib is almost extinct.

TEQWEDI

The Teqwedi (Teqwwedi?) are a sib from southeastern Alaska, now represented at Yakutat by two main lineages: Bear House and Drum House. Swanton (1908, p. 409) derives the Te’qoedÎ from a small island, Teq°, near the northern end of Prince of Wales Island, in what is now Haida (Kaigani) territory. “From all the accounts obtained it would seem that the Te′qoedÎ constituted a large part of the population of Prince of Wales island and moved to Tongas and Sanya at the time when the Haida immigration took place [ca. 1750?], whether that happened peaceably or otherwise. Part of them are now among the Hutsnuwu people [or Angoon] and part at Yakutat.” One of our Yakutat informants said that the Tongass Teqwedi quarreled among themselves, because a young man in one house desired the young wife of the old chief in the next house. The chief's people killed their young sibmate, and so had to move. They went to Killisnoo (near Angoon) and eventually some came to Yakutat (cf. de Laguna, 1960, pp. 143 f). Another Yakutat informant said that the Teqwedi originated on an island (Tan, ‘sea lion’) somewhere “below Ketchikan,” but split up over a woman. Different groups were named for the places where they settled. One group settled at Ł’u on Kruzof Island near Sitka, and some of these, the Bear House lineage, came to Yakutat. Their previous home near Sitka was also called TandAan, ‘the point behind the sea lions,’ or Ł’udAkA, ‘on the edge of Kruzof Island.’ However, another informant said that the Teqwedi came from Tanyeda, “below Ketchikan” (i.e., Prince of Wales Island), traveling north in canoes, and were originally known as TandAqwan, ‘sea-lion alongside people.’ Those that went outside came to Yakutat, while those that went inside became the DAqł’awedi. Most of the latter stayed in Angoon, and are felt to be related to the Yakutat Teqwedi because they share with them the Killerwhale crest and many personal names. Garfield's Angoon informants (1947, pp. 433–449) and ours at Angoon (de Laguna, 1960, pp. 137–144) confirm the move of the Teqwedi from the south to Kruzof Island and from there to Yakutat, but derive the DAqł’awedi from the Stikine YEnyedi.

The Bear House group at Yakutat is also called Xeł (‘foam’) Teqwedi, and one informant said they came from Saxman near Ketchikan. (Swanton, 1908, p. 399, lists the Xł qoan as an Eagle sib in the Stikine area.)

All sources indicate that we have to distinguish between two lineages or subsibs, the Bear House Teqwedi (Xuts hIttan) who came along the coast from Prince of Wales Island and, as TandAqwan, are of pure Tlingit extraction, and the Drum House lineage (Gau hIttan) who are associated with an inland route, and with Athabaskan connections. Emmons in particular (see below, p. 226) makes clear the difference between these two groups, reserving the term “Taqway di” for the Bear House line.

The Teqwedi (lineage not specified, presumably both) seem to have come first to the Dry Bay area. Some apparently lived on Akwe River or their women married Raven men there, for atgawet, the famous trader, house chief, shaman, and organizer of backward groups, is said to have been born at Gue of a Tł’UknaAdi father (see the Story of Łkettítc, pp. 243–245). He is said to have traveled extensively, marrying at least 10 wives, mostly the Kwac-ca daughters of prominent local men, so that he could become rich from the furs given him by his brothers-in-law (a typical Tlingit technique for “trading” with the Athabaskans). As we have seen, he “organized” the relatives of his wives, naming them after Chilkat sibs: anAtedi and Kosedi (Qusedi) of the Copper River delta, and the Kagwantan of ałyA. Although we cannot be sure to which lineage he belonged, nor exactly when he lived, his behavior fits that of a southeastern Alaskan Tlingit, and I would take him for a Bear House man. From the many stories about him (pp. 245–247, 710–712), including the conflicting traditions that associate him with the pre-Russian village on Knight Island as well as with the post-Russian period at Diyaguna’Et on Lost River, we may take atgawet as exemplifying the northwestward spread of Tlingit trading customs, and probably of Tlingit ceremonial usages, including Tsimshian-derived shamanistic features. He is, in fact, a Teqwedi parallel in the Yakutat and Kaliakh areas of the Kagwantan traveler, QakewtE, who came from Hoonah to the Dry Bay Athabaskans (pp. 270–272).

I judge that the Bear House Teqwedi were originally introduced into the Yakutat area through marriage. The territory which they acquired was that formerly held by the Ł’uedi, and included Lost and Situk Rivers, although the manner of their acquisition is not clear. Perhaps they fought for it, or perhaps they “only homesteaded” the area, as one Drum House informant expressed it, after the Ł’uedi had been defeated by the Tł’UknaAdi (brothers-in-law of the Teqwedi), although the sequence of events was never specified. There are evidently still some bitter memories which have inhibited full discussion of this history.

At Diyaguna’Et the Teqwedi had a fortified village, not abandoned until the middle of the last century; they also had a village at Situk, where they were known as SitAq-qwan. Later, they were the leading houses in the village on Khantaak Island, and were also important in the founding of the Old Village, Yakutat. From Malaspina's evidence of the Bear figure and of the Killerwhale Fin emblem in the graveyard on Ankau Point, and from his mention of similar monuments on the south shore of Knight Island(?), we might speculate that the Bear House Teqwedi were already established on Yakutat Bay before Russian occupation. Although we cannot, of course, know to what Eagle-Wolf sib these tombs belonged, we find that the Teqwedi were associated with Knight Island, even into the last century, for Chief Daqusetc of Diyaguna‘Et and Khantaak village is reported to have built a Bear House on this island.

[According to Emmons (MS.): The] “Ta quay di migrated north from the Dixon Entrance shore of Prince of Wales Island through the seaward island channels and settled on the rivers and inland waterways below Yakutat. This movement is believed to have been consequent upon their expulsion from this country by the Haida invasion from Masset about the middle of the 18th century. They seem to have married largely with the Qwash qwa Kwan and formed the second largest family at Yakutat.”

The other lineage at Yakutat is that of the Drum House group. According to the official version told by their present leading man, they came from Sitka, and were the group of Teqwedi that went “inside,” when they separated from the others at a point near Sitka. This probably means that they came overland by way of the Chilkat Pass and Alsek River. Our CAnkuqedi informant specified, in fact, that the (Drum House?) Teqwedi followed the overland trail from Chilkat which the CAnkuqedi had pioneered, and did not come by boat. The Drum House people were living somewhere in or near the southeastern part of the Dry Bay area when a party of their hunters discovered the Ahrnklin River. This was purchased by their chief from the YEnyedi. They established ‘Big Animal Town’ on the Ahrnklin River and presumably had other settlements in the area. This was before the Bear House group had come to Lost and Situk Rivers. According to another informant, the Drum House Teqwedi became residents of the Yakutat area because a Raven man from Yakutat married one of their noble women; her children were the first Teqwedi children at Yakutat.

It was while living on the Ahrnklin River that the Drum House Teqwedi hunter encountered the Golden Eagle which became the crest of his lineage. The Ahrnklin people were nearly exterminated (by an internal feud, or by smallpox, according to different accounts), but a baby girl was saved by her uncle and from her all the present Drum House line is descended. It was presumably at this time, in the middle of the last century(?), that the Ahrnklin settlements were abandoned. The Drum House Teqwedi moved to the village on Khantaak Island, and later to Yakutat. Because of the reduced numbers of Teqwedi, the death in 1937 of the last chief of the Bear House line, and the preeminence of the leading Drum House man, the two lineages are now all but merged, and their members refer to themselves as “all the same Teqwedi.”

[Emmons (MS.) writes: The] “Gau hit tan were of Athapascan stock and came down the Alsech to Dry Bay in early days and later settled on the An klin where they had a considerable village. They were visited by smallpox early in the last century and those remaining deserted their houses. In after years this site was again occupied by Ta quay di with one family of their people. Their women are said not to have worn the labret through the lower lip.”

TŁ‘UKNAADI

The Tł’UknaAdi (also heard as Tł’unaAdi), ‘people of the coho salmon tribe,’ (Boas, 1917, p. 130, Ł’uku’ ‘cohoe-salmon’; Harrington, MS., Ł’uukw ’cohoe’; Swanton, 1908, p. 400, L!uk!nAXAdÎ, ’king-salmon people’) are Ravens from southeastern Alaska. Those at Yakutat say that their “first house” or principal house is Whale House at Sitka, where there is still a branch of their sib. On their way north by canoe, they stopped at Lituya Bay, but did not settle there. At Dry Bay, however, they married some of the Athabaskan women and established a residence. One informant said that several Raven groups, Tł’UknaAdi, KałcInedi, and DAdentan, all came north together in boats, receiving their separate names from the places where they stopped. Thus, it is said that the Tł’UknaAdi were named for a river near Sitka, Tł’ugunAX or TłAkunu (tł’UknA?), the first place where they landed. Of course, this conflicts with the derivation of their name from the coho salmon, tł’Uk, which they more commonly cite. The KałtInedi (Swanton, 1908, p. 399, Q!AłtcAne’dÎ, ’people of the creek Q!A’łtcAn,’ a sib at Kake) were also named for a river. The latter stay at Hoonah, Sitka, and Juneau, according to our informant, although Swanton lists them only at Kake. At any event, they do not figure in Yakutat history.

According to another version, the Tł’UknaAdi from southeastern Alaska became allied with the TłukwaAdi of Dry Bay through the marriage of the Teqwedi daughter of a Tł’UknaAdi man with a rich TłukwaAdi. The father of the girl, Qatłse or Qałgexw, is probably to be identified with the chief of Frog House at Gue.

In their northward spread, the Tł’UknaAdi were probably associated with the Eagle Kagwantan, or one of its subdivisions, for it was the profitable trade with the Athabaskans of Dry Bay which seems to have prompted these two Hoonah sibs to expand northward from Cross Sound. This is what is implied by the story of QakewtE. Swanton recorded two versions (1909, Tales 32 and 104) and we heard another from a Tł’UknaAdi man who had been born in Sitka. Despite the considerable differences between these stories, we gather that QakewtE was a Hoonah man of the Kagwantan sib, or of a related group, married to a Tł’UknaAdi woman. Before he journeyed north, he killed his own sleep in the form of a bird. This he gave to his wife's people, who thereby acquired the Sleep Bird as a crest. After this, the sleepless man wandered northward, until he discovered the Dry Bay Athabaskans. The main point of the story is how he taught them efficient coast Tlingit methods of obtaining and preparing food, and brought them south to trade with his people. Swanton's Tale 32, recorded at Wrangell, goes on to explain how the Tł’UknaAdi who were married to Kagwantan women founded Kos!’x at the mouth of the Alsek. This is Gue on the Akwe River, to which our Yakutat version of the story simply brings QakewtE. At any event, this town was inhabited by the TłukwaAdi and Tł’UknaAdi. It was here that the Kosedi and akA’ayi are supposed to have split off from the latter, and also where a branch of the Kosedi roofed a house of moose(?) hide, becoming the Moose House People (s! hÎt tn, Swanton, 1908, pp. 407, 409, 413; 1909, pp. 160–161). This version, Tale 32, concludes with the war between the anAtedi of Chilkat and the Tł’UknaAdi of Gue and of Grouse Fort (KAnuwu, Swanton's KAq!nuw’) on Icy Strait. This war was cited by my informants as one of the circumstances leading to the abandonment of Gue (see pp. 273–274). Tale 104, told by a Box House Kagwantan man at Sitka is more concerned with the fortunes of the Kagwantan of Grouse Fort (here rendered as KAq!Anuw).

At Gue on the Akwe, the Tł’UknaAdi built a number of named houses, and here they found a frozen frog on which they based their claim to the Frog as a crest. From this town, accompanied by their relatives the Kosedi, and also by parties of anAtedi from Chilkat, the Tł’UkanaAdi used to come to Yakutat to trade, perhaps staying as long as a year. On one such occasion they quarreled with the Kwacqwan, and took several of the latter back as captives to Gue. One of these was the highborn woman from Knight Island who was helped to escape by the nephew of the Tł’UknaAdi chief of Gue. Although the Tł’UknaAdi looked down on the TłaayIk-Teqwedi, some of them took wives from this group, even though their relatives warned them that they would lose caste when they fathered Teqwedi children. However, it was through these associations that they learned of the Russian loot taken by the TłaayIk-Teqwedi. The raid on the latter's Eagle Fort on Situk River was inspired, according to an informant, by a desire to obtain some of this Russian wealth; according to another, it was because the Situk chief had failed to deliver the slave which he owed his Tł’UknaAdi father. In any case, the Tł’UknaAdi who were defeated at Eagle Fort, soon got their revenge by massacring their enemies at WuganiyE, a sealing camp in Disenchantment Bay. The Tł’UknaAdi thus feel they have as good a claim as any to Yakutat territory.

Gue was finally abandoned when a flotilla of canoes going south to trade or to make war on the Chilkat anAAdi were lost in Lituya Bay. It would appear that this event occurred after the Russians had come to Alaska (probably in 1853–54), yet it is said by some that it was flotsam from the overturned canoes that brought the Whites to this part of Alaska. Some of the inhabitants of Gue remained in the area, settling in Dry Bay where they lived as long as the cannery was in operation, while others moved north toward Yakutat. The latter built a house on Johnson Slough, another at Diyaguna’Et, and a third at Situk village. Still later (early in the present century) they had houses at the Old Village, but do not seem ever to have lived on Khantaak Island. The chief of the Tł’UknaAdi at Dry Bay evidently held the highest prestige. The Tł’UknaAdi in Yakutat today represent both the Dry Bay and Situk families, and there have also been relatives from Sitka who have lived in Yakutat.

[According to Emmons (MS.): The] “Thluke nuh ut di came from the Hoonah of Cross Sound to Dry Bay where they met the Interior people of the Alsech River and traded for copper, and moose and caribou skins. Later continuing northward they reached Yakutat. They lived more about Dry Bay in early days and later settled at Yakutat and today constitute the second family in numbers and the first in social importance.”

When Gue was abandoned, many of the Tł’UknaAdi moved back toward southeastern Alaska. Those who settled in Lituya Bay became the akA’ayi; those who remained in Lituya Bay for only a short time and then went on to Hoonah became the DAdentan. My informants also mentioned Tł’UknaAdi at Hoonah who had apparently never come north. Thus, many years ago a Hoonah woman of that sib was captured by people from the south (Klawak ?). Although she purchased her freedom with the copper belonging to her son, the Awk people of Juneau claim to have ransomed her. To remove this stigma from their sib, some of the Yakutat Tł’UknaAdi a few years ago made a large payment to the Awk group involved. Some of the Tł’UknaAdi from Gue went to Sitka, and there built a Frog House, which resulted in trouble with the KIksAdi, the dominent Raven sib at Sitka, who claim the Frog as their exclusive crest. This incident occurred about 1902, and involved a number of Tł‘UknaAdi from Yakutat. There is in consequence still great bitterness felt toward the KIksAdi.

KAGWANTAN

The Eagle Kagwantan (Swanton, 1908, p. 399, K’gwAntn, ’burned-house people’) also established residence in the Dry Bay area, having apparently moved there as wives and brothers-in-law of the TłukwaAdi (cf. Swanton, 1909, Tale 32, p. 161). In Tale 104, the Kagwantan of Grouse Fort (KAq!Anuw’) in Icy Strait made war on the TłukwaAdi of Dry Bay because the latter had killed a Kagwantan woman. They captured the mother of a Dry Bay chief, evidently a Drum House Teqwedi man to judge from his name (Q!ayea’tqn), eyeatqin. She was released when she gave them her son's Wolf Post, which they took back to Grouse Fort. This episode implies that the Drum House Teqwedi already had a lineage house at or near Dry Bay. At Grouse Fort, the Kagwantan built Wolf House, apparently utilizing the crest which they had captured, and at the end of the great potlatch to dedicate the new house slaughtered many slaves whom they threw dead and dying into a nearby gulch, Slaves’ Valley (Swanton, 1909, pp. 342–345). This episode was also recounted by one of my Kagwantan informants from Dry Bay (p. 470). When Wolf House later caught fire because of the recklessness of some young men, the Kagwantan acquired their present name, ‘people of the burned-down house.’ A fight among them was averted by the Tł’UknaAdi chief at Grouse Fort. Later, some of the Kagwantan moved to Sitka, where they still live (Swanton, 1909, p. 346).

The Box House lineage, QukwhIttan (or KukhIttan), (Swanton, 1908, p. 400, Kk hît tn; Boas, 1917, p. 128, q‘Úku‘, ’chest, box’), seems to be the Kagwantan group that was represented in the Dry Bay area. A member of that sib from Dry Bay felt that her people were most closely related to the Box House Kagwantan of Sitka. According to her, the Kagwantan separated from other Eagle sibs “after the Flood.” The Yakutat people listed for me the Kagwantan at Sitka and Chilkat, but forgot to mention those at Hoonah.

While living in the Dry Bay area, possibly at Gue although no house name was mentioned, the Kagwantan from this place joined their relatives at Sitka in making war on the CAtqwan, the “Daqł’awedi” or Nana‘ai Wolf sib of Wrangell. This trouble was caused by the faithlessness of the KIksAdi wife of a Sitka Kagwantan man, who took a CAtqwan man as her lover. The war culminated in the massacre of the Wrangell peace hostages at Sitka in 1852. Peace between the two groups was not finally achieved until the present century. Other versions of the same affair were recorded at Angoon in 1950 (de Laguna, 1960, pp. 154–158).

The Box House Kagwantan from Dry Bay are now represented by a single family at Yakutat, and apparently have never had a lineage house there, although there was a Box House at Dry Bay. From time to time, Kagwantan men and women from Sitka and Chilkat have married Yakutat spouses and some have lived at Yakutat.

TCUKANEDI

The TcukAnedi, ‘grass people,’ (Swanton, 1908, pp. 408, 413, TckAne′dÎ) are an Eagle sib, and are “considered low caste, but appear from the stories to have formed a rather ancient group.” Swanton believes them to be related to the Kagwantan, although they were named for Grass Creek, (tckAn hn) on which they were camped at the time of QakewtE's return with the Dry Bay Athabaskans. They are cited as the proverbial example of those who neglected the golden opportunity, for they were afraid to trade with the Athabaskans and drove them away. That is why they are now poor (Swanton, 1909, Tales 32 and 104). Paradoxically, in our version of the same story, Qakew-tE is himself said to have been a TcukAnedi man, and his people are recognized as the teachers and progenitors of the Dry Bay Tł’UknaAdi—obviously a confused account. Most curious of all, one informant, when questioned about this sib, explained that the TcukAnedi are really the “Square Box clan or QukwhIttan.” If these groups were the same or were closely related, this would explain why QakewtE, who was evidently “Kagwantan” in a broad loose sense, could have been called TcukAnedi, even though he was not one of the group who drove away the Athabaskans.

The home of the TcukAnedi seems to have been north of Cross Sound. My informants said there used to be TcukAnedi at Lituya Bay and also a few at Dry Bay. They denied that there were any at Hoonah, although Swanton reports them among that tribe.

AKA‘AYI

The akA′ayi or akA’ai, ‘on the island people,’ (Swanton, 1908, p. 413, Q!AtkaÎ) are said by our informants to have been a branch of the Tł’UknaAdi who remained at Lituya Bay, while the rest went on to Dry Bay. Their name is derived from an island where they camped. (Could this have been Cenotaph Island in Lituya Bay?) A similar version of their origin is also given in Tale 32 (Swanton, 1909, pp. 160 f.), although Swanton (1908, p. 413) identifies the island as Ałts’nÎwâ, or Bear Island, in Dry Bay, while none of our informants place the akA’ayi, as a sib, as far west as the mouth of the Alsek. In Tale 104 (Swanton, 1909, pp. 340 f.) the Kagwantan, returning from raiding the Dry Bay TłukwaAdi, encountered two canoes of akA’ayi near a stream (uq!) where the Kagwantan shaman destroyed the canoe and canoe men of the akA’ayi shaman. The latter was named utcda (‘Wolf-Weasel’) which is also the name of a famous Dry Bay TłukwaAdi shaman of the last century, who died about 50 years ago. No doubt he had predecessors of the same name.

One of my informants said that the akA’ayi owned a hit (Moose or Cow House). It will be remembered that Swanton considered this lineage to be a branch of the Kosedi. This would suggest that the akA’ayi may have lived nearer to the Alsek River than I had been given to suppose.

According to Yakutat informants, the akA’ayi moved from Lituya Bay to Sitka, where they now live. They are said to have decided to “become Tł’UknaAdi” after the dispute between the latter and the KIksAdi over the Frog crest. The akA‘ayi have never lived at Yakutat, although a few of the present residents are descended from Lituya Bay George, a man of that sib, who was buried at Situk in 1926.

DADENTAN

The DAdentan (also heard sometimes as T’adentan) are a Raven sib at Hoonah. Swanton (1908, p. 399) renders their name as T!Aq!dentn, ‘retaining-timber-house people,’ and reports that the TAq! hÎt tn, ‘people of slug house,’ were a branch of the above. Boas (1917, p. 124) gives A as ‘retaining plank’ for a house; my informants translated ta or ta as ‘bench’ around the inside of a house, or as a ‘worm or snail out of the shell,’ while ‘slug’ was yen. (Evidently ta carries the implication of something annular or spiral, like the snail or the encircling bench.) My informants also insisted that the TA hittan were different from the DAdentan. The latter were really a branch of the Tł’UknaAdi of Gue. When that town was abandoned, about half of the sib moved to Lituya Bay, where they split into the akA’ayi and the DAdentan. The latter are those who went on to Hoonah. On this journey they received their present name because they camped at a point, DAden. However, they still claim Lituya Bay as their territory, and “still” (i.e., until recently) hunt sea otter near Lituya Bay and Cape Fairweather. Their rights to Lituya Bay are generally acknowledged.

Another informant told me that they had received their name from a point, Daden, near Sitka, where they camped during the northward dispersal of Raven groups “after the Flood.” Tale 104 (Swanton, 1909, p. 388) implies that they lived with the Kagwantan at Sand Hill Town (or at a town called AkAnuw’), north of Cross Sound. When this was destroyed by an advancing glacier, summoned by the incautious words of a menstruant, the Kagwantan moved to Grouse Fort in Icy Straits, and the DAdentan settled “at a place just opposite.” Since Grouse Fort was on a point (de Laguna, 1960, fig. 16), it is not clear whether the DAdentan settlement was on the mainland shore of the cove across from the point, or whether it was on the shore of Chichagof Island, south of Icy Strait.

This sib was never established at Yakutat, although there is now a DAdentan woman, born at Kake, married to a Yakutat man. The chief concern of the Tł’UknaAdi of Yakutat with the DAdentan is that the latter, in talking to Swanton in 1904, should have claimed so many crests to which our informants feel they have equal, if not prior, rights.

KIKSADI

The KIksAdi, an important Raven sib at Sitka and Wrangell, are known to the Yakutat people chiefly as enemies. This was because a KIksAdi woman was the cause of the war fought by the Kagwantan of Sitka (and of Dry Bay) against the CAtqwan of Wrangell, and because the KIksAdi at Sitka violently opposed the attempts of the Tł’UknaAdi to display the Frog crest. There are no KIksAdi at Yakutat.

For further information about this and about other sibs of southeastern Alaska, consult Swanton (1909, pp. 398–400, 407–414).

HISTORICAL NARRATIVES

Introduction

Although I was fortunate to hear a great many stories and historical accounts from well qualified narrators, a number of whom have since died, I was not able to transcribe these in the native language, although some tales were recorded on tape. My written versions are therefore all in English, either that of the narrator or of the interpreter, and so are of limited value for a study of Tlingit narrative style. In some cases the storyteller's command of “literary” Tlingit was evidently as limited as his ability to express himself in English. In other cases, the narrator or interpreter spoke English effectively and vividly, although the language might be colloquial or ungrammatical.

To the tales and traditions recorded at Yakutat in 1949, 1952, and 1954, I have added summaries or the full texts of those collected earlier. These include a few unpublished versions obtained by John P. Harrington at Yakutat in the winter and spring of 1939–40. Since his informants were also among mine, it may be of some value to compare what these persons narrated on different occasions, as indications of the constancy with which such traditions may be preserved. I do not know whether Harrington recorded any of these accounts in Tlingit or in Eyak; at any rate all that I have are short versions in English.

In preparing these tales for publication, I have purposely edited them as little as possible. The most serious mistakes in grammar have been corrected, as have obvious confusions between singular and plural or between the sex of third person pronouns, but on the whole it has seemed better to let the stories stand as recorded. Attempts to put them into a more polished form in the hope of recapturing the impression of the “original Tlingit” might well introduce distortions of meaning as well as a false flavor. Furthermore, these English versions are, after all, what was actually told to us (most accurately transcribed in 1954, least closely written down in 1949). They are also the form in which most young people at Yakutat will hear these stories today. The English expressions used by the narrator or interpreter can help us to understand how these storytellers attempt to bridge the gap between the past, when the traditional tales had a more important role in life, and modern times, when their function has not only shrunk but of necessity has undergone a change. It is through these stories, in fact, that the Yakutat people today look back upon their past, and in so doing discover themselves anew.

The most coherent account of the history of Yakutat was that given in 1949 by Harry Bremner, the leading man of the Kwacqwan. This was read to him and corrected by him in 1952. This history deals primarily with the migration of the Kwacqwan from the Copper River and with their acquisition of lands in Yakutat Bay. Mention is made of the movement of ałyI-Kagwantan from the west and of the Teqwedi from southeastern Alaska into the Yakutat area. It also deals with the coming of the Russians and with their expulsion. This history has become the official version, since a copy which was given to the narrator was submitted to a Federal court in 1953 as part of the evidence supporting the Kwacqwan claims to lands in Redwood Bay, Yakutat Bay, where the Westfall Logging Company had been cutting timber. The account as given below is supplemented by explanations made at the time it was corrected, and also later in 1952 and again in 1954. This history is presented in its entirety, in order to preserve the continuity of the account, although subheadings are introduced to aid in comparisons with other versions of the same events. As will be seen, the versions given by different informants, even though of the same sib, do not correspond in all details.

Harry Bremner also outlined the sib territories from Italio River to Cordova, which he was competent to do, since he had lived in Controller Bay with his father, a ałyI-Kagwantan man; he had also been adopted by Jim Kardeetoo, the leader of the Bear House Teqwedi whose lands are east of Yakutat. In addition, Harry Bremner told me about the discovery of copper and about an averted fight between the Copper River Indians at Chitina and those from McCarthy, events which took place before the migration of his ancestors from the Copper River. He also told about the war between the Tł’UknaAdi and the TłaayIk-Teqwedi, accepting a responsibility to do so because there was no one left alive who could. He recounted incidents about atgawet, how smallpox came to the Yakutat area, and about the war between the Sitka Kagwantan and the CAtqwan.

Another official version was the history of the Drum House Teqwedi, obtained from Olaf Abraham, the leading man of that lineage. An account, based upon statements made by him and translated by his wife, Susie, was also submitted to him for approval. Olaf Abraham, with the late Sheldon James, Sr., acting as interpreter, also told how the Drum House people obtained the Golden Eagle as a crest. No complete history, official or otherwise, could be obtained for the Bear House line of the Teqwedi.

The last leader of the CAnkuqedi, Frank Italio, told the story of his sib, including two of their sib myths. He also gave one version of the war between the Tł’UknaAdi and the TłaayIk-Teqwedi, and a brief account of how the first White men came to Lituya Bay. Since there was no man among the few ałI-Kagwantan who could narrate their traditions or sing their songs, Frank Italio was requested to do so by a member of that sib.

Other versions of the Kwacqwan migration from the Copper River were obtained from several other members of the sib. There are also additional brief episodes in the history of the ałyI-Kagwantan, in the career of atgawet, in wars between the TłaayIk-Teqwedi and Dry Bay people, told by ałyI-Kagwantan, Kwacqwan, and Tł’UknaAdi informants. The story of the drownings of the Tł’UkanAdi from Gue, and of the quarrel with the Sitka KIksAdi over the Frog totem were pieced together from statements made chiefly by Tł’UknaAdi women. A Kwacqwan woman told about the averted fight with the Tsimshian sea otter hunters at Icy Bay.

Some of the statements made by informants were too disjointed or too unclear to form a connected narrative. But wherever possible, these have been summarized and included in the previous sections dealing with the individual sibs. In other cases it has been necessary to reorganize a disconnected account into a straightforward narrative. However, while episodes have been rearranged into correct chronological sequence, as far as could be determined, the stories remain as nearly as possible in the narrator's own words.

The History of Yakutat

[Told by Harry K. Bremner, June, 1949; corrected by him, July 11, 1952. This is supplemented by explanations made by him at various other times in 1952 and 1954.]

THE KwACK’QWAN MIGRATION

Formerly there was a glacier clear across Yakutat Bay from Point Manby to Krutoi [“Head”] Island. Glaciers also blocked the head of Russell Fiord. This was then Situk Lake, and drained into Situk River. Icy Bay was full of ice then. There was a glacial point there, but no bay at all.

My people, the Kwacqwan, were Copper River people at Chitina, TItna’. Lots of things happened before we left. The real name for our tribe [sib] then was GInEqwan. GIne is the name for the Big Bremner River across from Chitina. There is also a Little Bremner River below Chitina. They were named for my step-grandfather, John Bremner.[69]

Before we came to Yakutat we used to have war with the McCarthy Indians. They were a part of us, but we at Chitina were small; they were great big people, all giants. They didn’t like us, and we didn’t like them. The trouble was over hunting grounds, I think.

We stayed at Chitina. The Raven chief, ŁtAkdax, died. He had lots of property. Everything belonged to the whole tribe. Long before he died, he killed a giant moose. He used the horn for a big dish, every time he gave a potlatch. When they divided the property among the tribe, there was trouble over that dish. The brothers—all the men in the tribe called themselves “brothers”—had trouble over that dish, but there was no killing. They lived in a long town, with rows of houses. One group didn’t get the dish; the other group did. The group that didn‘t get the dish got sore. So they left, walking on the glacier.

The people who started out from Chitina got lost. It is foggy between Icy Bay and Chitina. One part of the bunch started going one way and the others went the other way. They hollered back and forth to each other: “wúhù! wúhù! wúhù! wúhù!” That's the way they called to each other, but they kept getting further and further apart. Then one bunch came out on the mouth of the Copper River. They had no name then, until a big shot, atgawet, from southeastern Alaska, came up and called them the GanAtedi. They stayed first at a place called SAwdaq. That word means ‘cockles’ in the Copper River language. Some of them stayed at Eyak Lake near Cordova. Pretty soon they moved to Katalla, and then moved again to Chilkat on Bering River. Long afterwards we Kwacqwan met them again, when we traveled up in canoes to Eyak and Katalla and found our brothers again. The Copper River people came to meet us and that's where we get to meet again.

(Way later on, when we met them again, they had a chief of the same name as the chief who died. The last one of that name died over 100 years ago. We met them at the mouth of the Copper River afterward, every summer. We went in canoes to Alaganik, ’AnAAnA, or sometimes to Eyak. The Chitina people didn’t own Alaganik, but they came to meet us. They would bring down furs, and coppers, chewing gum from interior spruce, and sell it to us. [August 28, 1952.])

Our people kept walking over the glacier. There was only ice, no bushes, nothing. They started southeast. They had nothing to eat. There was starvation on the glacier. It was a long way for us to walk.

Then the people thought they saw a wolverine. They used it for a compass and walked towards it. When they came to it they saw it was a little mountain, an island with trees on it, just a little hill. They had a campfire but nothing to eat. That night a wolverine came to their fire. The hungry people killed him and ate him. They cut him up into little pieces to feed all the people. Then they walked on again.

Pretty soon they saw a rabbit sitting on the snow, far away. They walked towards the rabbit. After two days walking they saw it was the top of a mountain, but they kept on walking anyway. Finally they came to Mount Saint Elias. It was a compass for the people so they wouldn‘t get lost.

Then they found that bay, Icy Bay, Wàtè [aé]. The glacier was all over the bay, way out. They made a camp just west of the place where the bay is now—not houses—just a camp of yellow cedar bark. The camp is Wate dA [ae dA?], ‘in the bay,’ and the camping place was Tíy’áni, ’place [town] of the yellow cedar bark [tÌy].’ That was what the people used to use for the roof of houses. When they traveled, they used to pack it along, just like a tent.

(There was a song composed by a woman who stayed behind in Icy Bay, when the Kwacqwan argued as to why they had left Chitina, and half of them went back again. The mountain was so steep that they had to walk in zigzags up the snow. The woman who was left behind was so sad that she was weeping and composed the song. They don’t know if those who left ever reached Chitina. [May 2, 1954.])

The chief said: “We will be the lost tribe.” He meant that they had no husbands and wives with them. They were only the men and their “sisters,” the women of their own tribe. They never married their sisters. This meant that there wouldn‘t be any children and the tribe would die off.

Then they had something like these soldiers’ barracks—a woman's hut and a man's hut. The chief called a meeting. They decided that all the brothers would go to their sisters’ hut at night time when it is dark and sleep with their sisters. But the women were never going to ask who he is that came, just put a red mark on the man's forehead, at the center near the hair, for a mark. So they will know the next day, but they won’t say anything.

The Icy Bay chief was planning this. He said: “You sisters are not going to refuse any brother that comes to you, or we’ll all die off.”

But they didn’t have to do it.

[Commenting, May 2, 1954, on the version told by X, another member of the sib.]: You know the chief said: “We’re all going to die out. X said the chief said to his tribe, “We’re going to meet our sisters,” and they told the sisters to put marks on the men. But they found the other tribe [i.e., ałyI-Kagwantan, before this was necessary]. But X says it happened. And one girl really slept with her own brother. And next day she find out. She is so ashamed she went in the water and he went in the water. They turn into sea bird. [The last belongs to myth, he said, not to history.]

They were just lucky and they found the Kagwantan [ałyI-Kagwantan]. The next day seal hunters brought back the report that they found blood on the ice where someone was skinning seals. They reported to the chief and the chief asked his braves who was going to look for those people.

“Me, I’m going to go!” “Me, I’m going to go!” the young men said.

So they went to look for those people. They found the ałyI-Kagwantan. They had come from ałyA [Kaliakh River] before us. They found the land before us. They had the land from Strawberry Point to Gutaxw, a big valley west of Icy Bay. That's why we had to come east by an inland route and why we went east, because they already had the land to the westward. Icy Bay is ours. The ałyI-Kagwantan had big war canoes when we met them, but we had nothing. They spoke Tlingit, we spoke Chitina language. They were called ałyI-Kagwantan, but after they moved to Yakutat they were called TłaayIk-Teqwedi.

(Later they all spoke Eyak. They crossed Yakutat Bay in canoes, after the Kwacqwan had crossed, and settled at Situk. [July 11 and August 28, 1952.])

They had trouble, too, and came from the west. They were just like us, and had only their sisters with them. They were Eagles and we were Ravens, so they could marry. Both tribes were happy.

PURCHASE OF THE KwACK’QWAN LANDS

They kept moving east. They came to Yakutat Bay. A young fellow walked across on the ice to the mountains, near Mount Tebenkoff between Yakutat Bay and Russell Fiord. He saw the beautiful beach along the ocean. So the people came down to it. They [Kwacqwan] saw some peeled celery, so they looked for the other people. They found those people. These were the HInyedi, Ravens. There are none living here now. They are all in southeastern Alaska. Then, they were all over Yakutat Bay. They lived in the spring at Kwac, that humpy stream, and also on Knight Island.

(The HInyedi in southeastern Alaska probably know the story of how they sold their land. They owned all of Yakutat Bay and the east side from the site of Nesudat, near the airfield, back to the mountains. [July 11, 1952.] The HInyedi also owned land as far east as the Ahrnklin River. They were called StaAdi, after the eastern branch of that river, Staa’, the last bit of land they held, which they sold to the Teqwedi. [August 3, 1952].)

Long ago the people didn’t live in one place all the time, but moved where food was easy to get at different seasons. They used to kill the humpback salmon with spears. They used whalebone for the spearheads. They found dead whales on the beach and used to eat the whale meat, too. They were lucky to find one in the winter. It meant lots of food for everybody.

Our tribe got Knight Island. Our tribe were picking strawberries there. And the HInyedi caught the daughter of the ałyI-Kagwantan chief and cut the berry basket off her back. So her father, Qe, bought Knight Island for her and her tribe. She was Kwacqwan; one of her names was Ketł.

(Another name was probably Tłáxaguséx, “Never Wears Out.” [June 20, 1952.] [This may well be yA-tłét-qU-cI-xÌx, ’never decays.’])

The Hmyedi were pretty strict with that humpy stream. Some of our boys went to that stream to get some salmon. The HInyedi caught them and got hold of them and broke up their spears. And the boys went to report back to their chief, because they wouldn’t fight unless the chief said so.

The chief said: “There's going to be no trouble. We‘re going to buy that place.” So he offered a lot of property to the HInyedi chief, and that chief accepted it. So that is how we got the name Kwacqwan.

The property was sea otters. That was valuable. We came from the Copper River, so we had coppers, tinna. A copper as high as from the chin to the tips of the fingers on the outstretched arm was the most valuable. It was worth eight slaves. So they gave this property.

The Hmyedi had to go to southeastern Alaska when they sold all their land. They went right close to Ketchikan, and there are a few in Juneau. Yakutat was pretty rich then. They hunted the sea otter right among the islands, all over.

ałyI-KAGWANTAN AND THE FIRST SHIP

The ałyI-Kagwantan had trouble among themselves, no killing. One group moved to Point Manby. The chief of the group made a lucky flower which helped them in hunting. The lucky flower was called kaaní [’leaves,’ synonym for plant “medicine”]. There are other kinds of kaani. We learned about it from the Haida. This flower helped them to find a ship on the beach. It was a Russian ship.

They found a woman there, the first White person they ever saw. They couldn’t understand her. She tried to explain—pointed to herself and held up two fingers—that two White men with her had walked up that way. So the Indians looked and found their tracks. They tracked them because they knew they were in danger. They had fallen into the glacier and were dead.

So one of the men, Qàtsá, took the woman as his wife. They had a lot of things in that ship. They found iron and guns. They made a big bonfire and put the guns in it, and pounded it with stones to make spears out of it. She tried to show them how to use guns, but they didn’t understand. The people became rich with all the things from the ship. They found some black powder and poured some water on it and tried to eat it. The woman tried to stop them. It was gunpowder.

The people knew how to work iron because they knew all about copper from the Copper River. They used to be able to make copper hard as steel, for knives. Now, nobody knows how to do it.

The woman's husband treated her fine. She was like an Indian woman. All that we eat, she ate. She did what we do. She lived so long she got old and died.

THE COMING OF THE TEQWEDI

The Teqwedi used to be down below Ketchikan on an island called Tan. They got different names from the places where they stayed. They were a pretty big tribe. They had trouble among themselves, woman trouble. A group went in a canoe and moved north. They landed at Edgecomb Island, Łu, near Sitka, and settled there. Some of them came up here. They belong to Bear House, Xuts hIt.

So many years later, the Yakutat people got the chief's daughter for their young man. It was some Raven tribe. She was a Teqwedi woman (Teqwca) who married up here from down there. Their children were the first Teqwedi in Yakutat. She raised them. They belong to Drum House, Gau hIt.

[The sequence of arrival of these two lineages is not clear]: (The Bear House group claimed to be the first arrivals. The Drum House people came next; they married in. [July 11, 1952.])

[With reference to fetching the high-class Teqwedi woman:] (A long time ago the Indians went way down to Ketchikan to get high-class wives. You see, it's like King George, who looks around for a wife who's his class. The Indians never want to marry lower than they are. If they are high-class they might go as far as southeastern Alaska to look for a high-class wife. I think that high-class Teqwedi wife lived in Yakutat. [July 11, 1952.]

TANU AND THE RUSSIANS

Then the Russians came.

They were fishing. At first they got along fine with the people in Yakutat. They used some Indians as officers for their soldiers. One of them was Tànú [tàn-’úx?, ‘sea-lion tooth‘?). He learned Russian. He was a pretty smart, pretty big, well-educated man. [Tanu was ałyI-Kagwantan, or rather, TłaayIk-Teqwedi.]

Pretty soon so many Russians came that things were getting different. The Indians were beginning to dislike the Russians. They took the children away from them, onto the ship. Tanu said they go to school. One of the ships’ captains married a Yakutat woman. Her name was Kusqan-tła [or Kuqan-tła]. She reported back to Yakutat: “Is not school—is slave!”

The children had to dig in the garden in summer time to catch squirrels. The Indians could not do anything about it. The Russians took the Indian wives away from their husbands into the double fort they had for protection. Some time later, when they got tired of them, they would send them back to their husbands. The Russians had guns and cannons, so the Indians could do nothing.

The Indians get smoked salmon for the winter. That's what they had to depend on for food in winter. Their smokehouses were at ’AkA on First Summit Lake [Aka Lake], and at Gùtc-cAkí-’àn [’Hill Top Town’] on Second Summit Lake [Summit Lake]. The Russians put a gate across T’awał Creek. Every time the Indian people want to go to their camp they have to portage their canoe, because the only time the Russians opened the gate was for the Indian chief to go through.

[A fuller account of Indian grievances is given on pp. 259–260.]

Tanu was a brave man and wouldn’t stand it any more. “Starvation is coming. We are all going to die. It's just as well if we die right now.”

He was going to make war on the Russians, he said. His people didn’t believe that, because Russia is too big a nation; they have everything. The Indians had nothing.

“If you don’t want to help me, I’ll handle it myself,” he said. “When the Russian soldiers are coming back from fishing, that's the time I’m going to put the war on them.” He was going to fight them in their boats.

He was a friend of the Russian king [leader of the colony], who gave him respect. He was a kind of straw boss. He was given a sword for his protection.

When they were going to make war there were only a few Indians with him. The others were cowards. Only a janitor, who helped the cook, was left in the fort, and a few others. All the rest were out fishing. The janitor was mean all the time, so a young fellow volunteered to kill him. He was DudAnekw [also heard as DuDAnEq, Tuxwtane, and TúdInE]. He was crazy.

(He was not bewitched. He was crazy-brave, foolhardy. He was Kwacqwan. [July 11, 1952.])

Tanu said he was going to kill Stanislaus, the Russian king. He said he would be the first Russian to be killed. “When you hear me make a noise up there, the fight is already started. I kill him.”

The boy went out picking salmonberries beforehand. He had them in a bucket in his hand. He hid with it in the bushes until he heard Tanu make a noise. “I have some berries I picked for you, Snaka.”—That is “partner” in Russian—The janitor thanked him. He reached for the berries. “I’m going to split some wood for you.” So he got the ax and hit him on the head and killed him.

So each Indian killed his own man before the fishermen got back.

When the fishermen got back, they didn’t all come back at once at the same time. Boat by boat, they always used to come back. Every time the boat landed, Tanu and his gang went to help as usual. They jump in the boat and killed them with their knives. That's the way they killed them all.

One Russian ran away. The Indians looked for him but didn’t find him. A ship came and he ran down on the beach outside Point Carew, and was waving at the ship. The ship stopped and a boat came in and took him off, and he reported that all the Russians were killed. So they went back to Kadjak [Kodiak].

Ever since then there have been no Russians at Yakutat.

This is the way the Indians tell the story, the good and the bad. Every night the chief would tell stories. The people had no books, but had to be pretty smart to keep it in their heads. The Russian story was different. A Russian cook who was working here in 1943 told it, but the Russians probably fixed up the story to make them sound good.

Then the Indians moved to Situk River and made a new village. At that time the glacier still blocked Russell Fiord and the head of it was Situk Lake that drained down Situk River. The village had just four houses and a fort around them. They called it Eagle Fort, Ta nu. They expected Russian revenge; that‘s why they built that fort.

Tanu and his Kwacqwan brother-in-law went to the bay to get sea food. They saw a Russian ship anchored there. Tanu went in the ship. He spoke Russian pretty well; he was smart. They made him a prisoner. Tanu went on board the ship because he was a brave man, not afraid of anything. He was a good man. He wanted to explain. So he gave himself up for trial.

ŁucwAq [translated as ‘no-eyes,’ and as ’one-eye’] was Tanu's partner. He was just a brave man. He was left at Yakutat. He was a leader in war. He was a Kagwantan [i.e., ałyI-Kagwantan]

They gave Tanu a short trial on the ship. It was probably the captain who tried him.

He said the first Russian killed was the Russian king. They asked him if the king had a weapon for protection, when they were fighting, man to man. He said the king always had it at his neck. He wore a knife hanging under his left arm on a string around his neck. When he first met the king, he asked him for snuff. The king had a snuff can in his pocket. The king wore it in his left breast pocket. He gave Tanu some snuff. As soon as he put the snuff can back in his pocket, Tanu jumped on him with his knife. The first punch with the knife hit him right on the snuff can and didn’t hurt the Russian. Then the king screamed. The Indians believe that it is a coward who screams. Even though he was not hurt in the flesh, he screamed. The king grabbed the knife and nearly took it away from Tanu. They fought a long time and Tanu killed him.

That's why the Russians didn’t like it: the Russian king screamed.

After the trial, the Russians said: “Tanu is going to scream.”

They did everything to him on the way back to Kodiak to make him scream. They put handcuffs on him; they cut him in the flesh with knife points, not to kill him but to make him scream, and put red hot irons in his flesh, in his breast. They told him they’d let him go if he would scream like the Russian king, but he wouldn’t.

After they got tired, they tied him upside down to the mast. They tied him by the ankles, hanged him upside down to the mast. A storm came. He did not eat, he did not sleep. For two days and two nights he hung to the mast in the storm. They put him down after two days. He was so sleepy he sat down and slept.

Then the cook, Snaka, came around with the tweezers he used to pull out his whiskers, and poked his face with them, when Tanu was asleep. And Tanu said “HAn!”—something like that.

And the cook yell out loud: “Tanu scream! Tanu scream!” He ran all over the ship yelling that.

And then they let him go—gave him good bed, good food, everything. The Russians were happy.

They took him to Kodiak and the Russians gave him a trial. After he told his story, he was free. Instead of putting him in jail, they made him an officer, a lieutenant. They gave him some soldiers when he was a lieutenant. Pretty soon be began to dislike the Russians again, and so he killed all his soldiers. He went back to town and explained to the king. The king gave him another gang—no questions, nothing. The same thing happened again.

Pretty soon the Russian king gave him a trial. Why does he do such things? He told that Russian king and that court that he doesn’t know. “I’m not myself. After you hanged me up on that ship mast for two days and two nights, my brains are spoiled. I don’t know why I killed my soldiers.”

Then they sent him back to Yakutat, with two Aleuts in a kayak. They were going to bring him home. The Russian king told those Aleuts to be sure to bring him back to Yakutat to be safe. Every time they stopped for the night, those Aleuts didn’t sleeep. They were afraid of Tanu. He was a bad man, he would always kill. Pretty soon they couldn’t stand it. They shot him when he was sleeping, and killed him.

They brought the body back to Kodiak to the king. He had a trial of the Aleuts. They told him they were afraid. The Russians killed them under the king's orders, I don’t know how, but they were dead prisoners.

The Russian doctor operated on Tanu to see why he was so brave. He cut him up and looked at all his parts. The only thing he found was that he had a small heart.

Then followed a war with the southeastern Alaskan people at Situk River. And then the sickness came. [These events were told as separate stories and will therefore be recounted in separate sections.]

OTHER COMMENTS ON THE HISTORY OF YAKUTAT

[Although some of my informants had actually read histories of Alaska, there was only one, Maggie Harry, a Kwacqwan woman, whose comments on Yakutat history covered a timespan approaching that of the previous narrator. She discussed the history of Yakutat with Harrington in 1939 or 1940, and with us in 1949 and in 1952. These observations are given below, in chronological order.]

There was a big water flood all over the world. They thought it was all over the world. There were three places in the world that were not covered by water: Devil's Thumb near Wrangell, Mount Saint Elias, and Mount Fairweather. They [the Indians] knew that the old people lived up there because they found their skin robes subsequently, high in the mountain rocks.

When the migrators were coming to Yakutat across the ocean, offshore, they saw Mount Saint Elias ahead, looking like a seagull on the water [MH to Harrington, who comments “her words,” 1939–40].

These Indians started as four brothers on the upper Copper River. An ivory dish with beautiful stones, the first brother wanted it, the second brother wanted it, the third brother wanted it, they all wanted it. An old woman prophet had said that whoever got the dish, had to keep it. So the three [who didn’t] had to migrate.

One of them came down the Copper River and settled near the mouth, another came along the ocean in a big skin boat, bringing his family with him of course as [they] all did.

But her family's brother ancestor [i.e., the family of the brother who was the ancestor of the informant] came across the ice, glaciers, till they saw land, till they saw good land, which was here at Yakutat. The ones that came along the ocean got here first, the glacier migrants arrived later. There was a little argument but they settled down peaceful.

The migrators over the glaciers maybe consumed a hundred years in migrating to Yakutat. When they reached here, the Indians who had come along the coast by boat were already at Yakutat. When the ocean travelers arrived here, there was no one living here…

…There were 8,000 or 10,000 Indians here when the Russians came. The Russians thinned them out by taking their kids away.

…There used to be 8,000 Indians here at Yakutat 1,000 years ago. These were the only Indians who defeated the Russians. The Russians elsewhere always came back. Here not.

The Russians took 50 kids away from here, under the pretext of taking them away to school. For 10 years they did not come back. That was a long time. That, and shutting the gate at Ankau Inlet made the people here decide to do away with the Russians. This was the only place we succeeded.

The Russians had first fought the Aleuts. Later they mixed with them, whoring their wives.

…My grandfather [momobro] used to lead his people over to the castle. My grandfather was the Prince of Yakutat and was named Cáada (a name given him by the Russians). Cáada was the son of Atkaa-wéet. [They] called the castle núuwuu [’fort‘]. It was like a big castle, just like a big castle. My father built a smokehouse there later, after the Russian prince had been killed.

The Indians burned the castle and all the Russians down. The Indians took all the ammunition, but took no food from there. The food and dishes they burned when they burned the castle. [MH to Harrington, 1939–40].

We came from Copper River, like Moses going out of Egypt.

Four brothers fought over an ivory dish, called tAnduk. Hundreds of different stones were made on it. So we split in four. Gudíłta’ was the king at Copper River.[70] The others left the town to die. GAneqwan [GInEqwan] was the tribe left at Copper River.

We were the family that first went on top of Mount Saint Elias. That's our flag [crest]. One tribe was lost when it was foggy, so came to Kałiak River and became the ałyI-Kagwantan.

Our tribe thought they saw a seagull far off when they first saw Mount Saint Elias. Every day it is getting higher. Generations grew and died in the wilderness.

They found the Teqwedi in Icy Bay. Aleuts, Goe, were here at Yakutat. They sure were mean!

All of the four tribes finally met again at Copper River and made a village at the mouth. The GInEqwan still remembered us.

Three hundred years ago there were no trees at Yakutat—just strawberries. Our clan bought the land from the Kusedi.

…There were no Russian kids from here. There was only one halfbreed that didn’t have any children. She was a beautiful girl, Prince Shawnista's [Stanislaw's] daughter. He was the Russian king that was killed. She went to Sitka.

Shada [Cada, Kwacqwan of Moon House, “the first one from Copper River to build a tribal house,” August 24, 1952] was the only one who could lead his people through the gate at Ankau.

The Russians took 300 kids from here. Tanu ‘Itìnìskù was the one who killed Shawnista. The Russians lived at Salt Lake. They had a farm with cows. The only Russian saved was the lighthouse keeper at Point Carew.

White people were here before the Russians came. A ship was wrecked near Summit Lake. One woman was saved. She talks different from the Russians. The two men with her drowned in Summit Lake when the ice broke. Ten or twelve years later the Russians came.

This is the true story of Yakutat. [MH, 1949.]

[The historical remarks made in 1952 pertain only to the Kwacqwan migration from the Copper River, and are therefore included in that section (pp. 239–240).]

Other Versions of the K[w]acqwan Migration Story

[Nine informants, including four Kwacca (i.e., Kwacqwan women), two men of that sib, a ałyI-Kagwantan woman, a Tcicqedi man and a Teqwedi man furnished other more or less complete versions of the migration story of the Kwacqwan, or comments on it. These serve to corroborate the information first recorded by Harrington in 1939 or 1940 that Eyak was the original language at Yakutat. As the late Jack Ellis had volunteered to him (MS): “The ‘Yakutat language,’ that is, the original language, which George Johnson is teaching me—that is, what I am calling the Cordova language—is called yáat khwaan yuu wathángi, literally the ‘here language.’ “ From the remarks given below we can also see the importance of this migration in furnishing potlatch songs still used by the Kwacqwan.]

HOW THE KWACK’QWAN CAME TO YAKUTAT

[This was told by Sarah Williams, Kwacqwan, July 11, 1952. The incidents were in almost completely inverted order, but have here been arranged in what we believe to be the intended sequence.]

Up the Copper River was a Raven chief, Guditłta’, or udiłtA’. After he died, each one of his relations wanted to get his property, a moose horn dish, tAnAu i (or tunduq I), with things on it that shine like a pearl. Oh, it's fancy!

[It was a fancy platter, all over abalone shells, according to Minnie Johnson, Tł’UknaAdi, June 20, 1952.]

And some sit on this side, and some sit on that side. And this side wants that dish, and that side wants that dish, too. They got mad at each other. The other side got the dish, and that's why the Kwacqwan moved away from Copper River. There were sisters and brothers and uncles, and some moved from there.

After that [sequence unclear], they came on the mountain. That‘s why they have Mount Saint Elias [as a crest]. They danced down from that mountain. They were happy when they were coming on this side. Lots of things happen there, and there are songs [about these events].

They stay in Icy Bay a long time, 2 or 3 years, or longer. It's just icy there, from Icy Bay to here at that time. And they lost a boy, ŁA’la’ or ŁA’a, about 10 years old. He fell under the glacier. He didn’t die then. He just cried under there. And that's why his mother came to sing that song. ŁA’a's mother caught a seagull and took care of it like her own son. And when they had such a hard time at Icy Bay, the seagull got eulachons, some kind of little fish from the ocean. The seagull took them to its mother and that woman feed her brothers. The boy was still crying under the ice and couldn’t get away.

Another woman took care of a sea otter. And the sea otter went and put sea boots [chitons] right on its chest and take them to its mother. She was a different woman, but it was in Icy Bay, too.

They stay in Icy Bay a long time. Two or three boys run from Icy Bay across the ice. And the chief said somebody lives on that side. That‘s why they kill seal [i.e., he could tell from the signs of sealing that there were others in the vicinity]. Just the two boys were way ahead and tell the people. And they move the second day, and the people move again. [It was not clear whether the small boy was lost on this trip.]

The Goe [“Aleuts”] stayed here before us. It used to be Goe first. But when we came from Copper River we bought it. The man who bought Knight Island was TcukAn-’ic, ‘Little Grass Father.’ They called it AnAwAs. That's Copper River language. In Tlingit it is called Qa-cai-a’, ‘Somebody's Head Island.’ TcukAn-’ic had a sister named AmáyAq (or emáyeq). She picked some berries there in a basket and one of the [Goe] ladies saw this and got mad and cut the basket of berries from the girl's back.

That girl cried, and her brother asked why. She told him they had cut the basket. The girl got impatient. “I don‘t know why they never pay [for] this AnAwAs!” This lady got mad. “I pick berries there.”

The same day they bought AnAwAs from the Aleuts. When they bought the island they called it AnAwAs. They had a big town on the island, just Kwacqwan houses. Then they bought the little river on this side of it, too.

We Kwacqwan never get anything free because they [Goe] had something there. We eat fish. The Goe don’t like the Kwacqwan to take the fish. They were strangers to the Kwacqwan at that time. That boy, DudAnEq, son of Wanise’ [ałyI-Kagwantan], the nephew of TcukAn-’ic, was in the canoe. That young man, he's just a kid, and when he saw the fish at the Kwac stream, he got it. A [Goe] man saw it and got mad. He broke the boy's fish spear. The boy got mad and told his uncle that there's lots of fish there. That's why the uncle said he was going to pay the man for his nephews.

So TcukAn-’ic got the Kwac stream. He paid for it with a canoe. It had 7 cross bars, with 14 coppers tied on them, 7 on each side. Each copper was worth 10 slaves.

After that, when they got enough boats—big canoes, not small—and coppers, the Goe chief told the Kwacqwan that they were going to show [sell?] them one more island. That was Egg [Haenke] Island.

Our nation never stole this place. We bought it. That's why we stay here. We never take it way from each other [i.e., from anyone]. Because they lived up the Copper River the Kwacqwan had tInna [coppers] then. They used copper for everything—for knives, whenever they had a war.

After the Goe sold Knight Island [and the humpback salmon stream], they went away. I don’t know if they all went away. Some of them stayed here and married.

[The same informant made a further comment, May 10, 1954, on Kwacqwan names derived from the Copper River: for women, ac, Qełcaki, ał Di’axładzu, and Duqeł; for men WatdAł, WAtUq, and ŁA’a’. The last was the name of the boy lost on the glacier.]

See, that ŁA’a’, when he passed away, he fell in the glacier and he start crying there. And that people can’t get him out, because [they had] no strings [ropes] that time. And they use sealskin strings, I guess, or some kind of strings. And it's too short—they can’t get him.

And when he passed away, his mother made up that song, because they hear him crying under the glacier. Nobody knows it [the song] this time now.

And she takes the seagull—small seagull—and it‘s just like a kid, her son.

And that's why it's hard to learn it. They sing about her kid and at the same time they sing about that seagull, her son. She's not going to have a child again, and she take it for her son. His name is ŁA’a’. Because the kid fell down under the glacier, he's still alive there. In Copper River language it's a name. The old people say it's O.K., he gonna be pass away. And that's a name in the Copper River language. ŁA’a’ means ’man’—qa in Tlingit.

COMMENTS ON THE SEAGULL ADOPTED AS A SON

[Another Kwacca, Susie Abraham, also spoke about the seagull that was adopted. (July 24, 1952.)]

The Kwacqwan made a song for coming through the fog. And one is the song for the son of the lady that had the seagull baby. It's so sad…The seagull and the ocean—the people never saw them before. Her son fell in the glacier and she felt so sad. When they saw that gull it looked so pretty. Later, when starvation set it, it brought things to its mother. And then they composed a song when it finally went out forever. They sing it at a potlatch now when they feel sad.

[Another Kwacqwan informant was reluctant to include this episode. When Harry K. Bremner was questioned about the tradition of the woman who adopted the seagull, he said [(May 2, 1954):]

That's part of the story, but that's not my story. They just raised a seagull, that's all. They get it from the nest, I think.

Nobody knows how many years [she kept it]. That seagull fly away from her and always came back to her again. Keep it for a pet. And when a strong winter comes—I don’t know if it's starvation or hardship—her brothers blame it on her.

“You raised that seagull, that's the cause of it—that strong wind that come, and starvation.”

So she weeping and crying, she talking to that seagull. The seagull understand her. What they tell the seagull, the seagull do it.

And she talking to the seagull, she told the seagull:

“You going to go away from me. You not going to come back to me any more. You just go away forever. And don’t you ever come around to this village any more.”

The seagull tries to talk back to her. It don’t talk, just make a noise. So it don‘t fly, just walk to the water. When it get to the water, it swims, going out—just swim, never fly. The seagull never come back.

That's the time she composed a song, when she see the seagull going in the water. That used to be our tribe's song: kétłAdi-yAdi ‘i’iti ciyí—'seagull-child-(?) song-of.’ (The words were in the Copper River language. It was an old song.)

Some of them said that the seagull grew to be a giant seagull. No. Some of them didn’t listen to the story; that's why they always get mixed up [i.e., mix myth (tłagu) with history (ckAłnik), he explained].

HOW THE KWACQWAN CAME TO YAKUTAT

[The old Kwacqwan lady, Katy Dixon Isaac, made the following comments about the migration of her people. Her grandaughter, Violet Sensmeier, acted as interpreter. (June 30, 1952.)]

Yatqwan is Eyak. This language was spoken at Yakutat long ago, but when Mrs. Isaac came here no one spoke it. Yakutat is not a Tlingit name. People from Katalla named it. There used to be a glacier here and when it started to melt away, a lagoon was formed. Yakutat is the name for the lagoon.

StaAdi is the same tribe as Kwacqwan. ’Iq hini [Copper River] is the place they came from. They gave them the name Kwacqwan after they came here.

A Copper River group got into a fight over something that belonged to the chief, Gudiłt‘a’, who died. Part of them came here by Mount Saint Elias, Ca tłen [’big mountain’]. She doesn’t know what they called those who stayed behind. Those who came were the StaAdi. Mount Saint Elias belongs to the tribe that came to it….

There is no tribe named Ł’uedi here now. They used to be here. They were Eagles. (She does not know what became of them.)

Her father's tribe was [originally ?] Kagwantan. There were too many for one house, so they divided. One became the Tcicqedi. Her father was Tcicqedi….

[An interview with Mrs. Isaac was recorded on tape, 1954, 4–1, with her grandson, Sheldon James, Jr., interpreting (March 24, 1954). Later, comments were obtained from Harry K. Bremner, who listened to the recording (May 2, 1954). The following is taken from the tape and from additional explanations made by Mrs. Isaac.]

At Chitina they had a platter made out of wood, ornamented around the edge with dentalia (tae). Abalone (tae u tei) was put around the edge of a moose horn dish.

(They had killed a giant moose and made a dish out of it. The moose horn dish was called tsAntu. That's the Copper River language. The one who owned the moose horn dish was a chief, an Indian doctor. They don’t know his name. But ŁtAda was the name of his grandchild.) [HKB, May 2, 1954.]

The platter [or both dishes ?] was the reason why they separated from their group and started to walk this way. She (KDI) doesn’t know how many days they were walking, but one reason why the tribe separated was on account of the shells put around this platter.

While they were walking they came out just the other side of the mountain and onto the glacier. The glacier was formed so there were steps all the way down to the water, and there was gravel on top of the ice. And every step or platform that was there, they made songs and danced on each layer or platform until they came down to the beach, to the water.

While they were on the glacier, they killed a dog and put it in one of the crevasses. And that's why the glacier receded so far and left all the bay there. That's why they call it “Yakutat.”…That's what it means—yakwdat means “lagoon” in their language up there. When they came down there after they killed their dog up there, they said. “There's already a kind of lagoon formed in there.” That's in their language—“There's a lagoon formed.”

’Agun—’lagoon’; yatqwan enA duwasaq yakwdat—’[in] local-people's language is called Yakutat.’

…The bay starts to form when the ice starts to recede…. The people were asking each other down that way after they threw that dog into the crevasse in the glacier. They asked each other how it was coming along. And they answered in this language that there was already a bay forming there.

“There's a lagoon forming,” they said in George Johnson's language [Eyak]—ye ’agún yékunastín—’a lagoon is forming there.’

…At that time this was all covered over. [A solid glacier, it was explained, covered all of Yakutat Bay and the land to Icy Bay and beyond.] After they threw that dog into the crevasse it start to recede. That's how this Yakutat Bay was formed. That Icy Bay—it wasn’t much of a bay there. This [Yakutat] is the bay that start to form after they put the dog in there.

[The Kwacqwan were evidently accompanied by an Eyak group.]

Some other tribe [was] mixed in with the people walking this way, and came here with them. People from ałyI that moved over—moved away from their tribe that went up to DjIłqat [Chilkat on Bering River]. They separated from their main tribe, ałyI-Kagwantan. They gave another name for themselves after they separated from their main tribe. Part of George Johnson's tribe, that‘s them that come down this way—Tcicqwedi.

[Two of the songs sung on the migration were recorded. A marching song, 1954, 4–1–B, has a lively tempo, like that of a dance song. The other, 1954, 4–1–A, is a mourning song in the Copper River language; see p. 1155.]

This song is one composed by GudiłtA’. He was supposed to be ŁIngit-tłen, ‘big man.’ And he had a rifle accident when his younger brother got shot by his oldest brother accidentally. And while he was crying he started to sing this song. He composed this song while he was crying over his brother‘s body.

When they were walking, they always sang this kind of sorrowful songs. They were always feeling bad. They sang most of these songs on the heavy side—yA-DAłci, ‘heavy songs,’ just the way they felt when they were moving away from their home tribe.

[Katy Isaac was puzzled because the song referred to a muzzle-loader, ‘una,—“the kind you load yourself—one shot. You make the lead and make the ‘shell’ for it.” Yet the migration took place before the Russians, and she didn’t know how they got the gun.]

[Harry K. Bremner knew the story, but denied that a gun had been used. He added this comment, May 2, 1954:]

They shoot with the arrow. There's no rifle there that time. There's no White man yet…. But this is the way of the story: The people went out picking berries. And they were picking berries, and that younger brother of his got a brown bear robe around him. They were picking some bushberries, not strawberries. And he [Gudiłta’] thought it was a bear, and he shot at it. And he got it—dead shot. It was his own brother. That's when he composed that song. It used to be a tribe song. Every time the GInEqwan gave a potlatch, they used that song for a tribe's song. [It is in the Copper River language which HKB does not understand.]

[Further comments by Mrs. Isaac concern the purchase of Knight Island and atgawet, so are postponed until a later section.]

FURTHER COMMENTS ON KwACQWAN MIGRATION SONGS

[The informant, Maggie Harry, a Kwacqwan woman, described and sang three songs, sung by her ancestors on the march from Copper River. (August 24, 1952.) The songs were finally recorded, 1954, 7–2–A, B, C (May 27, 1954). The following statement combines explanations made on both occasions.]

We bought Knight Island, our people. We come from Copper River. And the people start to hate us there…The Copper River people, their language is different from the Yatqwan [Eyak]. I don’t know the Copper River language, but my uncles used to know it…. I knew just a few words of the Yatqwan language. My grandmother used to speak it. [There were 10 generations from the ancestors at Copper River. The full list, which we were unable to record, contained such names as Gudiłta‘, Łayak(?), atgawet, Cada, YandułsIn, and Qanida.]

Old Sampson, YándułsÍn was his name, didn’t die until he was 105 years old. [Grave monument in the Old Village reads: Blind Sampson, October 1948, Age 110.] Cada is grandfather of all the Yakutat Kwacqwan houses. He's the first from Copper River to build a tribal house. He built DIs hIt [Moon House] in Khantaak and then[?] in Nesaudat. atgawet is the father of Cada. Cada is the father of Qanida. Gudiłta’ was the first of the line.

[The ancestors of the Kwacqwan composed eight songs, which they sung on their migration across the ice, and which are still used in potlatches. They appear to have been all in the Copper River language.]

A marching song [1954, 7–2–A p. 1226] was the first song they made. They had a feather in each hand as they were marching along…. When our tribe sings this song, the men and women are in a line and they walk back and forwards, moving both hands with feathers [eagle tails or seagull wings], left and right [August 24, 1952]…. This marching song they always use when they’re coming to the dance. When they start to come in they stop right by the door. About a hundred people stand in a row, feathers in hand. They have dancing songs after this. After we are finishing, then we use it for the parties [after the potlatch] when they dance. [May 27, 1954.]

The resting song [1954, 7–2–B p. 1227] was the song they sang when they were coming from the Copper River, when they were resting on the prairie. When we sing this song, we do like this: Move our knees from side to side, but we don’t move our feet. We dip twice on each side and move our hands in time (back and forth across the chest). Your knees go with your hands. It's just like the wind goes.

Then they had an accident, just when they come out. The mourning song [1954, 7–2–C p. 1155] is a sad one. See, this boy shot his brother…. The song has long words to it. This man was telling how he was looking for his brother…He was looking for his brother right on the ice. He says, “My little brother,”—(gesture of hands shading the eyes, as if looking). “Where are you?”—(hand stretched out). “Please come back to me!”—(both hands on the heart, “just like he's loving him.”). It's a loud song. They can hear him a mile from the camp. [August 24, 1952.]

That's about half way, coming from Copper River, the boy that shot his brother. It was with an arrow, or something like that. That's the saddest song a person can sing. You know, when they saw him coming, they heard a long ways when he's coming, and he just made a motion with this hand, it's just the way he feels. Just like he was calling him. “A,”—just like he was calling him to come, his brother. “My loved one, come back to me again.” He still can’t believe he's coming home without his brother. “My little brother, come back to me! My brother, why did I kill my brother? Why did I do that? Please come back to me”! This is Copper River language.

And when we’re really in trouble, that's the time we sing this song—real deep sorrow. [May 27, 1954.] It costs lots of money when they sing it at a party…. All the tribe stands, men and women together. The whole tribe just moves back and forth. The men and women sing together. The men sing a bass and a tenor and the women sing high and low, too. The four different voices are singing all at the same time. [August 24, 1952.]

FIVE COMMENTS ON THE KWACKQWAN MIGRATION

[The following was recorded by Harrington in 1939 or 1940 from George Johnson, Tcicqedi.]

The natives discovered Yakutat before the Russians came here.

The story goes that the Cordova-people…were at Cordova, they claimed the Copper River, they had a little trouble between them, that's why they separated, and they came this way across the land, and they claim they came out at Icy Bay. They had to go way back into the mountains and then came out on Icy Bay. They were the first ones who found Icy Bay. They came walking overland from Icy Bay and found Yakutat. They were the first who found Yakutat. They were yéel [Yeł, ’Raven’] people to which Mrs. Annie Johnson belongs, and this is the most populous [sib] here at Yakutat. And they are the ones who live here in Yakutat now.

There came mixed-up people here just like a cannery crew, and the original Cordova-language [Eyak] yielded to the Yakutat language [Tlingit].

[The following explanation was given by Helen Bremner, ałyI-Kagwantan, June 20, 1952.]

It was Qada’u, the ałyI-Kagwantan father, who bought the Kwac stream for his Kwacqwan son, CtÀł’éu (or CÀłÚ’). The boy was spearing fish from a flat rock under which the salmon run. The owners didn’t like it and broke his fish spear and cut his string of fish and threw them away. Then the father got mad and bought the stream for his son. The people from whom he bought it were the Ł’uedi or the HInyedi.

[Francis Riddell was given the following account by John Bremner, Kwacqwan, August 17, 1953.]

When the people first came to this area, the glacier extended from Point Latouche across to the Manby side. The Manby side was apparently then all ice. Knight Island was bare of trees, just as it is now around Point Latouche and Disenchantment Bay, and those areas from which the glaciers have recently retreated. The flat sandy area [near the site of Old Town on Knight Island] was covered with strawberry plants. At this time there was no forest on Krutoi Island.

Two canoes went from Knight Island to go salmon spearing at Humpback Creek. The people who owned Humpback Creek did not like to have other people use it for fishing. So they took the spears away from the two canoes of young men and broke them. The young men returned home and told the tribe of their treatment. The older men said that such indignities could not continue, so it was decided to buy the creek.

The people who lived on Knight Island originally came from up the coast. They had to cross the glaciers to get there.

[These remarks were made by a Teqwedi man, Olaf Abraham, 1949.]

The whole of Knight Island was just a strawberry patch. There were no trees. There was a quarrel between two chief's daughters over the rights to pick berries. One girl, DuqEtł, went to her mother's brother who bought the island for her. The village on Knight Island was the oldest one around Yakutat.

[That the ancestors of the Kwacqwan may have received an unfriendly reception from the original inhabitants of the Icy Bay area is suggested by the following account. It was told by Sampson Harry, a Kwacqwan man who was explaining the origin of the wooden canoe designed for sealing among the ice floes (gudiyÉ). (February 25, 1954.)]

The way I hear it, we never used to know about that thing [the gudiyÉ]…. They tell us we come from Icy Bay, and the people over there, they live there all the time. They don’t want us to see that gudiyÉ. They just got a lake over there. They call it ŁIgasI ’a [Taboo Lake], because they hide that gudiyÉ in there. They don’t want us to see how they use it. And pretty soon they [our ancestors] found out. We see the blood just in the ice. They were hunting seals. It's pretty hard to go around in the ice. But they got that gudiyÉ with a thing in front. [He went on to describe the canoe, see p. 339–340].

…I don’t know the name of that tribe at Icy Bay. They made war with us when we came from Copper River. I asked Old Sampson [1866–1948] and Jimmy Jackson [1861–1948], my uncles, but they don’t know. They sneak up in war in the nighttime.

[Unfortunately no other person could offer any information about the seal hunters at Icy Bay, unless they were the ałyI-Kagwantan.]

“STORY OF THE KÂ’CK!QOAN” RECORDED BY SWANTON

Swanton's long version of the story of the Kwacqwan migration (1909, Tale 105) was recorded in Tlingit. It was dictated by a member of that sib, Q!’dustin, who was living in Sitka in 1904. He was probably the man known to our informants as Sitka Jake, Q’atAsin, or Qátustin, who had married the daughter of Sitka Jack, K’atsex. Them latter's brother was Q’ei, the Tł’UknaAdi chief of Whale House in Sitka. (Cf. Swanton, 1908, p. 406, Q!’, of Y’ÎhÎt.) Certain points in this version should be mentioned because they either conflict with or supplement the accounts given by our informants. The Copper River chief who died was ŁtAxdA’x, and although the dispute between his heirs was over his dish, Ts!AnAt!ū‘k!, he also had a copper (Swanton, 1909, p. 347). The latter was fetched from the valley called Łtaxn after the people had been living at Icy Bay (?) for over 10 years and had discovered Yakutat (ibid., pp. 354 f.). It was with this copper, worth 10 slaves, that they purchased land at Yakutat (ibid., p. 356).

About 40 persons formed the group that emigrated from Copper River (ibid., p. 347), and it took them 40 days and nights to reach Icy Bay (ibid., p. 345). This place, however, is described only as the mouth of a great river. The specification of 40 days may reflect the influence of Bible stories (see the version by MH on p. 236, especially since Sitka Jake was a religious Christian in some ways, according to a story about him told by a woman whom he treated as “granddaughter’ (MJ). However, as my colleague Catharine McClellan points out, since 40 is a ritual number among the Atna, it may be a purely aboriginal feature in this story.

Mention is made of the ceremonial garments donned on the journey when the people thought they would die, and also of songs sung or composed (ibid., pp. 347, 349, 352 f.).

The fog, in which part of the group was lost, was caused because some people had clubbed ground-squirrels (ibid., p. 348). It is taboo to kill certain species with a club, according to informants. The fate of the lost party is not mentioned, however, nor is there any indication of a later reunion at the mouth of the Copper River.

The crossing of the mountains on a glacier is described; the mountain is taken as a crest, and Mountain House (named for the mountain) is built when they reach the sea, but the mountain is not specifically identified as Mount Saint Elias (ibid., pp. 349 f.).

Here the C’dAdūx (plural) remained for 10 years, evidently intermarrying, since the settlement grew into a town (ibid., p. 350). There is no allusion at all to the problem of sib incest in this version. C’dAdx is not a name which any of our informants used. It suggests the name of the chief Cada, said to be a Russian word or name (Shada), and also the name of the Kwacqwan chief, Du, associated with Knight Island.

It was also at the coast that a woman, K!wâd’łtA, reared a seagull that grew almost as large as a house. She finally followed it out to sea (ibid., p. 350), but there is no suggestion that it was a substitute for a lost son, or that the seagull or a sea otter fed their adopted mothers.

The only mention of a boy lost on the ice occurs much later, after the Kwacqwan are living at Yakutat (ibid., pp. 361, 363).

At Icy Bay(?) a man built a skin boat and sent his six nephews to look for other people, whom they found at Yakutat (ibid., pp. 350 f.). After their return, a party of Kagwantan from Copper River also came in a skin canoe and were fed by the Mountain House people (ibid., p. 353), although there is no statement that they married. The use of skin canoes conflicts with our versions that the Copper River emigrants were without boats and crossed Yakutat Bay on the ice, and also that the ałyI-Kagwantan had wooden dugouts. It also seems to conflict with the tradition that the people who lived at Icy Bay (ałyI-Kagwantan ?) and who were there when the emigrants arrived from the Copper River were using the special wooden canoe (gudiyÉ) for sealing among the ice floes. The report of skin boats is in accord, however, with the positive statement that the Yakutat natives, before they had wooden canoes, made large skin canoes and also one-and two-man kayaks.

The original inhabitants of the town at Yakutat, Ykud’t, were the Athabaskan Kosk!dÎ and L!uq!-oe’dÎ. The former wished to drive away the Copper River immigrants. When one of them, Duqdan’ku, was discovered spearing humpback salmon at the Kâck! stream, they cut his string of fish and broke his spear (ibid., p. 355). The newcomers bought the place with their copper, and lived there for twenty years. Meanwhile, the Kosk!’dÎ and L!uq!oe‘dÎ left for good (ibid., p. 356). There is no mention of the purchase of Knight Island.

The story concludes with incidents which are extraneous to the foregoing, and which are not mentioned by informants.

One of the six brothers became lazy and was abandoned on a hunting trip by his brothers. The spirit of the mountain helped him to become a great hunter and sent him home in a canoe which was really a brown bear. Meanwhile the Teqwedi had arrived at Yakutat from Prince of Wales Island (ibid., pp. 356–360). On another hunting trip, one of the brothers was lost crossing a glacier, but the others were saved by the one whom the mountain spirit had blessed (ibid., pp. 360–363). In this episode mention is made of a large hollow cotton-wood tree beside a glacier at the head of the Kâck! stream. If a noise were heard inside it, this indicated a storm, and people would not attempt to cross the glacier. Informants also mentioned this tree, but associated it with crossing Yakutat Bay on the ice (see below). There is now certainly no glacier near the Kwac stream.

The last part of the story deals apparently with the Teqwedi. ‘Heavy-wings,’ KÎtcÎłDA’łq!, a brother-in-law of the Kâ’ck!qoan, is the principal character. (KItciDAł is a name belonging to the Drum House Teqwedi.) He had to give his daughter in marriage to the North Wind in order to secure a calm passage to Awk (Juneau). He met L!ê’nAx’DAq, the wealth-giving female Being, but because he said the wrong words, was killed by his own copper. His sister's son, XAtgw’t, took his ashes back to Yakutat, met the same Being, but became even wealthier than his uncle (ibid., pp. 362–368). There is no further account of the activities of this enterprising character. The story of the encounters of Heavy Wings and of atgawet with Property-Woman was told to us as a completely separate narrative.

Further Tales About Knight Island and atgawet

àtgawét, whom we have already met in Sitka Jake's story of the Kwacqwan (Swanton, 1909, Tale 109), was a Teqwedi man of southeast Alaskan derivation, but born at Gue on the Akwe River, of a Tł’UknaAdi father. He is usually associated with the early history of Yakutat, with fighting the Aleuts, and also with naming and “organizing” the Eyak-speaking sibs. He was a powerful shaman, as well as a wealthy trader. While all informants agree on his many marital ventures, which have made him a somewhat comical figure, there is real disagreement as to when he lived. According to many, he was responsible for the purchase of Knight Island and for the founding of the village there; according to our most knowledgeable historian, he lived much later, on Lost River, and had nothing to do with the early Kwacqwan settlement. Jenny Kardeetoo (1872–1951), in telling the story of Du‘s sister (see pp. 245–246), indicated that atgawet was living on Knight Island just after the Russians left. (There may have been several men with the same name.)

atgawet had three names. His “real” name was WUckAkeAdagwetc (or WUckAqeAdagwetc), referring to contending Killerwhales that ‘crowd up on top of each other.’ Another of his names was Hínieł’, again referring to the Killerwhale that ‘tears the water.’ (Should this last be Hín yA-eł’? cf. Boas 1917, p. 193.) His third name, by which he is commonly known, is a nickname. His daughter-in-law let out gas, and he said right out in the community house “àt gàwé—’maybe it's me?’ “—just to keep her from embarassment. The suffix, -t (cf. Boas, 1917, p. 94), was added to the remark or question to make it a name. The joke and the coining of the nickname, explained an informant, was characteristic of the public joking relationship between a man and his daughter-in-law. All three names were among those borne by the recently deceased head of the Teqwedi Bear House lineage, Jim Kardeetoo (1862–1937), the same line to which the original atgawet is supposed to have belonged.

If we summarize all the information given about him, we find that his father was a TłUknaAdi man named Łkettitc, and his mother a Teqwedi girl named Kaistan, daughter of a Tł’UknaAdi chief at Gue, named Qatcguk or Katu. The latter was said to have been the uncle of Łkettitc (which may be only another way of saying that they both belonged to the same sib). Sitka Jake reported that atgawet was the nephew of Heavy Wings, KItciDAł, but two of our informants reversed this relationship. KItciDAł was the nephew, they said, who built Drum House at Ahrnklin and married a Kwacqwan woman. At any event, atgawet seems to have married many women. The following names, all Kwacqwan, were given by our several informants as those of his wives: ’Ándúł, Siat, Kałtenku or Katłaténu, Dùhán, Wana-tła, Katłat’e, and Tłe’an (the last the daughter of a ałyI-Kagwantan chief). It is interesting that the last atgawet, Jim Kardeetoo, should have married a woman whose name was also Tłe’an. Two sons of atgawet were listed: Unaoci and CtAtł’eu. The latter is the name of a chief of the Kwacqwan Raven's Bones House. There seems, however, to have been no direct connection between atgawet and Cada of Moon House, although the latter was father of Jim Kardeetoo.

A number of accounts have been pieced together to learn something of the original atgawet, if indeed, it is safe to assume that the same name refers always to the same individual. It is possible that there was a noted Teqwedi leader in pre-Russian times some of whose exploits are ascribed to the matrimonially successful trader and shaman of later days. We shall, however, begin our “biography” with the story of his father, Łkettitc. The latter may be cited as an example of the virtuous Tlingit youth who in folklore is rewarded with good fortune.

THE STORY OF ŁKETTITC

[The following brief version was told by Emma Ellis, a woman from Dry Bay. (July 22, 1952.)]

Łkettitc, when a young man, used to go without eating. In winter he just put a belt around him and went without clothes. He just wore shoes in winter time. He chopped wood all the time, so the fire never died down. He was always chopping wood for his uncles and grandfathers. Finally he became lucky and a great man. He got what he wanted, the rich Teqwedi daughter of a great man. He married over here from Gue and lived at Knight Island, or maybe on Khantaak Island. [The last sentence surely refers to his son, atgawet.]

[The following version was told by Jack Reed, Tł’UknAdi, 1880–1953. The account has been edited. (July 24, 1952.)]

At Akwe there used to be lots of people, Tł’UknaAdi. One time there was a young Tł’UknaAdi man, Łkettitc, who stayed alone. He was a good boy, young, husky too, and kind, like all Tł’UknaAdi. His uncle, Katu, had a Teqwedi daughter, Kayistan. He also had two slaves, a man and wife, and they had a baby.

There were lots of people at Yakutat also at that time, and the people from Yakutat and Akwe used to visit each other for 2 or 3 months at a time. Winter was coming and lots of people were going to Yakutat. The uncle of Łkettitc had a big canoe, but he didn’t want the boy to go, because he was too crazy [foolhardy]. That's why he stayed behind.

So the young man made a big pile of firewood for the wintertime. He chopped it, split it, and piled it. Sometimes he used snares for fox, and sometimes wooden traps.

The slave's husband died. The baby was all right, but after the winter came, the baby cried. The young man got up. It was cold; the north wind was blowing, and he got some water for the baby. He helped him.

“I’ll teach you how to get the luck,” the slave baby's mother said. She knew that from her husband.

So she gave the lucky (formula?, amulet?), just like a present to the young man. After that he caught lots of fox. That's the way she helped him.

So the young man gave lots of skins to her father to get married to Kaistan. [There is also some suggestion that he anticipated his uncle's permission by having relations with his daughter while the uncle was asleep.]

The slave woman is still alive (now? at the time of the marriage?). Now this woman was a good slave. She was never sent away, but Kaistan didn’t want to call the woman and her baby “slaves” after that. They are like Tł’UknaAdi now. [July 24, 1952.]

…Kaistan was the mother of atgawet. He was a shaman who could communicate with Sitka. [JR; July 27, 1952.]

[The following story was first told by John Ellis in English, with Tlingit phrases dictated and translated. Then it was recorded in Tlingit, March 25, 1954, Reel 1954, 2–1-B.]

Did you ever hear a story about Łkettitc? I know some of it.

That's the man who was told to get off the boat in Italio River. That was his uncle who told him to get off. He was fooling around with the boat there. His uncle told him: “What's that man doing? Chase him off! Tell him to get off!”

He walked on the gunwale and just tipped it so far that the water got in there. He just run along the gunwale and jumped ashore.

He started walking towards Ue [This may be the southeast Alaskan pronunciation of Gue] at Akwe. When he started walking, his uncle said:

“’u! wetE yakagu! kaqa Ak duwudúnI Qatcgu-si qécà.”

’[Go on!] Go ahead—keep going! One who is heavier than the rest of them [i.e., is high class], Qatcgu's daughter you will marry.’

“’u!”—when you say that to a person you don’t think he’ll do it. She's a high-class woman, and in Tlingit they speak [of this] as a weight. She's got more weight than other people. ‘she's heavier than the rest of them’—kaqa Ak duwuduni. ’That woman you will marry’—qécà. That's what they said.

When he gets there—Ue—that's their village over there, he goes to a house, and he tells them:

“cawAt xan kAn-gAłanikt ’ayá [woman to-me tell-a-story now!]—I want you to tell me a story about a woman.” He didn’t really mean that. What he meant was, he wants somebody to teach him real life.

And they always start telling him a story about a woman. And he gets up and walks out. And he goes to the next house and says the same thing, and the same thing happens. He gets up and walks out.

Finally at the last house there was a slave who got free. He was living there. He told him the same thing: “cawAt xan kAn-gAłanikt ’ayá”

And that man [the slave] he got right up and said: “Hu! hu! hu!” Start running around in the house, just wildlike, and even took a knife. [The man] just sat there and watch him. And pretty soon he sat down and told him:

“a• ! tat eł djáyI tuw w An tsa nita, detA ’A ’At da wutł ’awE.”—“Ah. Never sleep when it's stormy at night, just keep busy.”

If you want to get rich you can’t sleep on a windy night. It‘s the main thing in life in order to succeed, is what he meant.

detA ‘just.’ ’At da wutł ‘really busy,’ or ’war.’

He means somebody to teach him a real life. And that slave got up and try to scare him, and he just sit there. Finally the slave told him: [phrase repeated]. It's just the way they talk.

So he stayed with him. He made that slave his uncle—du kak ’awułiyi. And he goes after wood for him, and he does everything, works for him—’ada yúkAwugutk. And he stayed there a long time.

One day, first, when he comes to the tree with an ax, he hits it, and the snow all fall on him from the branches. And he says:

“yEnatí! duwuwét ’a kAde ‘A kAnadzu!”—“Let riches fall on me!”

yEnatí—“that's the way it's gonna be” [Let it be!]. He speaks as if the tree were throwing snow on him. “Riches it's throwing on me.” ’Riches’—duwUwét, ’akAde ‘on me;’ ’AkAnadzu ’it is throwing.’

So one night the north wind was really blowing—’ayAt ’a cawAtAn Ue—they call it. Just like you lay a boat on the water. That's what it look like to them. Snow was piled up there. And that‘s the time the slave cried out for water. And he got up, he start digging his way through the doorway, through the snow. And he run down and he got some water and he gave it to him. After he drink it, he [the slave] told him:

“ ’an yanA CAyu da ’u. wUE’ ’aya ’i’i kwAła’u!” [’Village through washing-hair. Amulet I’ll let you have.‘]

That's ‘washing hair along the village.’ That's the way he said it. Olden time, they do that for luck. They wash their hair before Yeł du ’axt [Raven calls]. Even before that—people get up before Raven makes that noise. They wash their hair before anybody gets up. He tells him to wash his hair at one end of the village and then go to the other end of the village and do it again. On the beach in the river there—wash hair, and at the same time make a wish for luck.

[The slave gave him an amulet.]

So he does that all the time. And pretty soon he start getting luck, and buys some slaves and got a lot of valuable things, and went up and he got married with this woman. He was Tł’UknaAdi.

When that happened they were going down south. The next time when they were coming back, they were laughing about it, and they [i.e., his former companions] said:

“e qatASAtin we tInna-yAtitc ’At gu-sA-’u.”—“Let's see that man who's going to buy things with baby coppers.”

When they came there, they find out he was married, and from then on I don’t know. I forget what happened.

[A further comment was made on this story, by Emma Ellis, March 27, 1954.]

Łkettitc was Tł’UknaAdi. The woman he married was Teqwca or something. Qatcxukw du sik [Q's little daughter].

[The informant agreed to the suggestion that the father might have been Koseqi or Qusedi. He was not TłukwaAdi nor Tł’UknaAdi.] Qusedi don’t live at ue, but up at Knight Island. That's the place they stayed. They belong over there. They were the last people to live there [Knight Island]. atgawet stay over there—that's Łkettitc's son…They say Łkettitc gets married. He got some kind of dope, you know, from that slave—danakw they call it. That's why he get rich out of that. I forgot that slave's name….

ADVENTURES OF ATGAWET

[The following brief statements were contributed by a number of informants.]

The Kwacqwan first lived on Knight Island, then the Teqwedi. They lived at TłAKw-’an, Old Town. Du's sister was picking berries there, and they [the owners] cut the basket off her back, so Du bought the island. He was Kwacqwan and lived on the island. atgawet was the head of the Teqwedi tribe. He was Du's brother-in-law and married both his sisters. Du turned everything over to him…. [Minnie Johnson and Charley White; June 9, 1952.]

atgawet was a Tongass Teqwedi. His tribe came from Tongass but he was born at Akwe. His father was Łkettitc.

atgawet built the town on Knight Island. He gave tribal names to the Yakutat people in imitation of those of southeastern Alaska. He copied the names from the tribes at Klukwan near Haines [Chilkat]. The Yatqwan weren’t organized like the people of southeastern Alaska; neither were the interior Indians, the unana. atgawet married in here and organized the people and gave them names. He was married to two women. He called the brothers of one wife the anAtedi; the brothers of the other wife were the Kwacqwan. He liked the name TłAkw-‘an so much he gave it to the village on Knight Island. (When asked about Du, the informant said that he had not heard of him—my pronunciation may well have been at fault—but that different people have different stories about the town.) [Jack Ellis, 1949.]

atgawet used to be a big man. He had many slaves. He put up a great deal of food for the winter; dried fish and berries. He had food all the time, but when the other people were starving they would come to him and say: “I’m going to be your slave. Give me your dried fish. I’m starving, give me something to eat.” And they ask him to give them something to eat, and then they are his slaves—’At éci yAguwgu, ‘to become a dried-fish slave,’ they call it. Sometimes they get free when their family gets money and they pay it back. Sometimes when they have a potlatch, they are killed. Too bad, too bad! [Emma Ellis; August 5, 1952, somewhat edited.]

atgawet belonged to Lost River Xuts hIt [Bear House]. He lived all over, the crazy fellow. He was a big man, tried to have his own way with everybody and tried to be a big shot. He had a war canoe. He was not so rich until he married ałyI-Kagwantan's daughter. They [the ałyI-Kagwantan] were rich, very rich still to this day. [Susie Abraham; July 24, 1952.]

atgawet was a Teqwedi chief with slaves. He married Katłaténù and her younger sister, Dúhàn, both Kwacqwan women, and ’ndúł [same sib]. He had five wives in all. He was the first to live on Knight Island. He owned most of the islands. His grandchildren, his relatives, lived on the other islands.

’ndúł was so old that when she went outside of the house in winter she had a heart attack. They found a frog beside her in the snow. So they got this name, XIxt -si [Frog's Daughter], for someone else in the tribe. Mary Thomas [Kwacqwan] has that name now.

atgawet bought that humpy stream for his children. [The informant had never heard of Du, see below. She did not know the name of atgawet's house.] [Katy D. Isaac; June 30, 1952.]

atgawet was a big man from here, and he was married into the people [here]…He's the one that was buying up these islands here, like Knight Island, and these other islands, for his wife and kids. On account of most of the food was from those places, like Humpback Creek, he bought those for his wife and kids. He married three women from that tribe [Kwac-qwan], and bought Humpback Creek for them.

His wives were named: ’Andúł, Katłae (or Kała-ténkw), and Si’at. He was Teqwedi—one of the big shot men that owned slaves in those days. [Katy D. Isaac; March 24, 1954; in part recorded on tape 1954, 4–1, with additional comments.]

THE STORY OF DU's SISTER

This is one of the historical accounts, the chronology of which is uncertain, but which relates to the long series of conflicts between the Dry Bay Ravens and the Yakutat Indians, and which culminated in the destruction of the TłaayIk-Teqwedi by the Tł’UknaAdi, after the Russians had been driven from Yakutat. It seems appropriate to include this episode here, since atgawet was supposed to have been the brother-in-law of Du.

There were also other wars in the pre-Russian period we were given to understand, but our friends would not or could not give the details.

[The following version was told by Jenny Kardeetoo in 1949, interpreted by Minnie Johnson. The account has been slightly edited for the sake of clarity.]

The Kwacqwan bought Knight Island from the Kusedi [Kosedi], who sold all their ground and went to southeastern Alaska. Du bought the island from them. All his tribe contributed to buy the island. It was about a quarrel over berry picking. They got mad at Du‘s sister because she got ahead of them in picking strawberries. They cut her basket with a knife. [This the interpreter did not believe, “because they got no knife in those days.”]

Du built the first tribal house there, Nu hIt, ‘Fort House.’ A man married to his sister built Xuts hIt, ‘Bear House.’ This was right after the Russians left. It was only a camping place on the way to sealing camp before that. Now there are only big trees and elderberries where Nu hIt used to stand at TłAkw-‘an….

atgawet was the first man at Knight Island. He was Teqwedi. He had two wives. One was a Kwacqwan girl. A younger sister had to marry the husband of her older sister. He slept between them—big jealous!

They get into a war. Nobody could land at Knight Island. The enemy captured his sister-in law, Wuwac of DIs hIt [Moon House]. She was taken to Dry Bay. She was already married and had a boy when she was captured.

At Dry Bay she had an intimate friend, Da-tłen, ‘Big Weasel,’ a Tł’UknaAdi man. Other clans at Dry Bay were CAnkuqedi and Teqwedi. They were holding her for ransom. He didn’t want her to be a slave.

So he took her in his canoe to the shore of Dry Bay, and she walked all the way to Chicago Harbor [Eleanor Cove], opposite Knight Island. She made a fire with a drill and made a signal for her brother-in-law to come and get her. Her hair was matted with moss and devil-clubs. They got slaves to clean her hair, and then freed the slaves, they were so glad to get her back.

[When reminded of the story which she had interpreted in 1949, Minnie Johnson gave a version which she considered more accurate. July 13, 1952.]

It was Du's sister who was the girl who went back near Chicago Harbor. She got acquainted with the Tł’UknaAdi down there. They done something. The Tł’UknaAdi captured Du's sister for some reason. They kept two or three of them. It must be their tribe do something to the Tł’UknaAdi, otherwise they would never have captured her. They just want to keep her till they make peace [until her people paid for her, is implied].

They took that woman down to Gue. And there was a young fellow there. He was her boy friend. They got acquainted. He was the nephew of the head guy of Gue.

He felt sorry for her and he went as far as he can with her and the little boy in a canoe. He crossed the rivers. My grandmother told me about it.

They got in a canoe as far as the head of Situk. And then she walked across through the woods. That man was with her all the way.

And he start to make fire for her with a drill. It's got a round handle. And that flint, too, they used to hit it together and make sparks. And they have dry stuff they keep it in all the time—dry grass. They use pitch off the trees for kindling, like creosote piling. They make a shaving of it. They use the dry grass and then the pitch.

Then the boy didn’t want to be held up and found out. The people believe that she escape [all by herself]. He went right back. I don’t know how he make out with his uncle. But that fellow is out all the time, and he brings back grub from hunting.

atgawet sent slaves over to see who is making the fire. It was atgawet's wife's sister. I don’t know her name. They were so happy when they got Du's sister back. And her hair was all matted up with everything. And he ordered slaves to comb her hair and wash her and clean her up. And they let the slave go free.

It's a true story.

[atgawet also appears in stories of wars with the “Aleuts,” see pp. 254, 257].

atgawet AS POST-RUSSIAN

[The following comments were made by Harry K. Bremner who placed atgawet in post-Russian times.]

atgawet was a Teqwedi from southeastern Alaska, a rich man, and pretty high ’anyAdi [aristocrat]. He went all over marrying and had lots of wives. (Too many to remember.) He married [ałyI-Kagwantan's] daughter, Tłé’àn. Her brother is supposed to give his sister's husband a shirt when they marry. In that way he got a big pile of sea otter skins, higher than that girl. He got rich that way. He went to Cordova and married there. He said: “It looks to me like my brothers-in-law were like anAtedi,” so he gave them this name. Before that they had no name. He also named the Kosedi (Qusedi) at Cordova. He gave those names to TcIłqat [Chilkat on Bering River], Katliakh, Yakutat. When he married all over he gave these names to his new brothers-in-law. [He named both sibs and towns.]

Diyaguna’Et was his capital. But he used to stay at a little place in a house by himself, on the south bank of Lost River, between Diayaguna’Et and Nesudat. It was in a clearing shaped like a strawberry leaf, the stem towards the water. It was called “Strawberry Leaves” in Eyak. He stayed there, I don’t know why.

The first Raven's Bones House of the Kwacqwan was probably somewhere on Knight Island, nobody knows where. [July 11, 1952.]

[The following comments were made after hearing the recording by Katy D. Isaac.]

atgawet doesn’t belong in the old story. That's not the old story. [The story about him] it's not real old story. [In his day] all that tribe [Teqwedi] is already settled out at Lost River…at Diyaguna’Et. It's already a village that time that important man came up from southeast of Alaska—atgawet—not long ago.

The way they talk about buying islands at Yakutat, it's hundreds of years before. She [KDI] is right they find the ice clear across from Icy Bay…. The one who bought the land had two names; T’Uw [Du??] and the other name is Qéyq. He was ałyI-Kagwantan. The time he bought Knight Island, it's no trees, nothing on that island, just strawberries. They picked the strawberries.

It's his daughter. When they were picking strawberries—her name is AmayAq. She had two names. Her other name is Qètł. She was picking berries. That time they using baskets to pick berries. And she's got it packing berries on her back—packing. And the owners of the island, HInyedi, found her there. Those HInyedi cut up that basket that she is picking berries in.

And she reported to her father what the trouble is that she had. That's the time her father bought it for her, that means for the whole tribe. That tribe's name is Kwacqwan, what they call it now. [Before that the sib was named for their original home on Bremner River, GIne, “right across from Chitina.”] That's our tribe's name—GIneqwan. Until they buy that Humpback Stream, then they have another name again—Kwacqwan—That means “Humpback.” I think you got the whole story of that when I tell you that.

[When asked specifically about atgawet]:

That atgawet—big Indian doctor—the strongest, the biggest—and he's rich.

I just wanted to tell you it's a mistake that atgawet buy all the islands here. Everything is already settled down. It's many years after when they first discovered this piece of land from Copper River—Kagwantan [did]. I don’t know where they came from, that Kagwantan. They came in a canoe and we [Kwacqwan] walked on the land. You got it in your story, that one. They landed here before the Kwacqwan.

She [KDI] was right about the glacier was clear across some place up here—Chicago Harbor [Eleanor Cove]—across from there [Point Manby side].

[He commented that he had forgotten the names, but believes the history he learned from his father, and which the latter had learned from his uncle, Teqwedi.] The own tribe knows about themselves. atgawet was Xuts hIt. He came from southeast Alaska—went clear to Copper River. He married at Bremner River. He married there and at ałyA [“Katłya”]. He married a ałyI-Kagwantan's daughter. He had so many wives; that‘s why he became a rich man….

atgawet—he's not old. He's not so very far from my grandfather, I think. This atgawet—he had so many wives. I know one of his wives is Wanga-tła [WAnga-tła], another is Tłé’àn…. He lived here after the Russians. [The informant had never heard of him on Knight Island.] His place was over at Lost River—just a camp—they call it atgawet-’ani, that means ’atgawet's place.’ Right below Nesudat and the Teqwedi village, Diaguna’Et. That little place, they call it CUkwÁłał—that's Eyak…. They used to talk that language before. That means…“strawberry leaves”…three pieces. That's the way I think it looks. [He traced a three-lobed leaf with his finger. [May 2, 1954.]

[As a shaman, atgawet had many spirits, including the Sun's Children, Agan-yAti, and others that came later to the Teqwedi shaman, TE-’ic. When he first became a strong doctor, at Diyaguna’Et, he was “visited” by the spirit of a Tsimshian doctor. Later, atgawet and his wife, Tłé’àn, “visited” the Tsimshian shaman, that is, their spirits went while their lifeless bodies remained behind. It was on this occasion that atgawet obtained a Tsimshian spirit and its songs, as well as the right to the Killerwhale Hat, Kit axw, an emblem of the Yakutat Teqwedi. These stories will be found under Shamanism, pp. 710–712.]

THE SITE ON KNIGHT ISLAND

The discovery of a grave on Knight Island in June, 1949, and our excavations there (de Laguna et al., 1964), aroused great interest, and stimulated a number of the brief stories mentioned above. In addition we were told:

The Kwacqwan bought Knight Island. TłAkw-’an was a big city long before the Russians. Just east of this there was an old village called Yeł ’ada qutiyE (or Yeł’AdA ? Ayi, or qAtcíyè), “Raven Falls Down.” There were so many big houses there in a row, and when it's calm weather, the smoke goes straight up. So the raven that tries to fly over never gets to the end. It falls down. [Olaf and Susie Abraham; July 24, 1952.]

“Raven Falls Down” was the real name for the village we were excavating. atgawet called it TłAkw-’an to pretend it was a high-class people's place. [Sheldon James, Sr.; August 3, 1952.]

No one knew when the people moved from Knight Island, or why, but the consensus of opinion was that this was before the Russians came to Yakutat.

The grave, on the other hand, was generally associated with a shaman contemporary with the Russians. Thus, Olaf Abraham, ascribed the burial to a TłaayIk-Teqwedi shaman, the uncle of Tanu. The Russians were going to throw the body out because they discovered a Russian nail in the coffin. That started the trouble. [The coffin had been put together with handwrought iron nails.] Minnie Johnson, believed that the grave was that of the female shaman, Daódzù, sister to the Yakutat chief, Yaodaqet. She lived on Knight Island and predicted the coming of the Russians. Further information about this woman is given under Shamanism (pp. 712–713).

The Story of the CAnkuqedi

The CAnkuqedi came to the Dry Bay country from southeastern Alaska, via Chilkat. It was before this movement northward that one of their women married the Sun (see pp. 873–874). After they were living in the Alsek River area, they acquired the Thunder (bird) as a crest. Frank Italio (1870–1956), the last old man of his sib, told how his people came to Dry Bay, and also how the Thunderbird House came to be built.

HOW THE CANKUQEDI CAME TO DRY BAY

[The following narrative, interpreted by Minnie Johnson, has been somewhat edited, to include explanations made later in the interview. Three songs in Athabaskan—the fourth was forgotten—and one in Tlingit, connected with the drownings in the “Aiyan River” were recorded, 1952, 4–1–A a, b, c, and 4–1–D, see p. 1174. August 29, 1952.]

Cándà was where all the CAnkuqedi were living together down in the Southeast of Alaska. And they separated from the others. At that time people could settle any place they wanted to, and some moved in to Chilkat and went from there on.

From Chilkat up, they run across Unana, interior Indians. They come across them in hunting. They married into the Unana and became a part of them. The anAtedi claim they were the first to get acquainted with the Unana, were the first to meet the Unana that way. But the CAnkuqedi claim the anAtedi followed them there, that the anAtedi just followed them because they were married into them. The CAnkuqedi were the first to get acquainted with the Unana, just like brother and sister together. They [the anAtedi] look down on them [for that?], but they‘re the first Tlingit that meet the Unana. The anAtedi just follow them.

Nuqwa, NuqwayIk, is the first place they come to. [This was a Tlingit-speaking settlement on the headwaters of the Tatshenshini, a branch of the upper Alsek, not far from the source of the Chilkat River.] Then they came to Tł’Ukcu [Klukshu]. It was just a little way to Hutcai [Hutshi Lake]. It means ‘last lake.’ It was nothing but a big lake. It was a big place. That's where the women side of them married into the Unana. Then they went to TagIc [to the east, on the Yukon drainage, but perhaps not as far south as Tagish Lake itself]. The TagIc people are always hired by someone to lead them on. The CAnkuqedi hired the TagIcqwan as guides.

From there on, as they walked on the land, to Aiyan, they call it. The Aiyan were just like one of them, so the CAnkuqedi move right in, keep going. A long time they walk. It takes a whole year to travel back and forth from Aiyan's place. They call it Aiyan-’ani. [This is probably Selkirk on the Yukon.] It‘s a long ways to walk.

The river is running out so swift and they can’t get across. So they make a raft to cross the Aiyan hini. They tried to get across, but it's so swift all of the CAnkuqedi get killed but one. He's the only one of the CAnkuqedi bunch. There was a post there, and a line. You’re supposed to catch the post so the raft won’t be swept away. This man, QAtuduwAE, grabbed the line but missed the post, so the whole shooting match went under a tunnel-like. That river is running right into a cave. None of them is saved. It is called Yeł kai, “the place that Raven cracked” [literally ‘Raven's crevasse,’ cf. Harrington, síł’ kháasii, ’glacier's crevasse’].

The fellow that was saved, he ran back to Chilkat to notify the people that all his people are gone. So they all get up and went to that place. But when they got there, they found them all eat up by animals. So they went to work and gathered up the bones and just burned the bones.

You see, the river went through there, and just when they passed through there, so swift, there's a kind of eddy on the other side. That's where they find those dead people carried there. At the mouth of that thing everything is boiling like, just boiling. So the bodies washed ashore, but the animals eat them up.

Anything's bound to happen, it happens. That rope was made of moosehide, the strongest there is. That fellow done enough to get it around the post, but it broke, because it‘s time for them people to die.

[This may well have been at the Five Finger Rapids on the Yukon.]

Qànetł’, ‘Big Fat Man,’ was the Aiyan chief. He had invited them. He kind of adopted them, get together as true friend, like brother and sister. He's chief of that Aiyan River. He's CAnkuqedi himself, because he adopted them. That's why he turned four of his potlatch songs over to the CAnkuqedi, so they can use them in place of the people who got drowned. It's just like he's guilty of the fact that the people died because he invited them. So he let them have four of his precious potlatch songs, so the CAnkuqedi can use them.

So the CAnkuqedi got together and went to meet that man. That's the time they got those precious songs.

[Frank Italio sang for the tape recorder three of the four songs in Athabaskan, all he could remember. He thanked us for listening, and then was overcome with grief. When recovered, he sang a song in Tlingit, composed by a CAnkuqedi woman whose relatives had been drowned in the Aiyan River.]

After they got drowned, they composed this song. This song is composed by a woman. It is made like that:

Well, I give up, I give up.

My uncles and my relatives,

I give up.

There's a lot of other people have suffered

Just the same as I am, you know,

And they get along just the same.

But, you know, I don’t give up, I don’t give up.

And the next words to the song are made like that:

Why shouldn’t my uncles come to be alive,

And come to the door?

Come in through the door and let me see you?

Then I be sure that you’re not all of you gone at once.

Why should I expect you?

I know that you’re all drowned.

But anyhow, sometimes I expect you to come in the door.

But now, I give up, I give up.

[Later, not recorded]: There's a verse I skipped:

I should give up,

But I know all my uncles is drowned.

When first they started,

I never had an idea they were all going to go at once.

Yet they never came back.

I should know they all get drowned.

I should give up in the first place

All my uncles went under the water when the raft broke.

But I should know that.

These are the words I skipped.

[Frank Italio and the translator both wept when this song was played back.]

The TłukwaAdi were the first to settle in ’Ałse, and then the CAnkuqedi tribe women married into them. The woman was Cteyuti (or CtE’utE’); Yełida was the man. That's an old name. That TłukwaAdi man went to Chilkat to get this CAnkuqedi girl to marry him. That's how the CAnkuqedi find out about the Alsek country. Then that man and wife had children growing up. They knew they came from Chilkat, so they go back to Chilkat, these grownup children of Cteyuti and Yełida.

They found a glacier, an easy way to go back and forth. The name of the place where they found the road they have to walk on is called iyaw or iyaw. It's not too big a glacier, just a small glacier.

And from there they found a different place, called GuA or uA. This is the easiest way to walk back and forth, a path that goes easy, no bushes. And they get away from that glacier business. That was a long long way, and risky. But this was just like you walk on a board floor, no bushes to contend with. That's how the Yakutat people came to travel back and forth, easy. And even the Taneda Teqwedi found out about it. They go back and forth this way and don’t use salt water. The Taneda people walk across to Chilkat and then way back to the head of Alsek. That's how the Teqwedi came to Yakutat. But the TłukwaAdi were the finders of Dry Bay and Alsek.

The Unana taught them [the Tlingit] how to travel. They’re great travelers. Nothing to do but walk around.

THE BOY WHO WAS TAKEN BY THE THUNDERBIRDS (1949)

[The following was told by Frank Italio, in 1949, with Helen Bremner interpreting, to explain the Thunderbird Screen in his house in Yakutat. It will be seen how little this version varies from the account recorded in 1952.]

The tribe was moving in a canoe down from way up the Alsek River. The kid wanted to go ashore. When he went ashore for a rest he went up on top of a mountain, not very high, and lay down and fell asleep. When they moved on, they forgot him and left him there. They forgot him until they got to the glacier where they were going to camp. When they were unloading the canoe they saw he was left behind. It was only 1 day's travel down, but it was 4 days back to where they left the kid. They don’t go back to look for him because they know he was already dead.

The Thunderbirds found and saved the child.

The child lived among the Thunders, and when he's grown up he came among his own tribe, and began to get feathers like the Thunderbird. The Thunderbird let him come down to his tribe, took him back. The Thunderbird didn’t do any harm to that kid because he knows he belongs to his tribe. That's why he trained him to be a strong man and let him go back to his people.

From that kid, the people know where the Thunderbird lives. When it comes out, that's when you see the bright lightning. The kid didn‘t forget his own language. He talked to his people when he got back.

The interpreter used the terms “Thunder” and “Thunderbird” interchangeably, since the Tlingit word, xètł, means both. In the following account note also that the Tlingit sI-nè means both ‘to save,’ and ‘to capture someone.’ It is used of a supernatural being.

THE BOY WHO WAS TAKEN BY THE THUNDERBIRDS (1952)

[Frank Italio recorded the story in Tlingit and sang two songs connected with it, 1952, 2–1–C and 2–1–F. These were translated by Minnie Johnson. The following account is edited to include a preliminary translation of the story which was given on the same occasion, but was not recorded. July 30, 1952.]

Frank Italio was telling the reason why all the CAnkuqedi belong to the Thunderbird…the reason why they claim the Thunderbird is ahead [the head] of them, of the CAnkuqedi.

The people were all at the head of the Alsek and there was a little boy with them. They were at a camping place called Glacier Point, SÍ aI, and they all went ashore for some kind of a lunch. You know the Alsek is very swift. They need lines to take the canoes up.

This little boy was about 4 years old and he fell asleep on a flat rock. They didn’t miss him until they were at the foot of the Alsek. From there it's 4 days travel back. All the CAnkuqedi were moving down and they miss that boy. Nobody feel like going back against the swift current of the river running out. My goodness, it's 4 days hard travel back, so they decide it couldn’t be done. They decide by the time they get there the boy will be dead. They might just as well give up. Nobody could go alone to get that boy.

“He‘ll be dead.” So they decide to let it go.

…After that boy disappeared, they had a big potlatch when they know they can’t get him back…After he's lost for good, sombody compose a song for the boy. That's why the boy's name is mentioned [in the song]. It is GòsnÀ’w…So after they give up hope to see that little boy, some of the CAnkuqedi compose this song [1952, 2–1–C, see p. 1171]. The words to it are nothing but Eyak language [sic; the Tlingit, yAtqwan enA, ‘aboriginal speech,’ in this case undoubtedly refers to the local Athabaskan]. The old people understand that language at that time. It seems to hurt their hearts so bad they compose a song. They just mention his name. But they found out afterwards the Thunderbird take care of him.

[The mourning song, with its quavering repetitions, was sung through twice; see pp. 1214–1215.]

…He can’t understand a word, but from generation to generation they are practicing, so the next one to take his place…. I’m going to leave the Eyak [sic] language out….

That boy who was left up there start to cry, and the Thunderbird came around him, as a human being, and he save that boy. He took that boy and he raised him in a cave in the mountain.

[Frank is demonstrating to them how he belongs to Thunderbird….]

The boy get lonesome, so the Thunderbird get it in his feeling he has no right to capture him, so he deliver him to his family. He's a full grown man when he come back. From his leg down, all around his knees to his ankles, it's turned into Thunderbird quills, and from his wrists to his elbows [along the insides of his limbs].

He is the one who is the head of the family.

…When the boy begins to be a man old enough so he knows what the Thunderbird looks like, he start to give advice to the people [about] how the Thunderbird took him in, and he gave instructions to the people…. That boy, when he come alive, when he come back, when he's full grown, he built that Xetł hIt [Thunderbird House] and paint that in [screen, partition.] He built it according to the Thunderbird…. He made what you call a painted board like a picture of the Thunderbird…. He ordered how the Thunderbird house look in the mountain (pl. 91).

So they made a in. He sings a song whenever they potlatch that tribe…. That's why they claim that song and sing that at a big potlatch, because they spent so much money on it….

That's from generation to generation, they claim the Thunderbird is the head of them. But all the DAqEstina family died off but Frank Italio, the only head of the tribe who knows anything about it…. It hurts like anything, but he carried the tune out…. All of his family died off, and he's the only CAnkuqedi left….

This is a song for the painted screen [1952, 2–1–F, p. 1171]—Kagwantan inasuwu [not translated]. The Kagwantan use that song, too, when they potlatch anyone. It's a new tribal song. They [CAnkuqedi] have been down among the Kagwantan but they come up to Dry Bay….

[After the song was sung, the interpreter explained]:

The first words sings like it's an order from the boy captured by the Thunderbird about the wall painting. So this is composed by the Thunderbird captured boy…. [After a discussion with the informant, what appears to be a conflicting statement was given.] That's the song when they separate from the other tribe down below [apparently referring to the CAnkuqedi migration].

…The song that Frank Italio sings is an order from that little boy grown to a big man. He ordered this. And the understanding is, that the reason they use this song in the potlatch of a close relative who died, or something happened…. they use this song just to remind them of that little boy who got left on the rock. When he came back, he wants his people to belong to the Thunderbird.

It's composed like this [first stanza]:

Everytime when I hear the Thunderbird,

This man whenever he gets hurt, [I always become hurt]

The Thunderbird sounds like my brother that I lost,

It sounds like my uncle that I lost,

When I hear the thunder noise.

The next words he sings sounds like this [second stanza]:

They have got no pity for me.

They have got no pity for me.

But I get surprised when I hear the thunder.

It sounds like the relatives I lost,

Because they got no pity for me,

They left me alone.

But the Thunderbird is the head of us. I’m alone and the only one left. But the ladies ask me to sing what belongs to my tribe.

COMMENT ON THE THUNDERBIRD STORY

One of three verses of the same or a similar song was recorded by Mrs. Chester Johnson, June 10, 1954, 1954, 5–2–E, p. 1172. The song was” Xetł u daciyi, a song for the Thunder Blanket…composed before my mother was born. He's lonesome for that thunder noise.”

[The words were dictated and translated:]

It always makes me lonesome,

When I hear the thunder.

I always think of [imagine] my brother,

When I hear the thunder.

[The second stanza is about “my uncle—’a kak.”]

[The informant added:] Gònáq—xetł [thunder] catch him. Xetłtc wUcat [by-thunder he-was-seized]. That's why we build Thunder House.

The Story of the Teqwedi

As we have seen, Swanton's informant dated the arrival of the Teqwedi from Prince of Wales Island among the Kwacqwan shortly after the settlement of the latter on Yakutat Bay. The stories about atgawet—or about a Teqwedi man to whom this name and personality is ascribed—would support this chronology. We have, unfortunately, no adequate account of the immigration of the Bear House lineage, to which atgawet belonged. This is because the last big men of the lineage, Jim Kardeetoo, who was also named atgawet, and William Milton, Neut or NEut, died in 1937 and 1950 (or 1951), so that there was no one who felt ready to tell the official history of this house. For this reason, we have only brief statements about the Bear House group, in contrast to the fuller history of the Drum House Teqwedi, told by their leader, Olaf Abraham.

COMMENTS ON TEQWEDI HISTORY

[The following remarks were made by Jack Ellis, 1949.]

The Tongass Teqwedi split up in a fight over a girl. She was married to an old chief in one house—a chief always had one young wife—and a young fellow in the next house wanted her. The people of the chief's house killed him, and they had to move to Killisnoo. They kept on moving to Diyaguna‘Et.

At this place, the Teqwedi, who were rich traders, had three houses in a fort. The Ł’uedi, ‘Muddy Water People,’ named for the Situk River, took the fort from them in a battle. Later when they [Ł’uedi?] went to Khantaak (?) to get a woman, the Kwacqwan killed them all off.

[The following was volunteered after stressing the difference between the true Teqwedi of southeastern Alaska and the TłaayIk-Teqwedi. (Harry K. Bremner; May 2, 1954).]

Long long before the Russians, a Yakutat chief sent to Southeast of Alaska for a chief's daughter to marry to his son. He paid a lot for her. All Gau hIttan [Drum House people] are descended from her…. They settled on Ahrnklin River.

But the Xuts hIttan [Bear House people] came up themselves in war canoes [later?]. They had a war with the TłaayIk-Teqwedi at Lost River, at Diyaguna’Et. All were killed except the chief. His face was badly cut. His name was Daqusetc…. Yes, there were lots of that name…. The chief of that name was head of Xuts hIt on Khantaak [Chief Minaman]. It was also called Tu hIt [Shark House]. Xuts hIt was the mother—just as Yeł aqe hIt [Raven's Bones House] was the mother of lots of houses.

[Unfortunately, the name of the chief does not tell us whether he was Bear House Teqwedi or TłaayIk-Teqwedi, since famous names of the latter are now borne by the Bear House Teqwedi. I would suppose that Daqusetc was, however, a Bear House chief, and that it was his group that were defeated. The final crushing of the TłaayIk-Teqwedi did not occur until after the Russians had been driven out, see pp. 262–270.]

[A Drum House man made the following statement. (Sheldon James, Sr.; February 23, 1954).]

The Teqwedi came from down south. But my family came from Dry Bay by the interior. The others stayed in Dry Bay and Italio River, but us, we came on to ’Antłen. Frank Italio's tribe [CAnkuqedi] and my tribe came from the same place, same family. [But the CAnkuqedi remained in Dry Bay, while the Teqwedi came toward Yakutat.] They used to tell us that Teqwedi had just one tribe to get married with—Tł’UknaAdi. That was olden days. It changed a lot since my grandfather's days. Before that time, a person can’t do as he please against his tribe's rules. Now they call it a free country.

[The same man had said, August 3, 1952:]

We used to live in Dry Bay. But some boys walked to Ahrnklin. People were living there. So they bought the Ahrnklin. The others stayed in Dry Bay and became the CAnkuqedi.

Other Teqwedi came from Ketchikan.

The original owners of Ahrnklin spoke Tlingit.

THE TEQWEDI AND TłUKNAXADI AT DRY BAY

[The following brief story, told by Emma Ellis, a Kagwantan woman from Dry Bay, may serve to illustrate how the souhteastern Alaskan sibs, Teqwedi and Tł’UknaAdi, became established in the Dry Bay area. (February 21,1954.)]

A Tł’UknaAdi man, Qatłse (or Qałseykw), stopped this side of Lituya Bay, at Yakwdeyia. He was coming up from Southeast of Alaska—wanted to get something [presumably in trade]. He had a young daughter. I guess she's Teqwedi, I don’t know her name. His daughter got first monthly and can’t go on the water. So he stayed there with his daughter. And all the other TłukwaAdi were going over there, and see those people…. You know, a man always takes a good woman. A TłukwaAdi ’ànqáwu [aristocrat] see that girl.

Her mother ask her, “Give me that thing.”

They put a blanket around the girl. That man feel it in his heart, is stuck on that girl. He talks to her mother and father. Qatłse says, “That's OK.” He can marry that girl.

Then they give so many things to her mother and father [as bride price]….

The nephews, they take that girl. They packing to ’Ałse…way up to head of ’Ałse. That's how they got that Tł’UknaAdi—put it together in Dry Bay, because that girl is married to that TłukwaAdi. They don’t bother that country over there, [i.e., the Tł’UknaAdi made no claims on Dry Bay]. They say that's TłukwaAdi country, good country. All TłukwaAdi owned Dry Bay.

THE STORY OF THE DRUM HOUSE TEQWEDI

[This version is compiled from statements and explanations made by Olaf Abraham, and translated by his wife, Susie Abraham, July 24, 1952. A copy was given to him and approved by him.]

Long ago the Teqwedi came here from Ketchikan. They were feeling bad when they left, and those who stayed behind felt bad, too. They had trouble. But now they forget it.

They stopped at Killisnoo and Klukwan. At Sitka Island they separated, and some went outside and some went inside. Those that went inside, when they separated at the point, were Olaf Abraham‘s ancestors.

They stopped at some place between Lituya Bay and Dry Bay. [Olaf Abraham had forgotten the name.] They made a town there, and settled there.

The young people began to go for a walk and made a long trip. They found some people at Arhnklin. The name of the river is ’Antłen, short for ’At ‘ani-tłén, ‘big town of animals.’ The young people fell in love with the mountains and the river. They went back and told their chief how pretty that river is. The chief's name was GútłÈniyu; he was chief of Gau hIt [Drum House].

So the chief went to meet the other chief, the chief of the YEnyedi who owned the land, and they began to talk about it. So GútłÈniyu bought the Ahrnklin land for a big copper, tInna. The copper was as long as from the tips of his fingers to his chin, when his head was bent back, and was worth 10 slaves.

Then all the Gau hIttan came up there and the YEnyedi moved to southeastern Alaska, to Taku, where some of them still live today.

The Teqwedi built a big town on the Ahrnklin which they called ’Antłen, the same name as the river. It had four big houses: Drum House and Thunderbird House, and two others. Lots of people used to live there, but they are all gone now. There were also other towns there.

The river is cutting into the bank where the town of ’Antłen used to be and you can see charcoal 4 feet deep in the ground where the houses stood.

The land bought by the Gau hIttan included Dangerous River, called Kutłitcki hín, the east branch of the Ahrnklin called Staéya, the main branch of the Ahrnklin, and the northwest branch called GAnEtitsk. The name is in the language of the people who first owned this land, so we don’t know what it means. The land also included Seal River to the west, called Tsa ’ie. There is also a small stream northwest of the Seal River that also opens into the mouth of the Ahrnklin, but it has no name.

Olaf Abraham's uncle, Daknaqín [Ned Dok-na-kane, died sometime after 1921], used to own the land before him, but now Olaf Abraham owns it. He has four cabins there, and goes there to hunt every year. Because the land was bought for a copper worth 10 slaves, everyone has respect for him, and no one in Yakutat will go there to hunt without asking him permission. All the rivers from Dangerous River to the Situk belong to the Gau hIttan, but Olaf Abraham doesn’t take care of Dangerous River any more.

Other Teqwedi, Xuts hIttan, Bear House People, own Situk and Lost River. They settled there later, and this land is not as valuable because they didn’t buy it; they just homesteaded it.

The TłaayIk-Teqwedi were a different group. They lived at Situk and Lost River and in Yakutat Bay long ago. ŁucwAq was their chief. They were almost all killed in a war, and the rest of them moved north. George Johnson came from that place and is called ŁucwAq.

The YEnyedi also lived in Yakutat Bay, once. They sold Knight Island and Eleanor Island and other islands to the Kwacqwan. The Kwacqwan came from Copper River and spoke Copper River language. That is different from George Johnson‘s language. Now the Kwacqwan and the Gau hittan Teqwedi marry each other and both tribes speak Tlingit and live in Yakutat.

[Minnie Johnson, August 17, 1952, identified the builder of Thunderbird House on the Ahrnklin as KItcidAł, Heavy Wings, for whom Daknaqin was also named.]

COMMENT ON THE SALE OF AHRNKLIN LANDS

[Maggie Harry, a Kwacqwan woman, explained what happened to the YEnyedi (August 24, 1952).]

The YEnyedi sold Ahrnklin and walked to the interior, to Taku, via the Yukon. They went from the head of Yakutat Bay over a glacier, Si usa, ‘narrow glacier,’ in Nunatak Fiord. [She was uncertain of the location.] From there they went to Tcanukwa [probably near Scotty Creek on the headwaters of the Alsek, below Dalton Post]. Then to Taku Lake, and to Klukwan. That's where they came from. It was 3 months walking. It took 1 months to Taku Lake or Atlin Lake, ’Atłin. They went all around Atlin Lake to Klukwan.

[There are two versions of how the Ahrnklin Drum House people were nearly exterminated. One of these ascribes the trouble to smallpox, the other to a feud within the lineage or sib, but since the time when this occurred is evidently fairly recent, these stories are postponed to a later section. It was, however, while the Drum House people were living on the Ahrnklin that they obtained the Golden Eagle as a crest. Here also, the wolves guarded the body of a Drum House man who had drowned (p. 828).]

THE STORY OF THE GOLDEN EAGLE

[The following official version of how the Drum House Teqwedi obtained their crest is compiled from the story as told by Olaf Abraham and translated by his son, February 28, 1954, and as he told it on April 8, 1954 as an introduction to the Golden Eagle's song (p. 1166). This version and the translation by his nephew, the late Sheldon James, Sr., were recorded 1954,1–1–F. Another translation of the last was also made by John Ellis on April 15, 1954.]

Now you are going to hear from us about our origin and destiny [ha CAgun], We are Teqwedi. You will hear the song about the place where we have our land. This happened way up at the head of Ahrnklin River. One of our ancestors [QeeAtqin] who were living at Ahrnklin was out hunting in the mountains at the head of Ahrnklin, and he came upon that Golden Eagle. As he was coming towards it, he heard it singing. That was why he walked towards the place where the song was coming.

As soon as the bird saw the man, it began to sing in Tlingit, and he could understand it. The man saw that Golden Eagle was holding two baby groundhogs. It had broken its wing trying to catch those little groundhogs. The bird did not want to be killed, so in place of its life, it gave that song to the man. He listened until he learned it by heart. That is how the old people came to know it. They never liked to kill anything in a wounded condition. And that is why the bird gave the man that song in place of its life.

Then the man came to the bird, set the wing, and put it in a dry cave in the rock.

That bird was intended to be the origin and destiny of the Ahrnklin Teqwedi. Ahrnklin is where that Golden Eagle Screen was created [formerly in Drum House, Old Village]. (Pl. 213.)

How many hundreds of years the people were living before us? But the history of what happened to them has been handed down from generation to generation from that time to the present. That is why we know it.

This is the song I want to sing, so everybody can hear it. If anyone belonging to the Drum House People hears this song, anywhere in the world, he will know who he is, and from whom he is descended. That is all. I am going to sing:

[The words of the song are:]

I come from the other side of the mountain.

From where the sun rises, it is beginning to be light.

The dawn of morning is coming from the other side of the mountain.

[The name, QeeAtqin, also heard as QeetAtqin, and even eeatqin, was born by Skin Canoe George or George Ki-ye-quat-kene, 1855–1900. He was the brother of Daknaqin, and assistant to the shaman, Te-’ic. He was the son of Yaodaqet and QakEnAkugé. He was Olaf Abraham's uncle and the father of the first Mrs. Olaf Abraham. The name was inherited by Olaf's older brother, Joseph, and since the death of the latter is borne by Olaf Abraham himself.]

The Story of the ałyI-Kagwantan

The account of the ałyI-Kagwantan included in Harry Bremner's history of Yakutat is probably as authentic and official a version as we can obtain. Only a few additional details are available.

ORIGIN OF THE AŁYIX-KAGWANTAN

Mrs. Katy D. Isaac (March 29, 1954) believed that the ałyI-Kagwantan were “a branch of the Qukw hittan—Box House People…. [They came to ałyI] just through intermarriage from down there.”

[The following brief account was given by Helen Bremner, a member of the sib. (July 14, 1952.)]

In ałyI (or alyA), after the big Flood, we are all out on the ocean.

First, they see a beautiful mountain. And a big man is sitting in the boat, acting as captain.

“See that beautiful mountain over there. Looks like it's all painted. Maybe there's a river and we can find the mouth.”

They come to the mountain and they see the mouth and went in. They see the best place, and the Kagwantan get out and take the best place. There is just enough dry land for them. Those that came later are left out. “Go in the swampy place,” they said. They were the TcIcqedi.

And when there were too many for ałyI, we move farther up to Bering River and Strawberry Harbor. And then the Tcicqedi moved farther up, to their fathers, that is, to the mouth of the Copper River. Their fathers were the anAtedi. The anAtedi gave them too much land, and they got too much fur. So the anAtedi took it away again.

[It was while the ałyI-Kagwantan were living on Bering River that they obtained the Beaver as a crest, see below. It is not clear from where the ałyI-Kagwantan brothers went into the sky; however, see pp. 875–879].

WAR WITH THE ALEUTS

[One episode about atgawet concerns the ałyI-Kagwantan. (Helen Bremner; June 20 and 26, 1952.)]

atgawet had 10 wives. He married them all, looking for the richest one, and finally married Kagwantan's daughter.

…We [ałyI-Kagwantan] used to have a war with the Aleuts. We are on land at ałyI (ałyA) and they are in the boats. atgawet, the Teqwedi chief, was married to Tłéyàn (Tłé’àn), the Kwacqwan daughter of the Kagwantan chief. She was the sister of Du, who bought Knight Island.

When the fight started, atgawet said: “I‘m going to be in with my father-in law.”

He was walking back and forth in front of everyone, and was shot by an arrow in his forehead. He recovered and the Kagwantan gave him the best land. [That is, he was given the right to hunt on the best land. The Teqwedi never acquired permanent rights in this area.]

THE AŁYI-KAGWANTAN BEAVER

[The following account was given by Helen Bremner, a ałyI-Kagwantan woman, June 26, 1952. She knew that the Raven Decitan of Angoon also claimed the Beaver, and had read Swanton's “The Beaver of Killisnoo” (1909, Tale 68; de Laguna, 1960, pp. 136 f.). The ałyI-Kagwantan myth resembles more closely however, Swanton's ‘The Big Beaver’ (1909, Tale 62).]

The Decitan got the Beaver by accident, I guess.

We have egédi [Beaver], too. We learned a song from egédi. The Decitan learned it, too, but it's a different one. Ours is: “I wonder who can stop my uncles. They built a town for nothing.”

[The beaver house was in a lake.] It's all washed away. The lake washed away and the egédi-qwan [Beaver People] all died off. A Kagwantan young man was out hunting. They get the best things—furs—and fur of beaver is the best. He saw the lake was all washed away—no beaver house, nothing. He was looking around. He heard someone sing, half crying. He looked to see where that was. He looked up in the tree, the alder. There was a little Beaver singing. He didn’t want to kill it. He learned that song, went back home, and reported what he had seen.

That's how we got that song and that house egédi hit [Beaver House].

[At the request of this informant, Frank Italio told the story and sang the song composed by the little Beaver, September 13, 1952. This was recorded, as was the translation by Minnie Johnson, 1952, 7–1-B and 7–1-D, p. 1169.]

Now I’m going to explain the story, the reason why they claim the Beaver as their tribal affair and why they claim all the ałyI-Kagwantan belong to the Beaver tribe. Once they lived at a place called ’AnAkwé in Tlingit or in Eyak language. And the Beaver built a den [dam ?] there. But for some reason or other, the den was destroyed, and the whole bunch of Beavers were all drowned.

It seems there was just one little Beaver left. Finally they found that little Beaver sitting where the den was destroyed, all by his lonesome. And he composed this song:

There's nobody prohibit one another from building the den there. They know very well the river will destroy it. Nobody put them wise to it; nobody begged out. And they built the den there, and they know they’ve got to be destroyed by the river. That's why they made that song:

Who will stop building the den?

Who will stop building the den?

But they do it.

They build the den just the same.

That's why all my uncles went, and just left me behind alone.

That's why the ałyI-Kagwantan claim that song, because the little Beaver composed it. And they use this song when they give a potlatch, when they’re going to give the money away or else invite the people to the big potlatch….

And finally they built a tribal house in that place they call ’AnAkwé in their language, and they named it Beaver House.

But afterwards the people put them wise to it—that they should make something to remember the Beaver by, instead of building the house. The house will soon be destroyed. [Is this a reference to the flood on Bering River that destroyed Beaver House and Wolf House, cf. p. 104, or does it refer to the beaver's lodge?]

The next words to the song the little Beaver composed are like this:

Because there was nobody [to warn them ?], they’re just as much to blame as the people that destroyed that den.

And so, he gives up hope.

He sees the rest, his uncles and his whole family—all went.

There's nobody to blame but themselves, because they put the den there where the river goes out pretty swift.

They are just as much to blame as the river and the people [who?] are in ’AnAkwé.

That's the reason they claim this song, as their tribal song…. So this song belongs to egédi; they belong to egédi tribe.

[There was no further information about any people who might have destroyed the beaver dam. The ałyi-Kagwantan Beaver song is known to have the same tune as that sung by the Decitan, although the words are different. Frank Italio also said something about the Decitan Beaver story. The Decitan broke the dam with their spears and a woman of their sib heard the Beaver sing. It was a male, and when grown it took revenge by killing the Decitan chief and his relatives. (MJ, September 14, 1952).]

This story prompted the comment by Helen Bremner (recorded): “That little Beaver is a very active little animal.”

[A Kwack’qwan informant also told the story, although explaining, “It's not our nation. I can’t talk about it.” (May 5, 1954.) This version is somewhat edited.]

When that village was washed away, just one Beaver, the mother Beaver was saved. It went up into the bushes and sat down, and the water was coming down and washed it [the beaver lodge] away….

That man went hunting. And he heard that song. That's why that man took it down to the canoe, that Beaver. He saved it; he don’t want to kill it because he learned that song from that animal. And he kept it in his house, just like people. He took care of it.

That man is Kagwantan. That's why Kagwantan keep that song.

…And that Beaver, they never killed it. That man saw it. There was just one kind of nation there. That man said: “That Beaver is going to be my nation, going to be my sister.” He's alone, just like it. He went away from his relations for good. And that Beaver saved itself, when [the rest] washed away.

And that's why the Kagwantan had that egédi hit there; and that Beaver stay in it sometimes.

[Another Kwacqwan informant, Annie Johnson, was talking about the ałyI-Kagwantan Beaver, and sang a snatch of the song, but refused to record it, because it didn’t belong to her sib. “Too bad—I scared” (August 13,1952). Minnie Johnson then summarized the story:]

How they come to claim the Beaver—It was way up the Chilkat River [Bering River, Controller Bay]. They go over a glacier to get there. And then somebody matures, a young girl. And they ain’t supposed to walk on the glacier. A Beaver got a dam there, and he has a big family and a dam. The glacier melt and wash the whole thing away. And just one Beaver was left and he composed this song. That‘s why he owns the song and why it belongs to ałyI-Kagwantan. The way ahead of the Chilkat [headwaters of the Bering River] belongs to the Kagwantan.

[It should be noted that this version, which blames the flood that destroyed the beaver colony on the breach of a menstrual taboo, was told a month before Frank Italio recorded the story, as translated above by the same informant.]

[Another Kwacqwan woman, March 8, 1954, who had heard the recording, commented:]

Frank Italio said ‘It was told me by two people, this story.’ He didn’t mention who told him…. ‘somebody told me’…I think that's why he's telling it different from the way other people tell it. It's by the flood it's all washed away. And that little Beaver left alone. The little Beaver was sitting alone on top of the cottonwood, just moving—you know how flood is. People used to live in big rivers. That's how those Beavers were living, in the river…. It's my father's tribe and I hear them tell it…. It was the flood, but…Frank tells that somebody broke the Beaver's dam.

THE AŁYI-KAGWANTAN AND THE FIRST SHIP

[The following story was also told by Helen Bremner (June 20, 1952).]

Along east of Yakataga, two [ałyI-Kagwantan] boys were beachcombing, running around the beach. They saw a schooner. They saw a White lady sitting inside. She was holding a gun. She pointed it at them. They didn’t understand what it was. She thought the two Indians had done something to the two men from the ship. [Apparently this was explained by signs.]

They saw the tracks of the two men and followed them back to the glacier, to where the men had fallen in the black pit under the ice. They came back and took her by the hand and led her to the place, so she could see what had happened.

Then they took a lot of things from the ship, but they didn’t understand them. They thought rice was worms and threw it overboard, although she explained it was good to eat. The black powder they thought was dried blueberries and tried to eat it, but she explained with gestures that it would explode, and made them throw it away. She gave them guns and tried to show them how to shoot. But they took them and burned the wooden part off and broke them up for iron. They made the steel into spears. An iron spearpoint used to cost a slave. So they became wealthy.

One of the boys was Qatsá (Katsá). He was the bravest and the fastest runner. The White woman married him and finally died of old age.

Qatsá used to run across the ice from Point Manby to Yakutat. He was the fastest one.

There was a big tree at Point Manby, hollow. He would get inside and hear the storm coming long before. Then he wouldn’t try to cross on the ice. If he didn’t hear anything, he can run across. (Other people could also use the tree as a storm warning.)

[Mention is made of the same hollow tree in Swanton's story of the Kwacqwan, 1909, Tale 105, p. 360. However, it is placed beside the glacier at the head of Humpback Creek, and gives a warning not to cross the glacier. Since the glacier is reached by canoe and is the home of the seals, it would appear to be ice across Disenchantment Bay, if not across Yakutat Bay.]

[A Kwacqwan woman, Sarah Williams, also mentioned the finding of the wrecked ship. A man of her sib, born 1897, had been telling the story (May 10, 1954).]

He's talking about it. He's the first—Qatsa married with the Russian girl. They find her in the boat on the beach, in the ship. They got four White men—Russians—and they die under that glacier, and put that White lady in the boat. That White lady never understand them [the Indians who found her], and they never understand that White lady. The people were looking for the four men.

He's the one married with that White woman. He's Kagwantan.

The Copper River people told them [i.e., there were apparently Kwacqwan with the ałyI-Kagwantan], “We better help that woman.” And they go in the ship and they ask her what happened. And they say it's on the beach, that ship. And they were looking for something, those men, and they lost it [or, the four Russians were lost]. They never come back. They fell under the glacier. And that man saw it, that Qatsa saw it.

“I’m going to be married with that woman” [he said]. She is the one.

They came, came from the Copper River close to Mount Saint Elias, that's where they found it. And they came with us [Kwacqwan], they married with that Kagwantan. That Kagwantan took care of that woman.

That's the way he [PF] say it. He just talking about it, and I hear him sing two songs.

Wars with the Aleuts

While there are traditions of wars with the “Aleuts,” as we have seen, it is almost impossible to determine when the particular incidents occurred. Probably there was long-standing hostility, antedating the arrival of Russian-led sea-otter hunters which inflamed hatred of the Goe. Some of the events, such as the raids on Chugach territory, probably included that of 1792 in which Baranov himself was accidentally involved (see pp. 158–159), perhaps the “Massacre at St. Elias Rock” in 1799 (see p. 169), and almost certainly the raid made in the fall of 1805, just after the destruction of the Yakutat post, which led to the massacre of the Yakutat on Hawkins Island (see p. 175). Because of the uncertainty of dating, it seems most convenient to present these short historical comments here.

COMMENTS RECORDED BY HARRINGTON

[Apropos of the Aleuts]: These buggers are too mean. They had to chase them out from Katalla and way from Cordova to the island. They are the same size as I, small fellows, and they sneak up on you and kill you when you are asleep. They are sure going to get you when you are sound asleep. [George Johnson; 1939 or 1940.]

[Apropos of place names in the Yakutat area]: The Aleuts used to come in here and had Aleut names on all the islands here but they used to catch people for slaves, and so the native people chased off the Aleuts from Yakutat. [Maggie Harry; 1939 or 1940.]

ALEUTS AS THE FIRST RESIDENTS

[One Tł’UknaAdi informant shared the belief, already recorded (pp. 213, 237), that the “Aleuts” were the first residents of Yakutat. The Kwacqwan seem to have met Aleuts at or near Icy Bay, and from them obtained a skin boat with which they tried to cross Yakutat Bay. (Compare with Sitka Jake's version, Swanton, 1909, pp. 350 f.) One gathers, however, that in the end the immigrants walked across the ice.]

…Aleuts used to live on Knight Island, AnAwAs. They didn’t have a village there, no permanent camp. They just moved around. When the Copper River Indians walked here over the ice there was Aleut mixed in with them. They made skin canoes…. The Kwacqwan speared the Aleuts like fish and got rid of them. [Minnie Johnson; June 9, 1952.]

This place, when the natives came over from Copper River, from Mount Saint Elias, when they walk over…and they were stuck there [on the shore]. They don’t have no shack or nothing to stay in. And get so lonesome they don’t even know what to do. The glaciers sticking out so far. They can’t even walk over.

So the Aleuts loaned them the skin canoe. And they start to build one, but they got no materials to make it with. The Aleuts struck[?] this place, and the Aleuts got that canoe to come here with. They went as far as Manby, and they struck, and knocked a hole in that canoe. That's as far as they went. They had to go back to Icy Bay.

I used to hear my grandmother tell. When they got that steam bath house they used to tell one another.

[When they went back to Icy Bay] they got a canoe built then, they made another boat. They were GIneqwan that time….

They said the Aleuts struck this place first. And they went and settled around. I think that's who atgawet bought that AnAwAs from. He bought it from the Aleuts….

They try to drive them [Aleuts] out of here. That's what I overheard in the steam bath room there. The Aleuts tried to fight and they don’t win it. They scattered in the water, and they speared them with the spear. like fish. [Minnie Johnson did not know whether this last was before or after the Russians, May 31, 1954.]

In describing the stone dam on T’awał Creek, Schwatka (October 26, 1886, p. 2) reports that his guide, Yeet-shwoo-doo-kook

“told me that it was when the Aleuts held this country as their own, long before the white men came among them…. I questioned him about the legends in his tribe regarding the first arrival of these people, and felt perfectly satisfied that the history of the whites in this country was fairly known by him. They knew of the visit of the ships that lost the men in small boats in Lituya Bay near their own country, the fishing of the Russians and Aleuts for sea otter across the great bay where they lived, near Point Manby, and a dozen other incidents which show that their idea of the first arrival of the white man was approximately correct and that it is not unfair to suppose that the Aleuts once occupied the land now occupied by the Yakutat Thlinkets.” [The stone dam which the Aleuts were said to have made is described on p. 75.]

ALEUT RAIDS ON YAKUTAT

[Harry K. Bremner was explaining the place names in the Yakutat area. July 11, 1952.]

A long time ago I think they used three or four languages in Yakutat. Some places, these islands, I think it's mostly Aleut [names]. And it's mostly Eyak…. I really don’t know why there are Aleut place names here…. The Aleuts used to come here, but they are a bad people. They want to kill…. The Aleuts came here sea-otter hunting way before the Russians. The Aleuts had a war with all the tribes. Anything they could see [they would kill, or steal?]. They don’t know the tribes. They talk a different language….

The Aleuts just killed—no limit. They didn’t declare war, they just come down to fight when they don‘t expect it. They used to catch the Yakutat people when they come to Cordova to trade.

[Another Kwacqwan man, Sampson Harry, explained the stone fortifications on the small island east of Knight Island. (August 23, 1952.)]

It is called Nuw, ‘Little Fort.’ The Teqwedi made it. All the Teqwedi were together when the war is going on. The Aleuts came after them with their canoes, but they daren’t take a chance, because they don’t see any way to get in. The Teqwedi know they‘re going to come after them. atgawet is chief at that time. [It is not clear what Teqwedi group or groups may have been involved.]

[The same informant told of the escape of a Yakutat Indian from the Aleuts. (February 25, 1954.)]

The Aleuts came down and made war, too. [He had been telling about trouble with the mysterious makers of the sealing canoes at Icy Bay (see p. 241).] They found the Aleuts’ boats when they came to Dolgoi Island. Gued; ‘ayi [Aleuts’ Lake] was where they found the canoe, when the Aleuts came. They had sneaked in there. They took all the dugu yAkw [skin boats] in that lake out there.

One [Yakutat] man goes hunting seals out there and he takes his tAyac [forked-prow hunting canoe] with him. [He evidently landed and went ashore.] Close to the lake, as soon as he stands up there, he sees that dugu yAkw in the lake out there. And those Gued; see him at the same time.

And he turn around and ducks down, makes believe he's [a] seal. He sneaked to his boat. He look out and he move his boat, and he duck down again like he's a seal. That's why Gued; thinks he was seal. He thinks he's going to come to shore again. [The Indian] make believe he don’t see. That's how he got away—smart man!

When he grab his boat, jump on it, he paddle all the way out fast, and he duck down again. Gued; watch him. Sometimes he take his spear, then he put it down again.

That's how he sneak away. When he come around the point, he come to where the natives stay over there, at ’As kutu ’an [Village in the Forest], on the inside of Dolgoi Island….

Then he let them all know. So they get away from them Aleuts….

YAKUTAT RAIDS ON THE CHUGACH

[The last informant also told about carrying the war to Prince William Sound. (February 25, 1954.)]

…Long time ago they start war with Teqwedi. The Russians were over there with them already. These Aleuts, one Russian was helping them. That's why lots of those Teqwedi get killed that time.

The Kwacqwan fight with the Aleuts, too. At Degeła [Mummy Island, opposite the village of TauvIk, Hawkins Island], that's the place they killed the Kwacqwan people.

[The Kwacqwan were going up there to fight.] They were going after some things to the westward [i.e., on a raid]. They just go in for a dance—10 of them, I think. They [the Aleuts] get nine of them. One get away, so the people know. The Aleuts pretend to dance. Somehow, he got away to Yakutat, so they know it. So they went back to Eyak River, start the war.

In 1928 I went to Cordova and one boy talked to me about it. He looked kind of like a halfbreed, but he never forget the troubled days. I talked to him. I know the story, too.

No Russians helped the Aleuts that time. I don’t know which war with the Aleuts was first, Teqwedi or Kwacqwan.

[Helen Bremner had remarked, June 26, 1952:]

The Kwacqwan got killed in a war on Mummy Island in Prince William Sound. I wonder if the mummies are still there.

[The mummies had been removed from the burial caves prior to my first visit to the island in 1930. This find made a great impression also upon the Atna at Copper Center, for they also mentioned this as a scene of a battle.]

The First Ship at Lituya Bay

The very brief account of the first ship that came to Lituya Bay, told by Frank Italio in 1949, may be compared with the much fuller story recorded by Emmons. The ship, or rather ships, were certainly those of LaPérouse, even though the Yakutat people beheve that the ship was Russian. Furthermore, they say the Russians came because they were attracted by the things which had fallen into the water when canoes from Gue were wrecked. Since this disaster is usually cited as the reason for the abandonment of the town on the Akwe, an event which did not take place until perhaps the mid-19th century, at any event some time after the Russians had been expelled, we are led into chronological difficulties which cannot be resolved.

THE FIRST SHIP AT LITUYA BAY

[Told by Frank Italio, Helen Bremner interpreting, 1949.]

The CAnkuqedi were over at Lituya Bay. The reason the Russians came was because baggage fell overboard and the swift current carried it out. The Russians found it in the ocean, so they knew they were near shore.

When they came to Lituya Bay, the Tł’UknaAdi and the CAnkuqedi looked at the Russians through kelp—no, skunk cabbage leaves—like a spyglass, because they thought the Russians were land otters. Skunk cabbage would protect them. The Indians thought the Russians were land otters disguised as people.

The Russians just came to the mouth of Lituya Bay in a big schooner—they don’t come inside. They anchored out there. No one came ashore; no one went out to them. They were scared of one another.

[When questioned through the interpreter, Frank Italio professed not to have heard about the wreck of LaPérouse's two boats, nor of the prior wreck of skin boats in Lituya Bay as described by the French explorer, nor of the type of cemetery with the skull separated from the cremated corpse, reported by LaPérouse. The boats wrecked at Lituya Bay were wooden canoes, he said, coming from Gue.]

[The following notes were recorded by Harrington in the spring of 1940, when on a trip to Disenchantment Bay with Jack Ellis.]

J. E. says that Latuya Bay is a bad place.

Just at one time 10 canoes full of Indians were drowned at Latuya Bay. They had large halibut-skin bags full of valuable furs, fox, etc., etc.—but they did not go much for mink and sea otter. The Indians believed that these two kinds (mink and sea otter [Harrington should have written land otter]), if a man got lost and suddently became weak, that the mink or otter (people) came to him and the man felt his hands and legs growing short—he was turning into a sea otter. And he turned into one. So the Tlingit never killed minks or sea otters much. These bags were made of halibut skins sewed together and were watertight. They floated. They were filled with valuable pelts.

So when the Latuya Bay Indians saw a white-colored schooner of otter hunters coming on the high tide into Latuya Bay the following year, they thought it was “Crow” [Raven] coming back—they were always looking for the re-epiphany of Crow. And then they thought the white people must have picked up a halibut-skin bag of pelts floating way out somewhere and knew from that that they must have pelts at Latuya Bay and so the whites headed straight for Latuya Bay.

The Crow [Raven] had told them that his again-coming anyone that looked at him directly would turn to stone, and that all should look at him through a funnel made of a rolled up skunkcabbage leaf. When the schooner came in, all the Latuya Bay people took to the woods, from which they looked at the comers through skunkcabbage leaves. Only one man looked at the comers without skunkcabbage leaf, and he later went over and talked with the white comers.

“NATIVE ACCOUNT OF THE MEETING BETWEEN LA PÉROUSE AND THE TLINGIT”

[The following account, obtained by Emmons from “Cowee,” the main chief of the Awk people at “Sintaka” hini on Gastineaux Channel, was published in1911. The outline is given here and the names are transcribed according to the orthography used in this monograph.]

Before the White man came, the people of Chilkat and Hoonah used to go to Yakutat to get copper from the TłaayIk people. One spring a large party of Tł’UknaAdi went from the big village at KAnuwu [Grouse Fort] in Icy Straits, under three chiefs: Cadasiktc, Łkettitc, and YEnucAtik. Four canoes were lost at the entrance to Lituya Bay, and the first chief was drowned. [Is this the episode which was supposed to have led to the abandonment of Gue?]

While the survivors were still mourning, two ships entered the bay. The Indians thought they were two great birds with white wings, perhaps Raven himself, and fled to the woods. After a time they came back to the shore and looked through tubes of rolled up skunk cabbage leaves, like telescopes, for if they looked directly at Raven they might turn to stone. When the sails were made fast, they thought the birds folded their wings and they imagined they saw a flock of crows fly up from the ships, so they ran back into the woods again.

One family of warriors dressed in armor and helmets, and took their copper knives, bows and arrows, and launched a canoe. They were so frightened when thunder and smoke came from the ship that their canoe overturned and they scrambled ashore.

Then a nearly blind old man said his life was behind him, and that he would see if Raven really turned men to stone. He dressed in sea-otter furs, and induced two of his slaves to paddle him to the ship. When he got on board his eyesight was so poor that he mistook the sailors for crows, and threw away the rice that was offered him, thinking it was worms. He traded his fur coat for a tin pan and returned to shore laden with gifts of food. The people were surprised to see him alive, smelled him to make sure of his identity [that he had not been transformed into a Land Otter Man?], and refused to eat the food he had brought. The old man finally decided that it must be ships and people, so the Indians visited the ships and traded their furs. Then the White men lost two boats at the mouth of the inlet and many were drowned.

The Defeat of the Russians

Although additional details were obtained about the expulsion of the Russians from Yakutat, the most complete account remains that told by Harry K. Bremner (pp. 233–234). He also provided additional information about the provocations which led to the attack on the Russian fort.

RUSSIAN PROVOCATIONS

I believe the Indian story about the war with the Russians.

The Russians said they wanted to buy some land at Yakutat. The Russian king, Łanista, said they would pay later. They promised guns, ammunition, ax to chop wood—things the Indians wanted. But they never paid. They just got the land.

The Yakutat chief let the Russians keep the land because he thought they would pay. [He was presumably the Kwacqwan chief, Yaodaqet.]

They had a watchman—or rather, sentries, like the Army—at the rapids in Ankau where Bill Hall lives [on Tawah or T’awał Creek, between Aka and Rocky Lakes (Harrington MS.)]. They searched every canoe that went through. They took the children—little ones like this [the narrator gestured to two little boys, 8 and 12, who had come in and were listening]. They took the women. They took the women inside the fort, made them slime fish for them in their place. Then they let them go back to their husbands (after 9 months?). The men didn’t like that.

They told the people they were sending the children away to school. A native woman was married to the captain of the Russian ship. Her name was osał-tła [a Kwacqwan and Tł’UknaAdi name]. She told the people the children didn’t go to school. They were taken away to be slaves—[“To Siberia,” explained the narrator's wife].

Another thing the Russians did was to put a gate across the creek, way up [on T’awał Creek, above the Ankau lagoons]. The people had to portage their canoes way through the woods. The only time the Russians opened the gate was when the chief came by. [The gate apparently prevented the fish from going up to spawn in the lakes.] Tanu said they would all starve together because the fish couldn’t go up past the gate.

The next was when an Indian doctor died and they were going to bury him. In those days they didn‘t bury them in the ground. They put them in a box up high on four posts. They always painted and carved the box. A man found an old skiff up the bay—all broken up. It was made with copper nails and he took the nails to make that grave box. The Russians said he stole them and were going to kill him. This man was Tanu. [The informant did not know how the doctor was related to him, see p. 234.]

So he started a war on the Russians [February 14, 1954].

[Referring to the History of Yakutat, p. 235:] I stopped when Tanu take the land back from the Russians. I told that story already, how they took the land away from the Russians, and I told you why.

[He summed up the grievances: Failure to pay for the land; taking the children for slaves; stealing the Indians’ wives; threatening death for the alleged theft of the coffin nails; and putting a gate across T’awał Creek.]

That's all I think—all the troubles. [After counting the five points]—There's one more, I think. When they were going to give that land, the Russians promised to trade guns, ammunition, powder, and the ax they were going to use for wood—things like that. But they don’t. They don’t sell no guns, ammunition to the Indians, knives, anything. They broke their promise. [May 2, 1954.]

FURTHER DETAILS OF THE RUSSIAN DEFEAT

Tanu was TłaayIk-Teqwedi. Very few Kwacqwan helped in the war. That was because the Kwacqwan chief didn’t tell them to fight. He didn’t want to make war on the Russians. [This was not further explained.]

There was a watchman at the point. He lived in a cabin by himself. They forgot about him when they killed the other Russians. He used to watch the light. Every night he hoisted a lantern on the tree, in case a ship came in. He got away. He ran down to the beach. He saw a Russian ship. He made some kind of a signal and they took him on board. He gave the word how the Russians were all killed.

Another watchman on Over [Orphir] Creek was married to a native girl. He escaped too. When word came the Russians were all killed, he grabbed his little teakettle and ran away in the woods. Nobody knows what happened to him…. Nobody knows what happened.

The Russians make a different story—that Yakutat people were savages. But I know they weren‘t, because they believe in Dog Heaven [see p. 771]. [February 14, 1954.]

THE DEFEAT OF THE RUSSIANS

[The following details were obtained from George Johnson, a Tcicqedi informant who calls himself CÍtłwÀkw, perhaps the Eyak pronunciation of ŁucwAq. (June 9, 1952.)]

CÍtłwÀkw was a brave man. He built ‘Eagle Fort,’ utcgalaq glaca’ł [the Eyak name], up the Situk River. He was a Ł’uedi man. Tanu was with him. He was Teqwedi. He killed the Russians.

The Russians treat the native people pretty rough. They used to fish at Ankau. The Russians closed the gate, so the natives couldn’t go in there. Every so often they would tell the native chief to go in. They made the natives work all day long without pay.

The Russian had a handmade brass snuffbox. The natives had a dagger, made out of iron from driftwood. The two strong men went in the water in winter time, and got tough.

They kill them off. They are lucky. All the Russians were after fish with a rowboat. Only one man was left splitting wood. The two men came. One made a motion—“I’ll split it for you.” The Russian sat down and let him have an ax. The other man went to ask for snuff.

The natives agreed to chop his head off while the other killed the headman. He tried to stab him in the heart. The native stabbed the brass snuffbox by mistake. The native made a noise with his feet. That was the signal. The other men ran up and they killed him. So they killed the two.

They got the fire on the camp. They used spruce pitch. They got that lady. They took guns, clothes, powder, lead—took them away. Then they set the Russian camp on fire.

Two boats came back from fishing. They killed them all with the guns. Only two men ran away in the woods. In the fall, the Russians were going to come back. But they found the camp burned; they all went away.

[In the spring of 1940, the informant took Harrington up T’awał Creek, and gave him further information, although he evidently did not know exactly where the gate had been.]

The Russian's fort, ’Annúucii núuwúu, was built of spruce poles, sharpened at the top and high—so a person could not climb over…. [In their garden, on the point near William Milton‘s smokehouse, the informant and his wife had dug up] many objects of iron, and also several spruce poles, 4 inches in diameter, and sharpened at one end.

The gate was called AnnaaÀn Aâadii, ‘the fence's door.’ You could walk around, but couldn’t go around with a boat. That's the only place you can’t go through there. The Russians wanted all the fish for theirselves…

The Russians were here. They failed to conquer the natives here…. The Russian return to Sitka was the permanent end of the Tlingit nation.

MEMENTOES OF THE RUSSIANS

After the defeat of the Russians, a limestone rock was carved to represent the Bear, presumbably the crest associated with Tanu and his sib. This was somewhere on T’awał Creek, although the exact location was not known to Harrington's informants. It was found in 1948 and taken to Yakutat, where we saw and photographed it (de Laguna et al., 1964, pl. 3, b). We were not able to discover exactly where it had been originally. It has since disappeared.

According to Harrington, Peter Lawrence at one time said that “the face on the bear stone at Ankau is natural, they make’m eyes better. Yesterday he said that after the Russians had been murdered [in] Ankau, and the Ankau Mouth again was in possession of the Yakutat Indians, they made or fixed up a bear there, a stone totem of the Brown Bear phratry, looking down upon the Ankau Mouth to symbolize guarding it and to show that Indians were now in possession of it.”

When Harrington tramped up T’awał Creek to Bill Hall's cabin, he saw a boulder, 8 feet long and 4 feet high, that suggested a profile. At this point the “gate stream” was only one yard wide. “GJ a week later says this rock might be the bear, might look more like a bear at high water.” However, this was evidently not the petroglyph.

A number of things taken from the Russians were or still are treasured as heirlooms by the Yakutat people. One of these was a Russian cannon, kept by Jack Ellis, the Tł’UknaAdi leader who died in 1952. It was damaged by too large a charge of powder when fired on New Year's Day, 1949. The other cannon was taken to Gue, and may either be there or near the old cannery at Dry Bay. Chief George, the Kwacqwan chief who died about 1903, had a picture of Stanislas, or “Shawnista,” which was later stolen from the ANB Hall at Yakutat. The same chief also owned a small copper teakettle which had belonged to Stanislas. The handle was originally twice as wide, but was cut down to make sea-otter harpoon arrowheads. Chief George received two silver fox furs for each piece that he cut off. This kettle is carefully preserved by its present owner, Harry K. Bremner. Jim Kardeetoo was said to have had the famous snuffbox with the dent in it made by the knife of Tanu. He also had a Russian sword-cane (pl. 144), but sold that to the Reverend Axelson. It was also said to have belonged to Stanislas.

War Between the Tł’UknaAdi and the TłaayIk-Teqwedi

After the expulsion of the Russians, the TłaayIk-Teqwedi built Eagle Fort about halfway up the Situk River, which was equipped, according to some accounts, with the door taken from the Russian fort. They also had a fortified sealing camp in Disenchantment Bay, at the mouth of the second stream above Point Latouche, at a place now known as WuganiyE. At this time they had evidently intermarried to some extent with the Tł’UknaAdi from southeastern Alaska who had established themselves at Gue and in the Dry Bay area. The Tł’UknaAdi, assisted by other Raven sibs, among which we suspect were the Kwacqwan, TłukwaAdi, and perhaps others such as the Kosedi, at’kA’ayi, and DAdentan (if indeed, these were at that time separate groups), finally defeated the TłAayIk-Teqwedi so decisively that the latter disappeared as a distinct sib at Yakutat. This war would appear to be simply a continuation of earlier fights between the TłaayIk-Teqwedi and the Dry Bay TłukwaAdi.

Before this, the TłaayIk-Teqwedi or Ł’uedi had fought with the Bear House lineage of the Teqwedi from southeastern Alaska, and had killed many of the latter. This is said to be still a bitter memory, because they were not able to even the score. Did the Ravens prevent their revenge by killing their enemies? In any case, after the extermination of the Ł’uedi the Bear House Teqwedi held securely the lands on the Situk and Lost Rivers.

We may begin our account with that given by Frank Italio, for although somewhat obscure and at varience with most of the others, it serves to suggest that the trouble had been brewing for a long time.

TROUBLE BETWEEN THE DRY BAY PEOPLE AND THE YAKUTAT TEQWEDI

[Told by Frank Italio, August 29, 1952, Minnie Johnson interpreting. This has been somewhat edited to make it clearer.]

The TłukwaAdi were the first people established in Dry Bay, and they get into some kind of misunderstanding with the Teqwedi here [presumably the TłaayIk-Teqwedi is meant]. All the Teqwedi were out in sealing camp and just one old man, Qàdjákw, was left at Knight Island. He was so old that he can’t see. All the Teqwedi but him were at sealing camp, but they left that old man there.

And the TłukwaAdi come from Dry Bay and abuse him, and do all kind of dirty tricks to that old man who can’t defend himself. And so they get into all kinds of a war about it….

So then they [TłukwaAdi] build a fort. The biggest fort Frank Italio ever see. The foundations of it are in Dry Bay. They even had tribal houses inside the fort. The TłukwaAdi built a village and had that fort built all around it. They even had it way up in the mountains. It was called Cia’a núwu, “Eddy Fort.” [See pp. 83, 89.]

Then everything was settled and they had peace between the TłukwaAdi and the Teqwedi. Then they [the former] settled at a place called DInÉtki-’àn “It Wriggles Like Jelly” [referring to the shifting sands]. Frank Italio wonders why no trees or greens grow there at all, up to this time…. [For further discussion of this site, see p. 83.]

So they settled back in that valley after everything was settled with the Teqwedi.

The Teqwedi just died off or moved away eventually.

[The informant explained that at the time of this trouble, there were not many CAnkuqedi among the TłukwAAdi, just a few married-in CAnkuqedi women and their children.]

[Our questions prompted Frank Italio to give his version of how the Yakutat Teqwedi were defeated by the Tł’UknaAdi. This was told as a continuation of the above account.]

The Yakutat Teqwedi and the Tł’UknaAdi got mixed up over a slave, you know.

They [TłaayIk-Teqwedi] got that fort built up Situk. They got the Russian fort door for the door of their fort. They took it out of the Russian fort to GudAłexł [see p. 79]. They just look down on the Tanedaq [Prince of Wales Island] Teqwedi as outsiders, but it‘s the same Teqwedi.

Déudu’u [’Buys Two at One Time,’ referring to slaves or coppers] the head Tł’UknaAdi, gave his son, Daqusetc [Teqwedi], a dress for his wife, Tsagu-tła (or Túdà-tła) [Tł’UknaAdi]. For just one dress, the son was supposed to give him a slave. But he don’t seem to show up with it, so that's why Déudu’u went up to GudAłexł to see what's wrong, how come he didn’t deliver that slave. And he got killed. Four other Tł’UknaAdi people got killed there.

That's why, when ŁucwAq got into trouble with them, he say he never had an idea a man had sense enough [so little sense] to give away a slave for one dress.

That's why Tł‘UknaAdi claim WuganiyE.

That Deudu’u got four sons: Daqusetc, Caka, and Qiy’dE’ is the youngest one, ancestor of Cada. [Frank Italio had forgotten the name of the fourth son.] Cada is Kwacqwan. My grandma [the interpreter's] comes from them. She's a “daughter” of one of the sons.

WAR BETWEEN THE TŁ’UKNAADI AND THE TEQWEDI (FIRST VERSION)

[The following account was told by Harry K. Bremner, July 11, 1952, who indicated that this was the last war in Yakutat.]

Long after the Russians, some Tł’UknaAdi married into Yakutat. Soon after this, word got all over southeastern Alaska that the Yakutat people were very rich with things they had taken from the Russians, so seven tribes [unidentified] decided to come up and take it away from them. Before they left, their wives told them: “Bring a brave, 5 or 6 years old, and Yakutat baskets, because they make very nice ones.”

[The allies of the Tł’UknaAdi were never identified, although they were all Raven sibs. The following comment was made later.]

But long time ago, ever since they had AnAwAs, was the last war, Indian to Indian. They had no war unless southeastern Alaska Indians come around and had a war with TłaayIk-Teqwedi. But TłaayIk-Teqwedi was a part of ałyI-Kagwantan, not of southeastern Alaska. This was after the Russians. ałyI-Kagwantan had a war with the Russians. The man who was the brave one was Tanu. Tanu was the general; ŁucwAq was his assistant, his second. Before we know about generals and lieutenants, they worked that way. When the Russians took away Tanu, ŁucwAq was still left there. And ŁucwAq have the war with southeast Alaska Indians. Southeast Alaska come over to have a war with the Yakutat for no reason, just for the property they took from the Russians. ŁucwAq was pretty smart. He move his village halfway to Situk Lake, halfway from the mouth of the Situk River. He have a fort around his village. He won the war [there], but I shan’t venture to say it. We got it here in the village yet. Seven different tribes, all Raven—we’re among them. [This would imply that the Kwacqwan had been involved.] [September 2, 1952.]

The Teqwedi were living at Ta nu [Eagle Fort] near Situk Lake.

The Tł’UknaAdi went down near Ketchikan to consult a famous doctor who told them they would win. Their own doctor, who was not so highly regarded said they would lose, but he didn’t mention it straight out.

“If you see the kAt [barbed harpoon head] leave you, you will lose the war. If you see it come to you, you will win the war.”

The Teqwedi doctor said: “If I am killed first by our own people by mistake, you will win the war. But if I’m not, you will lose.”

The Tł’UknaAdi chief was Q’eí. The chief of the Teqwedi was łucwAq, Tanu's partner. His nephew was SAdÉn.

There were four houses in the fort. The people dug tunnels under the floors connecting the houses in preparation for the war. [The houses were in a line, with an entrance into the tunnel from the floor of each house.]

The Teqwedi men were all out chopping wood, early in the morning. They knew the enemy were coming but they didn’t know the war was on yet. They made a lot of bear traps [deadfalls] to get the enemy. I don’t know how they were made, but you stepped on the moss and the log fell. But it snowed [and the traps were useless].

There was a Tł’UknaAdi man behind each tree, way back. The Teqwedi didn’t know it was war already. The old doctor went around to each man, gathering up chips into the fold of his blanket. When he got close to each man, he said in a low voice, “War!” and told him to run back to the fort, carrying a log on his shoulder, when he himself went back. Then he called out in a loud voice: “You’re going to chop wood all day. You will cut one, and that one, and that big one there.”

They used an adz to chop the trees, small trees [about 18 inches in diameter], because they couldn’t cut bigger ones. They chopped them all around with ragged cuts. So when he [the doctor] got back to the fort, all the men suddenly ran, carrying logs on their shoulders, so that the butts stuck out like barbs on the fish spear head.

The little Tł’UknaAdi doctor said: “You see that kAt [barbed harpoonhead] leaving you, let's go back now. We will lose.” But the brave ones said: “There are so few of them, we can win.”

They came to the fort. ŁucwAq told his people: “We’re not going to fight.”

Q’ei called out: “My brothers-in-law, we are going to feed you big blueberries today.”

They fired shots at them. The people were all in the tunnels. The Tł’UknaAdi thought they had killed them all.

Before the shooting started, nobody knows why, the old doctor went out of the house and after a while he came back, and by mistake his own people shot him. They took him into the house, and just before he died, he said: “You shot me. That means you’re going to win.”

ŁucwAq was sleeping in the house. He gave orders not to be waked. His nephew, SAdÉn, was in the bathhouse. It had a bark roof. One of the Tł’UknaAdi got on the roof. There was a little hole, and SAdÉn looked up and saw him through the hole and shot and killed him.

The wife of ŁucwAq came and woke him. “Wake up! Your nephew has already killed a man.”

So ŁucwAq loaded up his gun with seven bullets. In a war, they name their guns according to their tribe, like Xuts [Bear] Gun, or Kit [Killerwhale] Gun. With one bullet, I think, he killed seven men. The Tł’UknaAdi were all on the roofs of the houses, and he killed them all except a few.

Then ŁucwAq said: “No more killing. Let them go home.”

The enemy stayed for 2 days. They wanted the bodies of the men who were killed in order to cut off their heads to take home. But ŁucwAq said: “These bodies belong to the eagles. You came here and made trouble.” They didn’t burn or bury the bodies; they dumped them through a hole in the ice.

So many more Tł’UknaAdi had come up than there were Teqwedi at the fort, but very few went back.

They got even later [next year?].

The Tł’UknaAdi came in big war canoes. The Teqwedi were at the sealing camp in the third valley below Egg Island, called CanA kusA, ’Narrow Valley.” It's a little place, with rock all around, like a box, and they build a stone fort there, with little holes to shoot through. They always kept their guns there, and they were always practicing. When a man shoots, a woman is behind him. He puts down the empty gun, and picks up another while she reloads the first [explained partly with gestures]. It's just like a repeating rifle. The chief doesn’t allow anyone to shoot guns at seals—only use harpoons—so they won’t frighten them away.

One man was always telling lies. He never told the truth. He was out in a sealing canoe and drifted down near Point Latouche. He saw a man in a tree. He had a white cloth wrapped around his head and he was wrapped in a black blanket. That tree is there yet. It was a dead tree with branches when I first saw it, but now only a small stump is left. That man sat in the tree all day. The other man watched him. Then he paddled quietly back to the fortified camp.

He told the chief, ŁucwAq: “It's war.”

There was an older man who told the truth. He said: “No. It was an eagle in that tree. I saw it fly away.” He explained: “I didn’t really see it fly away. I saw an eagle in the tree, and then I saw the eagle circling in the sky, and there was no eagle in the tree.” So the people believed him.

But ŁucwAq believed the other man, even though he didn’t usually tell the truth. ŁucwAq was a brave man, and brave men are wise. He said: “SAdÉn will keep watch tonight. The rest of you can sleep.”

But his sister, SAdÉn's mother, came to him and said: “You always make SAdÉn do everything.”

So the chief got mad and said: “SAdÉn can sleep too. We’ll all sleep tonight.” They did!…

The Tł’UknaAdi came in the night and killed all but ŁucwAq. He got away and was climbing a steep mountain, a place they thought nobody could get up. He had bullets in a little packsack, but he dropped it when he almost reached the top of the cliff. They shot him in the leg and he began to fall. He just let himself roll down, and get killed. They shot him till they killed him. He didn’t want to live any more, because all his people were dead.

WAR BETWEEN THE Tł’UKNAADI AND THE TŁAYIK-TEQWEDI

[This version was dictated on May 2, 1954, because Harry Bremner wished to finish telling the History of Yakutat, and knew that this should be included. He had previously been reluctant to tell it, because he did not wish to arouse any bad feelings, but realized that now there was no one else who could give the full account.]

That's where I ended, after that Tanu. That's where I ended, 1805, when they chased the Russians out. I told you that already, about Tanu, after they had a trouble with the Russians….

Tanu is TłaayIk-Teqwedi. It's a tribe's name. But they are a part of ałyIx-Kagwantan, and not southeast Alaska Teqwedi. Not a big tribe…. Tanu, his brother or his cousin, anyway, his name is ŁucwAq. He's just like Tanu—another brave. And ŁucwAq's sister is named T’ongwa. That must be a Russian name [Tanya?], don’t sound like Indian. And her son is named SAdén. That's ŁucwAq's nephew.

And after they had trouble with the Russians, they move up at Situk River, halfway. Just more than halfway to the lake. They place where they move up is GudAłexł. That's a river. They still call it NutA ’iti—they make a fort there. It's gone now, nothing left. It's named for the way it used to be. Just grass now.

They built that fort after the Russian trouble because they expect the Russians are going to come back. That's why they move so far from the water. But the other people, Teqwedi, the ones from southeastern Alaska, they stay in their own village, down there, Diyaguna’Et, and so the Situk Teqwedi have just small camps. And so the Kwacqwan, they stay in their own village, because they’re not in a war with the Russians…. I mean they don’t fight with the Russians. I think it's no good to call it a war.

The nu [fort], they built it there. They call it Eagle nu, Ta nu.

FIGURE 6.—Eagle Fort, sketched by Harry K. Bremner.

There were posts all around the village. The story said there's only three houses inside the wall. And they make a tunnel under the houses. It come up into this house, and this one. Well prepared for the war….

I don’t know why they had a war. They [Tł’UknaAdi] wanted some property they had gotten from the Russians. That's why. They wanted to get it from that small tribe. I don’t know for sure, but that's the way they’re telling it…. They died off long ago that people—just a small group. They came from ałiyA. They settled down here long time ago. That's the ones they’re calling TłaayIk-Teqwedi….

They came over here in wintertime. It was wintertime the Tł’UknaAdi came…. All the way from southeast Alaska. And they were living there [Dry Bay], some of the Tł’UknaAdi, some at the old village in Akwe. I’m not sure where they came from.

Tł’UknaAdi had an Indian doctor. And he's not very strong. That's what his own Tł’UknaAdi people believe, that he's not a strong doctor. And that Tł’UknaAdi Indian doctor told his people, “You’re going to lose the war. You’re going to be defeated.”

And the Tł’UknaAdi went down to the Dekina. It's almost the same as the Haida. “Way outside people,” it's Klawak people. They got two doctors from there. I don’t know how they got them.

And those two doctors said: “You’re going to win the war.”

But still the Tł’UknaAdi doctor said: “You’re going to lose.” And his own people don’t believe him. They believe those two doctors from Dekina.

They were coming in wintertime. On the way, that Tł’UknaAdi doctor with them, this Tł’UknaAdi tell his people: “If the spearhead get away from you, you’re defeated; but if you catch the spearhead you win the war.”

It's like this: [The narrator made the following sketch, fig. 7]

FIGURE 7.—Spearhead and log, sketched by Harry K. Bremner.

And that's the way they used to cut the wood—not too big—cut one block. They didn’t cut clear through, just leave them like that, so long that two men can carry it.

That's the way the Indian doctor see it. It looks like a spearhead to him. That Indian doctor, he can’t explain without interpreter, and that's why he said: “If spearhead gets away from you, you’ve lost the war; but if you catch it, you win the war.”

“KAt nasq qi….” ‘spearhead moving-away….’

The Tł’UknaAdi were right behind that village already, waiting in the woods where the people were cutting wood. It was wintertime. That's the time Tł’UknaAdi were going to get them.

But the TłaayIk-Teqwedi Indian doctor tells his own people, “If you people kill me before anything happens, you win the war. If you don’t kill me, you’re defeated, you lost the war.” That's what that TłaayIk-Teqwedi doctor said.

So they already know that Tł’UknaAdi war is going to come. So this door, the door of that fort, they open it way little bit, like this [fig. 6]. Just enough to go in sideways. It was on hinges. They open it just about that much. That's the way they did it when they heard the war was going to come. They don’t close the door. I don’t know why. It's a cold winter. So every morning they pour water in the doorway. Real cold—early in the morning—midnight, when it's real cold. And they keep doing it until the ice is so high. They’re raising it up all the time. I don’t know how high.

The ice made a steep slope into the house.

The headman, he's an old man. So every morning they went out to the woods. It's Tlingit law. Every morning—can’t miss a day. To get wood. They use Russian axes to cut wood with it. And early morning, the people went out to the woods.

And this old man, the head of the tribe, ŁucwAq, he went up there where they’re cutting wood. Everybody is cutting wood with the ax. Soon as he get up to where they go in the woods he saw a man—just the head—just come out from behind a tree way back in the woods. That's all he see.

Soon as he see it, he speak out loud to the people. He said real loud: “You people going to cut wood all day today. Bad weather coming.” And he said: “Some more people are going to come out to help you, from the village.”

He had a blanket around him, And he came right close to where they’re cutting wood. He just pick up his blanket like this: [gesture of picking up chips and putting them into the fold of the blanket]. And he pick up the wood, and whispered to each person: “War!” in a low voice. “As soon as I walk back, you jump off the log and run back to the fort.”

But in a loud voice he points and says: “You’re going to cut that tree down.” He pointed to the one where he saw that man. “You’re going to cut that one, and that one, and that one. Bring all the wood today,” he said.

And as soon as that old man walk away, about halfway to the fort, those people cutting wood jump off that log and they run. Those logs they were cutting like this [fig. 7], they’re carrying on their shoulders, two men on each. They run with it.

And that time that Tł’UknaAdi Indian doctor he point to that wood, like a spearhead. He said: “You see that wood. That's a spearhead. It got away from you, like I told you. It got away from you, you’ve been defeated. Turn back,” he said. “Turn back!”

But Tł’UknaAdi still don’t believe it.

And everybody run back into their fort. And everybody gets ready to protect themselves; everybody has a gun.

But ŁucwAq said not to start a war yet, not to shoot, not do anything. Just about that time they saw a man coming through their door where they pour the water, and some of the men shoot him. Dead shot. That's their own Indian doctor.

The last word he said: “You kill me. My own people kill me. My wish is come true. You’re going to win the war.” That's all. He's dead.

So they come. They kept coming all the time. They use the guns, they don’t use arrows, southeast Alaska. They’re already on top of the fort all around. They see down into the fort. And no fire inside the fort. That's ŁucwAq's orders—No fighting back. They’re all underground [in the tunnel].

And ŁucwAq is in the ground where they have a steam bath. He sleeps. He don’t like the war.

And SAdén, he's the first man to kill a man with a spear. The man was on the roof when he heard it—bark roof, not wood, bark. It was the roof of the steam bath house. The man make a little hole, that's how he can see. He killed him.

And that ŁucwAq's wife tell her husband: “SAdén kill a man!” Then ŁucwAq said: “All right. That's a war now. SAdén kill a man. That's a war.” He thought that people would turn back; he didn’t want war.

So they fight. They kill all those Tł’UknaAdi inside the fort. Some are on the roof already, some of the Tł’UknaAdi. The Tł’UknaAdi think they killed all the Teqwedi already. They made a mistake. They were all in the ground.

The headman on the Tł’UknaAdi side, his name is exíx [or eí]. He's the one talked to ŁucwAq because he's a brave man, he's a war leader—not a chief, but a war leader.

Every time they’re going to start shooting from the top, the Tł’UknaAdi called to ŁucwAq, “I’m going to feed you with small blueberries.” He's shooting with small shots, I think.

And that ŁucwAq, just before he fired, he tell his people to go around and fight, he said a word to exíx: “I’m going to feed you with the big blueberries now,” he said. And he started shooting.

They shot some more. Then they ask that Tł’UknaAdi leader: “Where did you get those blueberries from? What war you win it?” It's got to be taken through a war, the things you’re going to take on it [or talk about?]. “Which war you get it from? I get mine from a double fort, my big blueberries.” You know where they got it from the Russians. “I get mine from a double fort. I’m going to feed you with it now.”

They don’t kill any more. They just killed the Tł’UknaAdi inside the fort. He told his people: “Do not kill any.” All his men go up on top of the fort, and he told them not to kill any more.

That people were across the river, and Tł’UknaAdi on this side. And Tł’UknaAdi talk to ŁucwAq. They want to get those bodies. They’re talking to each other But ŁucwAq said “No.” So they went.

After they went, I don’t know how long afterwards, some of the people said: “Why don’t we kill them all? They’re going to come back and clean us up.”

So they went and followed to catch up. They stop at Diyaguna’Et, ŁucwAq's people. Tł’UknaAdi's not there. They already went. Keep on going on snowshoes.

And the Diyaguna’Et people said: “You come too late, they’re gone a long time ago.” But the Diyaguna’Et-Teqwedi were helping Tł’UknaAdi.

But Tanu was a prisoner already. And in the springtime and the summer afterwards they went up to sealing camp, ŁucwAq's people. And one of the headmen said: “Stay on the cross side” [i.e., west side].

But ŁucwAq chooses that narrow valley, that small one, WuganiyE. That's why he chose it, it's narrow. He likes it, he chooses it.

[Across Disenchantment Bay], it's just like a hilltop. It's steep. That headman wants to stay on the top so they can see a long ways, and it takes a long time to climb up. The headman chose it.

But no, he choose that place, ŁucwAq. And he said that valley, where it's narrow, he's going to put rocks there so they can shoot from behind. And that's what they did. They built a wall of rocks across the mouth of the valley—nu—to shoot from behind. [But no rocks were put on the back side.]

And this headman was living on that cross side. Very few people, not much went over there. ŁucwAq didn’t stay there. It was called eł’-cÀkí-’an, something like “village on top of the rock” [’Cliff-Top Village’, at or near Bancas Point]. ŁucwAq stayed on this side.

That's where they stay for seal hunting. They had a watchman all the time, lookout man. They stay there all summer for seal hunting.

And once one man reported he saw an eagle right on top of Point Latouche—just one tree on top there, the eagle sitting there. But instead of the eagle flew away, it climbed down the tree. But this man here, all his tribe knows it, he never tell anything truth; he always tells lies. So they won’t believe him. He come in, and all excited, tell the story. He says it's a war, but still they don‘t believe him.

When the last man come from the ice, from seal hunting, up to that camp, they tell him the story, what that man said. He said: “I see that eagle. It flew away from that tree across the bay.” So that time they never really believe that man. But that man tell the real true story that time. He saw the man [in the tree]. adi’Ik—’liar.’ But that time he was telling the truth.

So that night just before bedtime, ŁucwAq told his nephew, SAdén, “You’re going to be on watch tonight.”

You see, that's the way they do. Tie them up like this[?]. The guns are there already. Fire it and hand it back to the women. They train the women how to load a gun for war. They had three, four guns ready for each man. They get so many guns from those Russians. That's the way the guns are, all ready for war. They’re going to shoot from…each person had so many guns, all loaded.

And ŁucwAq tell his nephew, “You’re going to watch out tonight.”

And that time, as soon as ŁucwAq said it, his sister, Dongwa, SAdén's mother, said: “Not only is SAdén going to die.” She don’t say it out loud, just whisper—because she don’t want her son hard punished like that. “Not only SAdén is going to die,” just whisper.

But ŁucwAq heard right away—sharp ears. And ŁucwAq said: “All right, everybody's going to sleep.” and ŁucwAq called him. He said: “SAdén, you’re not going to be on watch. Go to sleep. I’m not the only one going to die, too.”

It's still that way today, everybody says it's too bad, that woman…. She don’t say a word [shouldn’t have spoken?]. That brave man should never listen to that woman. She's his sister.

And that night they came. They caught him when he was asleep. ŁucwAq's people never fight back. They caught them in their sleep.

And ŁucwAq, he got away. I don’t know how he got away. Tł’UknaAdi don’t find his body in there. So they look for him. They find him on the cliffs. It's a pretty steep cliff there; nothing can climb up. So they find him; chase him up the mountain. He can’t go no more. He can’t go no place. So Tł’UknaAdi got him. He lost his ammunition when he's climbing; he drop it. He's got his gun, he's got his powder. But they use lead for bullets. The whole sack, it drop. It slip out of his hand. So he don’t fight back.

First they shoot him in the leg, and he start to fall. That's all the words he said: “Tł’UknaAdi,” he said, “I’m going to be a yek [shaman's spirit] against you.” That's all the word he said, that's all.

And it came true. It [the spirit] came to TE-’ic [a Teqwedi shaman, see pp. 671, 715–719]. And that yek, they call him ŁucwAq Ahai. Ahai—“my shadow,” same thing as “reflection,” almost the same as “spirit.” [see Afterlife, p. 766].

[Te-’ic was the last of a long line of doctors who had that yek.]

So that's all I can tell. All the bad ones I don’t want to tell. I just try to make it good. I didn’t take much off, when they were talking to each other—those mean words, [i.e., the exchange of insults at Eagle Fort].

ŁucwAq means “no eyes.” He doesn’t like it when they call him “no eyes,” so [-?-] gave him another name, a mean one.

[Those who helped the Tł’UknaAdi in the war seem to have been] TukwaAdi, akA’ayi—all Tł’UknaAdi anyway. The names are different.

And after that ŁucwAq was defeated, Tł’UknaAdi said: “Nobody's going to touch that body. Nobody touch those bones. It's going to stay there forever.” So they’ve been there for a long time, for many years. Nobody touched it.

They take it down later, Teqwedi did. Xuts hIttan Teqwedi took the bones.

Tł’UknaAdi said: “If anybody touch those bones, there's going to be a war!”

But Xuts hIttan Teqwedi get real strong, they want a war. They bring it down. They want a war. Some reason, I don’t know why. They get ready for war; they bring it down; they bury it. I don‘t know where; took it to Khantaak.

[But they didn’t fight.] They sent their brother-in-law, nakani, Tł’UknaAdi—sent him up to bring the bones down. And one Kwacqwan little boy—like Tom Coxe, we used to call him [T’aw ka, ‘Chicken Feathers,’ only child of the shaman, Te-’ic; born about 1860 died after 1921]. He went along with Abraham, Olaf's father, and that's all I know about that. [Abraham, XAnane, a Tł’UknaAdi man, was much older.]

That was a long time ago. People were still living on Khantaak. No White men here yet.

A TŁ’UKNAADI VERSION OF THE WAR

[The following account was given by Annie George, a Tł’UknaAdi woman. (August 7, 1952.)]

The Tł’UknaAdi and the Teqwedi had a war in Situk. And those Tł’UknaAdi were pretty nearly all killed in Situk. It was up the river; it was at a place called GudAłexł. This was up the Situk where they had the war.

I don’t know which Teqwedi it is they are fighting…. They fight over a woman in the first place….

In that war the Teqwedi use Russian stuff and the Tł’UknaAdi at Dry Bay didn’t have any. The Tł’UknaAdi can’t get in the place where the Teqwedi are hiding themselves, because the Teqwedi use a door—just like that [pointing to the door of the house]. That's why the Tł’UknaAdi got beat up. So then they went to the sealing camp and make it even.

The Tł’UknaAdi all get killed. They didn’t kill anybody. It's just them that got killed. Some went back to Dry Bay. In the wintertime, when it's coming, they get ready to have a war again with the Teqwedi. And they send their wives to Yakutat to say that the Tł’UknaAdi all went to Sitka.

Those women went to WuganiyE, a sealing camp. They just try to make those people believe them. That's why they send their wives over there.

…They stay in WuganiyE, all those people [Teqwedi]. Pretty soon the people try to put up things for winter. They don’t have anything to eat in wartime. They don’t put up seal oil or dry fish. They just watch and think the Tł’UknaAdi are going to come and they’re going to have a war again.

The Teqwedi went up the Situk and come out on this side of AnAwAs [Knight Island]. And they take their canoes out there and went up to sealing camp. They’re going to put up seal grease for the wintertime….

Pretty soon they [the Tł’UknaAdi war party] come up there. They go way outside on the other side [of Yakutat Bay] and then around and down….

And that headman at the sealing camp told one man to watch out. His name was SAdEn. He told him to watch out that night….

SAdEn's mother say that—“Oh, that SAdEn. He's not the only one going to die,” she said.

That's why the headman—he is called ŁucwAq—he said: “That's O.K. You can all go to bed if you want.” That's why they don’t see anything.

Before [earlier] that day, they see an eagle on the point. There's a point, the first one they call ’Anádíyàc [Point Latouche]. They saw an eagle on this point. That eagle sees where those people stay….

…When they see that “eagle,” he's got a big hat on, that man. They always make a basket on their head, and they put cloth over it, white cloth. It looks like an eagle. Then after the man went down from there, an eagle went right up in the sky from the tree. That ’i [shaman] made the real eagle take his place when the man came down. Pretty soon that eagle fly away amd go right down the other side [of the bay?] That's why the people [Teqwedi] think it's really an eagle. They believe and they don’t watch good for the enemy.

They think nothing's going to happen. And they [Tł’UknaAdi] go on the other side in the canoe, way up, and then come down the other way. Then the Tł’UknaAdi did the same thing to those people. They kill all the Teqwedi, Nobody saved.

[The informant did not know what happened to the wives of the Teqwedi, who were presumably Tł’UknaAdi, and perhaps at the camp at the time of the massacre. She thinks they may have come down “this way. Maybe they went over to Nesudat.”]

[The following remarks were made by another Tł’UknaAdi woman, Minnie Johnson, on August 25, 1952.]

My mother and daddy showed me [the site of the fort at WuganiyE]. The logs still show. The Tł’UknaAdi got behind them to see what the people are going to do—the Tcicqedi, I hear.

That's why the Tł’UknaAdi come and fight—because Tcicqedi get away with one of their most principal men among the Tł’UknaAdi. He was Deudu’u, my grandmother's granddaddy. So the Tł’UknaAdi claim they take the place instead of [to avenge] Deudu’u. He's the headman. His name means “two slaves are bought.”

The Tł’UknaAdi killed them all, and they didn’t even expect anybody. That little tree at ’Anádíyàc [Point Latouche]—That ŁucwAq got wounded and climb all up there when one leg is shot off. He won’t give in till they kill him. He's the only one who‘s alive. He must be the chief.

They took the whole place for that—to even up the death of Deudu’u. That's why, WuganiyE, ‘burned up,’ they call it, because they are all killed off…

…He went up with one leg and one eye. That's why they call him ŁucwAq, “one eye.”

’AkEdAł keep shooting at him till he reach that tree. He go ahead and shoot, and they kill him.

[In the spring of 1940, Jack Ellis took Harrington on a long trip up Yakutat Bay, into Disenchantment Bay and Russell Fiord, and evidently told him about this war as they passed by the sealing camps above Point Latouche. Thus, Harrington's notes record that WuukkaanIyyé, or KhI‘uułłAyyâa in Eyak:]

“means where they (killed the people and) burned the fort—for they always used to burn the fort after killing the people. At first there was no Tlingit language spoken up here at head of Yakutat Bay, only ‘Yakutat’ [Eyak] language. But after the Tlingit discovered the place, then they came conquering, working westward, and that is why many of the place names up this way are only Tlingit names…. The Yakutat (Cordova-speaking) people had had a fight on the Si·tAk River and came through the mountains to here and were camped at this canyon, when in the night a big war canoe of Tlingit-speaking Indians sneaked right around the point and attacked them, and massacre them. This was the last battle of the Yakutat people and was only ca. 100 years ago.”

[The following was told to me by Helen Bremner on a boat trip to Haenke Island (June 11, 1952). She has seen the tree on Point Latouche, so knows this is a true story. We looked for it as we passed the point, but not even the stump was left on the bare slope.]

There was a fort on the east side of Yakutat Bay, called WuganiE. The TłaayIk-Teqwedi, really Kagwantan, built it because they were afraid of their enemies, the Ł’uedi [sic]. One of the men who lived in the fort was a liar named SAdÉn. He told so many lies no one would believe him.

Once he went out seal hunting in a skin kayak, all dressed in white, and came down through the ice towards Point Latouche. There is a dead tree right on the point. It is so old that it is all broken down, but you can still see it. He saw an eagle on top of the tree. While he watched, he saw the eagle climb down the tree. Eagles can’t do that, so he knew it was a man, an enemy. He sneaked up through the ice and saw it was a man.

Then he paddled back to the fort and told the chief what he had seen. But the people had heard him tell so many lies that they didn’t believe him.

The chief told him he could keep watch; the rest were going to sleep. The man's mother got mad because she said they were always picking on her son, so the chief said he could sleep too.

That night the Ł’uedi [sic] attacked and killed them.

[The following information was given by a Kagwantan informant, Emma Ellis, on March 27, 1954.]

The Ł’uedi stayed up there at that sealing camp, WugAniE or Wuganiye. They stayed at Situk, too. They were Eagle. They had a war….

They had a fort at Wuganiye…. They killed them off over there, you know…. That's why they call it Wuganiye. Just one woman, I guess, they saved, and one boy. I forget the woman‘s name….

That big man, that ŁucwAq, that big chief [was], an kunayÉ, ‘general.’ The boy who was saved was SAdÉn—that's his nephew. He got saved. He hid some place.

He thinks he's sitting like that [upright, arms folded—i.e. on guard?], then he's sleeping. When he hears something he takes the boat paddle. That's all he takes. Then he says, “Oh dear!” he says, when he sees that paddle. It's his gun in that fort yet…. He thinks his paddle is his gun. He's missing. Then they say he cry out, that's the way they say. The opposite people say he cry out.

“Oh dear!” he says…. I don’t know what word he used. It's YAtqwan word he's using [Eyak]—just like “Oh dear!” he says, when he sees it's his paddle he got in his hand. He thinks it's his gun he grab instead of that.

I think they were fighting Tł’UknaAdi, I guess. And that's why Tł’UknaAdi wins that Situk. They win it. Used to belong to Ł’uedi. Now Tł’UknaAdiyAti [i.e., Teqwedi, the children of Tł‘UknaAdi] own Situk.

[The following comments were made by a Kagwantan man, John Ellis, on two different occasions.]

There's one tribe that's not existing any more—Łuedi…. Ł’uedi means ‘Muddy Water People.’ The reason why they call them Ł’uedi is that at the time the head of this bay was Situk Lake. Situk River was all muddy. They used to be someplace along there.

There's a reason why they killed them out. They killed them out and later somebody else owned Situk. They killed them off by war. I don’t know if Ł’uedi were Eagle or Raven.

[He dows not know the cause for the war, because he does not like to listen to war stories. Furthermore, these are not often told, because they usually lead to further wars for revenge.]

There's a reason why they killed them, though. The trouble even went to those Silver Salmon tribes, too. And that's why this Silver Salmon tribe [Tł’UknaAdi] claims Situk, too, but the other people don’t recognize it that way. What they claim is, Silver Salmon people they don’t like war, so that story is that they pick up different tribe[s?] and give them tInna-yAti [small coppers]. They give them coppers to [take] revenge for them, because they don’t want to fight. That tInna-yAti, I don’t know just how big it is…. I don’t know who the Silver Salmon tribe gave coppers to. Some tribe they picked up and paid them tInna-yAti to fight for them. That's when they killed all those [Ł’uedi].

But anyway, they didn’t stay out. It came on them, too. That's when the Ł’uedi were all killed out. [It is not clear what happened to the Silver Salmon tribe.] [March 25, 1954.]

[The informant had been speaking about peace ceremonies.]

There was one on this Nuw [Little Fort Island near Knight Island]…. I think it's the same story about this Tł‘UknaAdi Tribe, when they had a war up in WuganiyE….

These women, Tł’Uk cawu [Tł’UknaAdi women] they were playing there, picking berries, or something. They stopped at that little island. This woman was just playing around, dancing like that peace [ceremony], and she was that kuwakan [peace hostage-ambassador]. And when they find out, they just make it real…. That was way after the war…. She's Tł’UknaAdi…. That woman's name was Tac-tła, ‘Branches Mother,’ [tcac(?)-tla].

[No further details were known. May 9, 1954.]

[Swanton in 1904 (1909, Tale 27, pp. 68–69) recorded from a Box House Kagwantan man of Sitka what appear to be references to these same events. They are included in a series of unrelated incidents connected with the Alsek people. The sections which interest us may be summarized as follows:]

The Alsek people used to go to a small river farther north to get slaves. There they killed a rich man, so the people, L!uq!oedÎ [Ł’uedi], built a fort, which Łucwâ’k equipped with a strong door that would admit only one man at a time. On their next trip, many of the Dry Bay people were clubbed to death when they tried to enter.

Łucwâ’k then renamed his fort Eagle Fort, and at first refused to let the survivors take the corpses of their dead comrades, saying: “The eagle's claws are fastened in the dead bodies, and he cannot let go of them.” Later he threw the bodies out.

When the bodies were taken back to Alsek, all the female slaves which the mourners had taken on previous expeditions were thrown on the funeral pyre. Then all the “Eagle people” returned to the fort, killed nearly all the defenders, including Łucwâ’k, and burned the fort. Łucwâ’k's body was not cremated, because a brave man does not like to sit close to the fire in the Ghost's home.

[Are these “Eagle people” the Kagwantan living at Dry Bay?]

On another occasion, when visiting at a certain place, the Alsek people were killed coming out of a sweat house. One of the victims was Sī’n, a man related to the Athabaskans. The Alsek people finally evened the score, and so the war was ended.

[The name of the victim suggests SEtAn, a TłukwaAdi shaman of the Dry Bay area. (See p. 672.)]

The Story of Gue and the Fate of the Dry Bay People

The settlement of Gue on the Akwe River near Dry Bay was the home of the Tł’UknaAdi, although some seem to have lived on the shores of Dry Bay. At Gue also lived other Raven sibs, the Athabaskan TłukwaAdi, the Kosedi and the ancestors of the DAdenten. Apparently the spouses of these people included Box House Kagwantan, Teqwedi, and probably the CAnkuqedi. Its founding, or at least its early days are connected with the Tlingit from Hoonah, QakewtE, who taught the Dry Bay Athabaskans how to fish. In one of the versions of his story recorded by Swanton (1909, Tale 32, p. 161), the town was settled by Tlingit from southeastern Alaska in the spring following QakewtE's return from the Athabaskans. Here the Tł’UknaAdi built Sleep House, the crest obtained when he killed his own sleep in the form of a bird and gave it to his wife's sib. This story is not very satisfactory, because Swanton's Wrangell informant located the town at the mouth of the Alsek River, and also showed himself ignorant of the local geography by indicating that the Copper River was close by. Our own version of the same story (see below, and compare pp. 274–275) would suggest that Gue was already established before QakewtE came to the Dry Bay country.

Gue was abandoned and the Tł’UknaAdi dispersed because, it is said, several canoes from the town were lost in Lituya Bay. It seems impossible to date this tragedy—in fact, there may have been more than one shipwreck in the treacherous entrance to the bay. We know of the loss of several large skin boats shortly before LaPérouse's visit in 1786. Our informants, while denying that the boats from Gue were of skin, suggested that it was flotsom from these overturned canoes that attracted the Russians to this part of Alaska. The fact that the woman who composed the song about the drownings was supposed to have witnessed the loss of her relatives suggests that the village from which they came or where she lived was not on the Akwe River but was in Lituya Bay. The expedition which was lost is linked with the war between the Tł’UknaAdi and the GanAtedi of Chilkat. A chief of the latter sib, Yełak, may well have been the same man as the chief whom Ismailov and Bocharov met in Yakutat Bay in 1788 (see pp. 134–135). However, it is not necessary to assume that, even if we can date the war and the drownings to the latter part of the 18th century, the abandonment of Gue followed immediately. Causes may take a long time to produce results, as interpreted in native history.

A Russian cannon, taken by the TłaayIk-Teqwedi in 1805, and carried back to Gue by the Tł’UknaAdi after they had crushed the latter, is said to have been left behind when Gue was deserted. The final abandonment of this town, whether or not connected with earlier or later drownings, would appear to have taken place about the middle of the 19th century: after 1852—the date of the massacre of the Wrangell peace party in Sitka—since a man from Gue played an important part in this event (see the War between the Kagwantan and the CAtqwan, pp. 279–284). By 1890, when Glave and Dalton passed through the country, Gue had ceased to exist.

I have already given a number of references to Swanton's two versions of the Story of QakewtE (pp. 81, 90, 227), so do not need to summarize these here. It may be of interest, however, to present the version of the story recorded at Yakutat.

THE STORY OF QAKEwTE

[The following brief version of the famous story was made by Jack Reed, Tł’UknaAdi, born in Sitka, 1880, died at Yakutat, 1953. It was recorded, July 4, 1952, in Tlingit, 1952, 1–2–A, together with the song composed by the leading character of the story (p. 1158). The following version in English is a free translation, with explanatory details, given by Minnie Johnson, and also recorded.]

Now I am going to explain the words to the song that man, KakEndaqin, sings. That's his Tlingit name. His name is Jack Reed. The song he sang a while ago, they want me to explain in English, so I try.

The song is composed by a man, QakewtE.

They call the point Seayi [sIt ai, ’glacier point’?]—around the bay, like.

So he's a pretty busy man, putting up food, hunting. Very little sleep he gets. He's working night and day and he's a pretty busy man. And he never sleeps much at night.

Finally he try to sleep, and there was a bird flying around him. They call it in English “Bob White, Bob White” [whip-poor-will?].

It was around his face and it keep him awake more. So he got angry and hit that bird—knocked him down. In English they call it “Sleep.” That's his sleep, he kill it himself. He's so restless and can’t sleep. He kill his sleep himself, so he is sleepless.

He search for a place where he can rest and sleep. Finally he made up his mind to search for a place to sleep.

There is nothing but a glacier from Seayi up to Alsek…. He make up his mind to keep on walking.

He is so much alone…. Those qaahai [shadows], spirits—he begin to imagine things. Sometimes he sees a man coming towards him. Soon as he get near, it disappears.

He keep on going.

He got it in his mind to go to Alsek and meet his wife's tribe. He keep on going. He still sees things. He sees a man coming towards him. He got kind of hurried. He want to have someone to talk to. It disappears—? the same thing.

…He come to Alsek to a tribe called TłukwaAdi. It's just the same as Tł’UknaAdi. They’re all together, but they get different names.

…He come to a place and he see where there are some men up the creek. People are trying to snare eulachons, sak we call it. They made some kind of a trap for it. They could only catch one at a time. He met the people and told them to dig some roots and make a fish scoop and dip out the eulachon instead of getting them one at a time. “Dip net” he called it.

He also ordered them to dig a hole in the sand and to line it with something so that the fish wouldn’t get full of sand, and to put the fish in a pile—make a big pile of it—so they can get eulachen oil. That's what they’re after, a long time ago….

So from him they learn how to catch eulachon.

In return, after they are scooping eulachon and make a big pile, and they decide they get enough….

This new man coming to Alsek—the real settlement is Gue. All the interior Indians and TłukwaAdi are mixed…. It's a big village itself. The TłukwaAdi and the Tł’UknaAdi are together….

Then they find out that man is brother-in-law to Tł’UknaAdi, and in return they give him a young girl, in return for the help he give to the people. So that's done, and that's why he compose the song….

He got a young wife, and he's friendly with his brother-in-law. His wife belongs to our tribe [Tł’UknaAdi]. Her name is Kunu [or nak]. He turned this song over to his wife's family, his wife's tribe.

That's all I can understand.

[The actual words of the song were not translated.]

[The recording made by Jack Reed was played on March 22, 1959, for John Ellis, who was persuaded to attempt a more literal translation. This is supplemented by explanations (in parentheses) made then and on March 14, 1954, when the tape was also played for him.]

Now I‘m going to tell you, my friends sitting over there, that the way they told the story, down below Seayi—the other side, where it was inside.

QakewtE—he's married to our sister, Tł’Uknaca [a Tł’UknaAdi woman]. At that time he can’t sleep, got stone where his foot[?]—that's the time he heard something that sounded like a bird. And he clubbed it, and he find out it was ta, ‘sleep.’ He saw it, and that's what he gave to his wife (he made it his wife's belonging). [She was] Tł’Uknaca—that's why they call our house Ta hIt, Sleep House. That's why he doesn’t sleep for many nights.

(And he wanted to come up to Gue. That Gue is Tł’UknaAdi's tribe's place. That's why they call that house Ta hIt.)

(Then he started walking up here.) He walked over a glacier. There was a glacier there at that time. He went over to Łe-dA-nítc (a place on the other side of Dry Bay, where there used to be a glacier). He kept walking, all the way to Alsek—(dak łunitc ’ałse—[back along-the-beach of/at Alsek]—that's the way he walks). He felt that way. That's why he was going to go to Gue. That's the way he felt it, that time he was coming to Łe-dA-nítc.

(And then when he was walking), he always sees somebody coming to meet him. And every time he comes there, there's nothing there. And then after that, the next time, the same thing again. The same thing happens. (It just keeps happening like that.)

He dresses up to meet him [the illusion]. (Its name is “olden time people.” I think this refers to what the old time people called red face powder.) He puts reddish stuff on his face—łeudínà—he puts it on his face. That's the way he dresses up when he's coming to the people.

This is the song he sings. (He's singing about that thing that always looks like somebody meeting him.) He's the composer of this song. It's what I’m going to sing.

[The words of the song could not be accurately translated, nor could the Tlingit words be properly transcribed from the tape. The words of both stanzas resemble somewhat the last words to the song recorded by Swanton (1909, Song 2, pp. 390 f.) although they are not identical.]

(The first two words he's got in there sound funny to me. The way it sounded: “I witched those little rocks” doesn’t make sense. They have pauses in, so that even one word sounds like three words.)

He sees like little rocks—like you’re looking for something on the beach, you look at little rocks. He was looking around the beach for something. When you’re looking, it turns out like what you’re looking for—something like an optical illusion. It was just little rocks.

[Second stanza] “I give up hope of seeing it.” (“I was watching,” or something—that's what he's singing.)

And then he came over to Alsek. They trapped hooligans [eulachons], and that time he saw it, living way up there in the river, and there was a village. That's the time he taught the TłukwaAdi how to make this trap. They’re staying together with the Tł’UknaAdi. (Tł’UknaAdi and TłukwaAdi were staying up at Alsek, getting these eulachon.) And then he told them to get tree roots. A long time ago we didn’t know anything. And they made a dip net (dígà). At that time they call it eta edi [trap lead]. They put it in and the fish came right up against it. (The eulachon trap is it. But they didn’t use it that time. They built a lead, like a fence, and dipped them out of there.) They dug a hole. And that's where they’re dipping—into that hole—where there was good sand. He helped them nicely, his people [i.e., the narrator‘s sib].

TcukAnedi—(the tribe to which QakewtE belonged. Same thing as Kagwantan. These tribes just split up all the time). He made Tł’UknaAdi. He helped them to exist, to multiply, helped increase the Tł’UknaAdi population. Some people don’t believe this—that he made the Tł’UknaAdi, this TcukAnedi [man]. It's because of him—this is why we are people. (He's the one ‘made’ us—xAłiyÍx—same word for making a boat.)

This is what he taught them. From there on we are beginning to think that Tł’Uknaca was married to the man who clubbed his own sleep. We think that man was the one. [I.e., we think this man should marry a Tł’UknaAdi woman?] That's why this Tł’Uknaca, while she was still young, they gave him permission to marry her.

That's the way it was about our life. That's the way their [our] life is. It's surprising—kU qa da gwÁtłì. Where this song ends, and this time we are staying in Yakutat. (The place they meet is at the cannery over here.) It's just like we’re having the hardest time this year. (What a situation we are in now, since this—[Company] took over the cannery [from Libby]. We are facing hard times.) Two summers, we haven’t got a job here. Everything's going wrong. Everything's going against our favor—even the head of the cannery. There's nobody to help us now. We are poor people. That's all we earn—only $200 or $300 dollars (every summer—not enough for winter living). That's how much we make this time. It's hard for us. I’m just telling you, these village people, just how much we who are staying in Yakutat are suffering.

Thank you for listening to me.

(This is what you recorded—sounds like he's asking Southeast people to come up, help us out. That story he's telling is like illustrating that man who came up to help us out, and this [recording] sounds like he's asking those people…. Nobody will come here to help us out.

…It doesn’t tell in the story what happened to the wife he left behind…. The bird he killed was Sleep, and he never could sleep again…. That's how they [Tł’UknaAdi] got Ta hIt.)

[A Tł’UknaAdi woman, Annie George, who heard the recording said:]

This was the place, Diai—East River, where he taught the people to catch herring in traps. The song is claimed by the TłukwaAdi. He found the TłukwaAdi all mixed up with interior people. He knows the TłukwaAdi are his kani [brothers-in-law], and they show him the way, how to walk over to Gue. He started from TanyedAq—that's Hoonah. He taught them to make dígà, dipper. Then he taught them to make a fire and scoop up eulachon and line a hole with skunk cabbage and dip eulachon in there. In the song he imagines lots of those men come to him. He just imagined it. [July 16, 1952.]

Jack Reed, rehearing his own recording, August 5, 1952, said that no one in Yakutat knew the story except himself—just Frank Italio, who forgets. He went on to explain how the Alsek people were catching fish, and it seemed as if he were describing a Figure-Four deadfall.

THE STORY OF GUE

At Gue three different people moved there in olden times. There was an Indian village on the east side at Alsek, and two on the west side. But it was maybe 30 or 40 miles from the Alsek to the big village on the Akwe where the people came. There is a Ta hIt [Sleep House] in Sitka and there was one at Gue [Jack Reed; August 5, 1952.]

Gu is about halfway up Akwe River. It's where the interior Indians and the TłukwaAdi and Tł’UknaAdi were settled. They had Ca hIt [Mountain House, for Mt. Fairweather], Yay hIt [Whale House], and Dekina hIt [Far Out House], and some other houses there…. There were four houses and a lot of small ones I don’t know. I could remember only three of the big ones: Frog House, Sea Lion House, and Whale House. [Annie George; July 7 and 16, 1952.]

Four tribal houses were built up at Gue [Mrs. Frank Dick, May 17, 1954.]

At Alsek [Gu] they had Dekina hIt [Far Out House], ’Itc hIt [Boulder House], TE hIt [Stone House, or was it Ta, Sleep?], and Xixt hIt [Frog House]. [Minnie Johnson; June 23, 1954.]

Just as there seems to be some confuston in house names, for undoubtedly the same houses carried more than a single name, so their owners or builders seem to have had several names.

The owner of Frog House was Qałgekw—the most important Tł’UknaAdi man in Gue. He had other names [MJ, July 13, 1952]. The man who owned Frog House at Gue was named DjIsníya—this seemed to be the consensus of opinion. DjIsnía and his brother, Dewudu’u owned Frog House [MJ, August 25, 1952]. Frog House was built by Stágwàn [MJ and AG, July 7, 1952].

DjIsnía was head of Tł’UknaAdi when they were building Frog House, and he found the Frog. [MJ and AG, August 8, 1952]. [I heard several accounts of this remarkable find:]

They were digging the foundations for the corner posts and they find this frog. It was froze solid. The old people were suspicious of such things. They put it in a good warm place. When the frog thawed out, my goodness! it come to life! That Frog House got four corner posts carved like frogs. They are still in there. [Minnie Johnson; July 30, 1952.]

So when the Tł’UknaAdi started to build the house there, they found a frozen frog. They put the frog on a piece of spruce bark, and they just put it aside. They were going to put it back again [in the post hole], but that frog came back alive. That frog is kind of a white-looking frog. That's how come the Alsek people claim that Frog belong to us. They called [the house] Xixt hIt, and it's still named Xixt hIt to this day. They made a in [screen, rear partition] out of the frog…. [Mrs. Frank Dick; June 17, 1954.]

Tł’UknaAdi tribe was digging in the ground where they were going to put the posts, the foundation of the house they were going to build. And while they were digging and digging, they dig up a frog that was frozen—frozen to death. And they put it up. They put it up on a piece of bark, I think. And while it lay there it came back to life…. And while they were working, they look at that frog. It is come to alive. And they were all surprised to see that frog come back alive. And that's why after they built that house, they call it Xixt hIt. It was at Gue…. And after they built that house, they make a totem pole in the four corners of the house, and a big frog in, Xixt in [Frog Screen]….. The headman, DjIsnía, he's the one that's going to built that house…. That's why they put that frog on four corners and when they fix that screen they put a frog [on it]…. [Frank Italio; May 7, 1954; Minnie Johnson interpreting.]

The frog was said to be “the biggest frog you ever saw”—about 12 inches in diameter. Stágwàn built the original Frog House, and his namesake built a Frog House at Sitka that was broken up by the KIksAdi (pp. 290–291). “The posts at Gue were still standing all covered with moss when I saw it about 40 years ago.” [Annie George; July 7, 1952.]

That Frog House was at Gue. Right next to it is Yay hIt [Whale House]. It's the biggest tribal house that was ever built. It was made of logs bigger than that one [at least 5 feet in diameter]. That's why it's still there. The chief of the house was Q’ei. He is my mother's relation…. Ya hIt is the biggest tribal house in Gue. It was made of big logs and a big frame. Nobody can understand how in the world they got it up there. That's why they still see it, covered with moss. They name their grandchildren after it, “Never Turn to Ground” [’Never Decays’]. [Minnie Johnson; July 30, 1952.]

Łdaxin built a tribal house in Gue—Ya hIt—biggest house in the world. People don’t know how in the world they got the studdings up. The posts are still standing, only covered with moss [Minnie Johnson; August 7, 1952]. Frank Italio was telling me about that Gue house, Ya hIt—the big studdings are just as solid, only the moss all grown over it. He kicked it. How many years ago since those eight canoes capsized in Lituya Bay! They just moved out of there. [Minnie Johnson; May 1, 1954.]

The next house above Ya hIt is CA hIt, Mountain House. The owner is Déudu’u. [Minnie Johnson; July 30, 1952.]

DESTRUCTION OF THE CANOES FROM GUE; WAR WITH THE ANATEDI

[Most of the following account (somewhat edited) was told by Minnie Johnson on July 30, 1952, when she and Frank Italio sang the songs commemorating the drownings in Lituya Bay, 1952, 2–2–B (p. 1159). Another recording was made by his sister, Mrs. Frank Dick, 1954, 6–2–C (p. 1160), who also dictated the words, May 17, 1954.]

From there [Gue]. the Tł’UknaAdi left to go trading, and they are supposed to come back…. Mount Fairweather gives a sign if something terrible is going to happen. They knew it before they started….

(There were 10 war canoes, 8 men in each canoe. They were in Lituya Bay for a rest. They struck it at the wrong tide. The big rock, tantEi [sea lion rock], got them.) [June 30, 1952.]

People were going to make war on the anAtedi of Chilkat. They killed a bald-headed man at Qa ca kułnuq wAt[?], right at the mouth of Chilkat River. Our own tribe cut his head off. And that head had no hair. The Tł’UknaAdi get that [head]. They just get the body and cut off the head with no hair.

So when they get excited, the bald-headed head is in the way, and the young fellows threw it overboard.

They were going to replace the anAtedi man that the Tł’UknaAdi had killed, but the Tł’UknaAdi man sent to even the score died with heart failure in the big canoe, so there was still one to make it even for us Tł’UknaAdi.

Big Raven, Yeł-tłen, was the Tł’UknaAdi doctor. When he get his spirits sent, he question all the people around him: “Who threw that bald-headed head overboard?” He pointed to them. “You? You? Was it you?”

There was a anAtedi ’i [shaman]. His name was CA [Wild Currants]. His spirit's name was ’An-kuoi, “Town-Rover.” They believed he hurt them because the Tł’UknaAdi killed the anAtedi man, and when they threw the head overboard, this hurt the doctor's feelings, so he upset the boats. They believe that is the cause of it all, because the bald-headed man was killed by the Tł’UknaAdi. That's why the doctor gets angry at us. It was just to make it even, he upset the canoes. I guess we were as guilty as they were.

Then that spirit of Yeł-tłen captured that CA's spirit, for Yeł-tłen is on our side. That Big Raven got more power than any Indian doctor. He took the spirit away from CA.

The lady who composed the song, WUckika, lost eight brothers. It's her real brothers who got drowned before her eyes. They were on the overturned canoes. One of them was XatsakwA (áÁw, or átUqwà, or aagU’), the last of Ya hIt. He knows there's no hope for him. He makes a noise; it sounds like a frog. [I.e., he made the cry of his sib totem when meeting death bravely.]

The woman who lost the eight brothers composed a lot of songs. She used to sit on the sand dunes and cry and sing, especially when the tide was smooth. The song composed by the woman belongs to [is about?] Mount Fairweather. That's why we claim the song. The woman's uncles and brothers were all gone. Because so many of our people drowned, Paul Henry named his boat [bought in 1952] “Mount Fairweather.”

The boats that were lost were not skin boats. They didn‘t have them that time. Only lately[?] they start to get skin boats in Lituya Bay. That time they drowned, they had eight men in each canoe. Skin canoes are too small [sic].

[Only the words for the first stanza could be recorded and translated. As dictated and explained by Mrs. Frank Dick, they are:]

Your grandfathers were watching the paddlers’ mountain [like a compass].

Close by, your hands miss it. [The canoe overturned, and they tried to grab it.]

[The mountain that was used as a compass was Tsałan, Mount Fairweather.]

[A song (1954, 1–2–E; p. 1161), commemorates a canoe, Crane Boat, that was lost in this war. Both Tł’UknaAdi and Kwacqwan claim the rights to the canoe and to the song. The following account, somewhat edited, was given by Charley White and Frank Dick on April 9, 1954.]

The towns were fighting each other just as Americans were fighting in Germany. The anAtedi and Tł’UknaAdi were fighting. They have that big canoe, Dułyakw [Crane Canoe]; they take it up to Chilkat. They fight over there—no more Tł’UknaAdi—clean out the whole thing—that canoe, too. The anAtedi bust up the whole thing, smashed the canoe.

[Only one stanza of the song was recorded and “translated”; the singers were uncertain about the second:]

All smashed up, the Crane Canoe.

They went away from here.

The Crane Canoe is still there.

SWANTON‘S VERSION OF THE WAR

[Swanton's version of the story of QakewtE, recorded at Wrangell (1909, Tale 32, pp. 161–165), ends with an account of the war between the nAxte′dÎ of Chilkat and the L!ûk!nAxA’ dÎ of Kos!ê’x and of KAq!Anuwū’ (Grouse Fort, Hoonah territory). This would seem to have taken place immediately after the founding of Kos!‘x (Gue), the year after Kakēq!utê (QakewtE) had returned south with the Athabaskans.]

The anAtedi chief, Ck’wu-yeł, ‘Tailless Raven’ [now a Tł’UknaAdi name], had invited the Kagwantan to a lavish potlatch at Chilkat. This seems to have been in connection with the making of a totem pole, carved to represent nkAw’Î [“Town Rover”?], the spirit of his shaman, Cqaq′, and also with the display of his Raven Hat. Apparently the Tł′UknaAdi, spouses of the Kagwantan, were also at this potlatch.

Q!one [one], the Tł’UknaAdi chief, made a Raven Hat, on which a Raven, with beak, tail, and wings of copper pecked at a copper plate. This he displayed to the Kagwantan at Grouse Fort, speaking disparagingly of anAtedi generosity.

In retaliation, the anAtedi built Whale House (Y’Î hÎt), and bought Tlingit slaves (Decitan, TcukAnedi, and Tł’enedi) to give away at the potlatch. This provoked war, because the Tł’UknaAdi who had only less valuable Flathead slaves to give, felt ashamed, and the sibs whose relatives had been enslaved were also angry, but the anAtedi defeated them all.

A anAtedi chief, Yeł-ak, had married the daughter of a Tł’UknaAdi man named Big Raven, Yeł-tłen (ył-Ln). The latter lived at Łaxa;′k, which the narrator seems to use synonymously with Kos!e′. Yeł-ak sent a slave via the interior with food and tobacco to his father-in-law (see pp. 144–145). He thought the latter would make peace for theTł’UknaAdi slain at Land Otter Point and nAk!-n (unidentified).

A Tł’UknaAdi man, CdisÎ′ktc, prepared for war, with a helmet carved to represent the monster rat that lives under Was!’ca mountain (Saint Elias), and with spearheads of drift iron, while Yeł-tłen sent his spirit to scout the route for the war party. They were joined by Tł’UknaAdi from Grouse Fort, whose relatives had been slain by the anAtedi. The help of the KIksAdi, DAdentan, and “other families,” was purchased with coppers (see p. 269). Yeł-ak was killed by CdisÎ’ktc, because the spears of the Chilkat had points only of bone and mountain goat horn, not of drift iron. The Tł’UknaAdi from Grouse Fort took the totem pole, nkAw’Î.

Then Ck¯′w-ył went to Grouse Fort to make peace. The war had lasted 5 years. The Raven Hat which he had captured was returned by his wife, the daughter of Łdah’n who was the Tł’UknaAdi chief, and head of Sleep House. The captured totem pole was returned to the anAtedi in exchange, both objects covered with eagle down (a symbol of peace). Ck’wył and his father-in-law, Łdahī’n, were exchanged as “deer,” and a permanent peace was established.

We might note that several Tł’UknaAdi men have borne the name, Tailless Raven, suggesting that it might have been obtained or captured from the anAtedi. One was Jack Reed, born in Sitka in 1880; another is William Benson, born in 1890 in Yakutat, but now living in Sitka. The latter also has the name CadasIktc as a “potlatch name.” A man of this name was chief of Sleep House in Sitka in 1904 (Swanton, 1908, p. 406).

COMMENTS ON THE DROWNINGS IN LITUYA BAY

[The following statement was made by a Tł’UknaAdi woman, after telling about the war between the Tł’UknaAdi and TłaayIk-Teqwedi. (Annie George; August 7, 1952.) The drownings in Lituya Bay were mentioned. It was sorrow for those who drowned that led the others to abandon Gue.]

That's how the Russians came on this side in a schooner. They saw those things drifting by [flotsam from the canoes]. They want to find out where those things come from, and they found out on this side there were so many skins. And then they go to the native people. People were at AnAwAs [Knight Island], and at Khantaak, and at Nesudat, and at Gucine [at or near Diyaguna’Et], when the Russians came. I don’t know why they left AnAwAs.

[A Dry Bay woman, Emma Ellis, said on August 1952:]

You know that Lituya Bay? The Tł’UknaAdi get drowned over there. And all that good stuff washed out to sea—sea-otter skins wash out to sea. And those halibut skin bags [waterproof bags in which the furs were carried]—it floats. The Russians get it. That's why the Russians came to Lituya Bay.

[The recording of WUckika's songs prompted the following comment, by John Ellis, March 14, 1954:]

Frank Italio told me that story. All I know, when the Tł’UknaAdi used to trade, they used to go south and would trade with furs, and then come back here. And the seven canoes are what capsized in Lituya Bay, at the time the song was composed. Maybe there's another song, I don’t know. But that song may be at the time it capsized over there.

There's another song they’re singing. All those things they had—those halibut skin bags had a lot of furs in them. And that's what drifted out and those Russians found it. That's why they started looking up this way. That's what she was singing about….

There's lots of furs in it, and those things [halibut skin bags] got buoyancy; they could drift far away…. They don’t use skin boats—all wood, big canoes, yakw yAdi.

[A Tł’UknaAdi woman added (Minnie Johnson; July 4, 1952):]

The houses at Gue became empty because the eight canoes, going south to the southeast of Alaska, got drowned in Lituya Bay. A Russian cannon was left at Gue. That's where you should dig. The people that lived there moved to Dry Bay and to here [Yakutat].

GIANT WAVES AT LITUYA BAY

That the wrecking of the Tł’UknaAdi canoes may have been due to giant waves, and that the village which was abandoned as a result was not Gue, but a settlement in Lituya Bay, is suggested by the tradition reported by J. P. Williams (1952, p. 138). This is summarized, after describing the giant waves of 1936 and evidence of an earlier catastrophe of the same nature.

“The incidents just related tend to corroborate the old Indian story about Lituya Bay. They say that at one time a large native village stood near the bay entrance. The place was much favored as a base for sea otter hunting. Inherently weather-wise, and using Mount Fairweather as a barometer, the Indians ventured to sea when the weather was clear and scurried for the shelter of the bay when the storm clouds began to gather on Fairweather's high snow cap. There came a day, however, when the returning hunters faced a scene of wreckage and destruction far greater than that of 1936. The village had been completely wiped out and the only person who remained alive was one woman who had been able to reach high ground and escape the flood. She had been gathering berries well up on the slopes of the hills.”

Although Williams believes that this disaster occurred “175 or 200 years ago”—probably dated from his own visit to Lituya Bay in 1936—it seems to me more likely that this was due to the giant waves of 1853 or early in 1854 (p. 94).

A SITKA VERSION

What may be a reference to the same tragedy is found in a story that Swanton heard in Sitka, about the Alsek River People (1909, Tale 27, p. 65). According to this, the shamans who lived in a town on the Alsek River predicted that disaster was coming to their neighbors who lived in a great town on a lake (Lituya Bay?). This was because the latter had said that they were not afraid of things that stutter and cannot speak properly. When two men from this town had gone hunting on top of the mountain, they saw a great flood pour down between the mountains and destroy their town. “This flood was caused by an avalanche which poured into the lake and filled it up, forcing the water out. Some human bodies were hanging to the branches of the trees.” The two survivors knew that this had been brought about by the angry land otters.

THE FATE OF THE DRY BAY PEOPLE

Although Gue was said to have been settled first, there were also Tł’UknaAdi living in Dry Bay during its occupation. When Gue was abandoned “in a hurry,” the people from there joined their relatives in Dry Bay, or dispersed to Sitka, Hoonah, and Yakutat. One of the settlements mentioned was at Diyai, on the east side of Dry Bay. The Tł’UknaAdi that were moving towards Yakutat were perhaps those who built houses on Johnson Slough, Situk, and Lost River. According to our informants, it was on moving away from Gue that the Kosedi and the DAdentan became separated from the Tł’UknaAdi.

Misfortune was also to overwhelm the TłukwaAdi. Two explanations for this disaster were given by the same informant, the daughter of a TłukwaAdi man.

FLOOD AT DRY BAY

[Told by Emma Ellis; August 5, 1952. The informant's grandmother was 10 years old in 1852, at the time of the massacre of the Wrangell peace party at Sitka. The flood probably took place about that time, perhaps somewhat earlier.]

Then one time, you know, when my father's mother was a little girl up at TInx kaani [Kinnikinnik Leaves, on the Tatshenshini, see pp. 87, 89], there was a flood all over. It was because my father's people [TłukwaAdi] made fun of a seagull. They threw it in the fire. It was a young one and couldn’t fly. They threw it in again. All its feathers burned off. They laughed at it.

And then a great flood came. And there was no place to be safe. That glacier broke that used to go across the Alsek. The people tied their canoes to the “Whale‘s fin.” That island at the mouth of Dry Bay, Áłtcinuwu, used to be a whale, and the people tied their canoes to the part sticking up. But some of the young people untied their canoes too soon. A great wave came along, turned over the boats, and the young people were all flooded in the ocean. Only the old people were saved.

It was when my father's mother was a little girl at TInx kaani when it happened. When she’d grown up my grandma called her sons by all her uncles’ names. Her uncles got drowned that time. When she talked about it, my grandma always cried. They lose lots of people that time.

BIG RABBIT AND HIS WIFE

[A brief summary of this incident was given by John Ellis, July 23, 1952.]

They moved away from DiyaI. The wife cried every day because they had killed her relatives. He [Big Rabbit, the shaman] got tired of it and told his people to cut his wife's hair. The rest all died off. Only John Williams [TłukwaAdi, died 1949?] stayed there. The TłukwaAdi are all scattered now.

[A fuller account of this incident was told by Emma Ellis on April 18, 1954.]

GA-tłen (Big Rabbit) was a big Indian doctor—TłukwaAdi. His wife, a Teqwca, was crying about her brothers.

The TłukwaAdi had given them food—some kind of Tlingit food—meat or something, that mountain goat meat, or berries. They gave it to those Teqwedi, that woman's “brothers.” Wayout cousins, in olden time, they call them “brothers.” They gave them food in a dish, and they don’t give it back to TłukwaAdi. That's what they war about it…. They just leave it someplace, then they go away. Olden time, a fancy dish is close to them. Some of them, moose horn or something, they make a dish out of it. And some kind of good wood, they make a dish out of it…. I don’t know what kind, they just tell it like that.

Then they kill those two boys—about that dish…. Teqwedi can’t do anything. They’re scared of my father's people [TłukwaAdi]….

Then that GA-tłen's wife crying all the time. And that GA-tłen, he can’t do anything about it. Then one time he says he got tired of it. He loves his wife—crying all the time about those two brothers they killed, and they don’t want to pay [an indemnity for the slaying]. Just because they don’t bring that dish back to TłukwaAdi, they kill them, just because they look at TłukwaAdi like they were just nothing. That's the way they think about my father's people. That's why they don’t bring that dish. So they killed those two boys.

GA-tłen says: “Cut my wife's hair. Make a fire out there,” he said, that big Indian doctor. “Make a fire.”

Then they put it in the fire, that GA-tłen's wife's hair, they say.

“They can die off, the TłukwaAdi people,” he says. That's why he says:

“Wucítdè yA ’angÁ nAsIí ’an ’ii cAt cAá.cI.” [No literal translation was given.]

“Nobody there,” was what GA-tłen said. “All that people died off.”

See, this Yakutat place, all these people died off. GA-tłen wanted his own people to die! [The informant explained that although ordinary people cut off their hair in mourning, it was taboo for a shaman to do so.] That's against the law…. Indian doctor and his wife can’t cut their hair. That's bad luck….

That's a bad thing that man did. That's why TłukwaAdi get mad at him sometimes. And Teqwedi and TłukwaAdi died off because of it…. They died off. Crazy man!

Smallpox

The abandonment of some of the villages between Yakutat Bay and Dangerous River seems to have been due to smallpox, and if the ravages of that disease were as severe in the Akwe River-Dry Bay area as they were near Yakutat and in southeastern Alaska, it may well account for the virtual disappearance of the population in and about Dry Bay.

Smallpox came to the Tlingit at a very early period, for near Sitka Portlock in 1787 saw pockmarks on the faces of all but the children. The disease probably had spread from the Spanish expedition of 1775. A more severe epidemic began at Sitka in November 1836, and by March of the following year had killed about half the adult population. By 1838 and 1839 it had spread over southeastern Alaska, and when it died out in 1840, one half the Tlingit had died. It is probably this epidemic which devastated the villages near Yakutat. There was also another widespread smallpox epidemic in 1862 (see pp. 177–178). We should also remember that two Aleuts came down with smallpox at Yakutat in 1795, although no epidemic is recorded (pp. 166–167).

In addition, some serious disease afflicted the Russian garrison at Yakutat in 1800 (p. 169). Measles spread over Russian America in 1848 (p. 178). There were also epidemics of typhoid in 1819, 1848, and 1855.

Since native accounts of epidemics are fairly brief it is very difficult to determine which one is meant.

According to a CAnkuqedi informant (Mrs. Chester Johnson; June 7, 1954), smallpox “killed everyone” in Dry Bay. It was at this time that QAłaétł, also called Łtuned;, became a shaman, and acquired the Disease Spirits as his familiars. This man was the mother's father of Lituya Bay George, a d;akA’ai man who was born in Sitka in 1854 of a Kagwantan father. The epidemic was before the days of schooners.

Before the Russians came, some people who had been in southeastern Alaska brought back the corpse of a person who had died there of smallpox, starting an epidemic here [Sampson Harry, July 14, 1952].

When smallpox came, the Indian doctors saw spirits coming, paddling in canoes (see p. 710). So many died they couldn’t burn them. Diarrhea came, and then another epidemic of smallpox. This was when my mother's father's father was a little boy and it orphaned him [1836–39?]. A lot of people moved away from here to Sitka [Jack Ellis, 1949].

Jack Ellis's mother's father's father was the Kwacqwan chief, Yaodaqet (II)—uncle to Chief George who died in 1903. His wife was the Drum House Teqwedi girl, QakEnAkuE, who was suckled by her uncle after all her relatives had died of smallpox. (For another version of the story see p. 279.)

I don’t know what year it was—they had smallpox, and everybody died off. My mother's mother was a newborn baby. She was born during the epidemic. They had nothing to give her because her mother died when she was a baby. They used to feed her on strawberries. Her name was Qełké). I saw her. I think she died about 1908, because I was 8 years old when she died. She was really old, but I don’t know how old. [She was a ałyI-Kagwantan woman, wife of Dry Bay George, who had come from Bering River about 1896 or a year or so later.] [Helen Bremner; March 13, 1954.]

Cada, the Kwacqwan chief, seems to have been about 11 years old during the smallpox epidemic. He died in 1908 or 1909, a very old man. Presumably this was the epidemic of 1836–39.

A more complete account of this epidemic and its effects was given by Cada's grandson.

SMALLPOX AND THE KWACKQWAN

[The following was told by Harry K. Bremner on several occasions.]

At the time of the smallpox, people were living at Aka. It was Kwacqwan, but not the capital city. They stayed there to smoke fish and sometimes they stayed there in the winter, too, but the true capital was Nesudat. On Summit Lake was Gutc-caki-’an. Here the Kwacqwan men had smokehouses. They were married to [ałyI] Kagwantan and to Teqwedi, the latter all mixed up by that time. The Kwacqwan capital was Nesudat. That's the capital, like Washington, D.C. It was the last village to Lost River, near the airfield. It was a village after the Russians. They stay there in just small smokehouses before, but after the Russians they make a big city. At Nesudat was Raven's Bones House, the highest house of our tribe. The chief was Yaodaqet. There was also Moon House and Fort House, and more I don’t remember, but those were the big ones. All the people in the different houses were like cousins. They were “brothers” in the same tribe, but they don’t always get along good, I don’t know why [July 11, 1952].

Smallpox, kwan, came after the Russians. There were people living all the way from Summit Lake, Second Summit Lake, to Lost River. And they all died. They died where they were sitting, mothers with babies in their arms. A few people were left alive at Lost River and some were left at Situk also. All the rest died. They didn’t try to burn them that year, but next year the survivors burned them [August 28, 1952].

All the way from Summit Lake to Lost River, they were burning so many bodies, the air was thick with smoke. My father showed me the charcoal all along the ground.

They moved from Nesudat to Khantaak, and there the tribes all lived together in one village. From Khantaak, they moved to the Old Village at Yakutat. [July 11, 1952.]

TEST OF THE STONE LAMPS

[The following story was told by Harry K. Bremner, May 2, 1954, in response to questions about an episode that had been mentioned by Jack Ellis in 1949: That people at Diyaguna’Et were starving, but a boy had thrown a stone lamp down the blowhole of a whale and killed it.]

…I think that was after the smallpox…Well, that's the story. Maybe just a story, I don’t know…. I don’t know how the people died. They said it was smallpox—they call it kwan—the biggest death in Yakutat. The biggest population here at that time….

At First Summit Lake [Aka Lake] there used to be a village—not a town. There were just small places from there to Diyaguna’Et, from the village all the way…lots of little places. That's the time the people died off, of the smallpox. In those days, they don’t bury each other. They burn it—they burned the body [and put the ashes in a little house on posts, he explained].

And deaths are coming fast. They don’t look at the bodies; everybody was sick. When a person died, just sit there.

The whole village, from Ankau to Diyaguna’Et, nobody left. If that didn’t happen Yakutat would be a big population. Two sickness [two epidemics?].

After that sickness was over, what was left of them at Diyaguna’Et, they got no lamp. But they know where there's one—up at Nesudat. There's a lamp in one of the houses.

And one of the men said: “Who was the bravest?” That was night. It's dark. “Who was the bravest man to get the lamp from Diyaguna’Et?” In those days people were very afraid of dead body. They don’t [get] afraid of anything [else], but they are afraid of dead body.

And one of the braves said: “I’m going to go. I’m going to get that lamp.”

They gave him a stick. He carried a stick. That headman of them told the brave man: “See how far you’re going to come close to the house; you’re going to put this stick in the ground.”

And he went. He didn’t bring it [the lamp]. He come without it.

So another one go. He gets the stick again. He goes into the house, but he don’t come through the door inside. He just open the door. He left his stick there.

Then another one go. He went in the house, but he don’t reach it [the lamp].

Another one went again. I don’t know how many of them, but so many of them—(maybe more than four)—see who's the bravest man.

When that man come back, the head of the braves ask, “Why don’t they bring it? Why? Why not get it when they’re inside the house already?”

And this man said: “It's dark in there. Can’t see nothing.” It's nighttime. It's pretty dark. He don’t see nothing. That's all he could see is eyes—eyes of the dead bodies—shine, shine just like a spark. And the mouth—the only thing they see.

And next day, they take a look to see who's coming close, who's the bravest. And they don’t touch the lamp, they don’t take it. They went back to Diyaguna’Et.

The next night, when it's real dark, that man ask, the head of them ask the men again: “Who's going to go this time, bring the lamp?”

And one of the young fellows said: “I’m going to go.”

And he went. He got the lamp. He take the lamp out But he don’t bring it. He throw it right in the river in front of the house at Nesudat.

He went back and reported he got it but he throw it in the river. And a little while afterwards, I don’t know how many days, they find the whale. Out on the ocean beach, I don’t know exactly where. And they find that stone lamp—that blowhole, they find it in there.

That time you mention it, there's starvation that time. After sickness over, nothing to eat. Then they find that whale. That's the story. Maybe just a story.

[In response to questions]: I don’t know why they didn’t get it in the daytime. They want somebody to bring it at nighttime. He didn’t bring the lamp back because maybe he was just a brave. On the oceanside of the timbers, they just took the bodies to the ocean side and burned them.

THE FATE OF THE AHRNKLIN TEQWEDI

Smallpox was evidently blamed by some for the depopulation of the Ahrnklin villages occupied by the Drum House Teqwedi. Others evidently ascribed the decline of this lineage to war. All agree, however, that the only survivors were the little girl baby, QakEna-kuE, who later married the Yakutat chief, Yaodaqet (II), Kwacqwan. One of their children was the Teqwedi chief, Daknaqin, also known as Dok-na-kane, or Old Doc. Another was ’Anésù, Mrs. Mary Abraham, (1858–1900), mother of Olaf Abraham and his brothers, leaders of Drum House.

[As told by Emma Ellis, July 12, 1952.]

That Old Doc's mother [QakEnakuE]—when smallbox came, everybody died. All her family was dead; just her uncle was left. And that man nursed that little girl from his own breast. That little girl was raised on her uncle's breast.

[Minnie Johnson, August 25, 1952, however, had a different version:]

In ’Antłen they have some kind of war. My mother preach to me about it. They kill all of them—their own tribe, the Teqwedi. They fight over shame business. When they [you] are starving and they give you something, they held you slave, just the same for spite work. Then your people have to go and pay. [See “dried fish slave,” p. 469.]

This here man, Nuni [or NunE]—and after he get away with everything [killed everybody] he thought, and then he struck something with his leg, and it was a baby. He already sober up, come to, you know. He just went wild before.

He said to himself: “Pick it up.”

He clean it up. The baby's mother is killed. There's nobody to take the baby to for help. He's so much alone and he doesn’t want to kill the baby. It's his sister's child.

I don’t know why [he would kill his own sister]. They’re just fighting one another. He don’t care who he kills. He got mad. He's been planning a long time to start that, you know.

QakEnakuE, Daknaqin's mother, was the baby. The reason my mother is preaching to me about her, she was raised by a man. He don’t know what on earth to do, so he just give his breast to the baby. Qa-tł’a [-tła?] cawAt—“Man's Titty Woman” they call her when they get mad at her.

The Teqwedi is all gone but that little girl. And she raise lots of Teqwedi [the informant enumerated her descendants].

If you grow into be a good woman, you be like that woman. That's why I’m so particular about it [raising girls]. That woman had more Teqwedi out of her. She start the whole Teqwedi tribe….

ABANDONMENT OF THE VILLAGES EAST OF YAKUTAT

It is difficult to fix exact dates for the desertion of the villages east of Yakutat. Thus, Gutc-caki-’an was probably never reoccupied after the smallpox epidemic, for none of our informants mentioned any individuals known to have lived there. ’Aka, on Aka Lake, was used, at least as a fishing place, until about the beginning of the present century, although now there is nothing but a clearing at the site. There were a few people at Nesudat in 1888, but they may have been here only for the summer fishing. Diyaguna’Et was deserted before Nesudat. Henry Shada (born about 1865?) used to tell about people living there, perhaps in his childhood, about 1875. The last important house to have been built at the village was probably Bear Paw House, in the 1850's. From Diyaguna’Et there was a movement, both to Situk village on Situk River, and to Khantaak Island, where the Kwacqwan also settled. The temporary houses on Khantaak, seen by Dall in 1874 [p. 182], were evidently replaced by permanent houses by 1880. The native history of these movements can, however, be better understood by tracing the history of the actual houses, and this is postponed until a latter chapter.

The War Between the Kagwantan and the Cd;Atqwan

The story of the war between the Sitka Kagwantan and the Cd;Atqwan, or Wrangell people, also involved some of the Kagwantan of the Dry Bay area. It culminated in the massacre of the Wrangell peace party at Sitka in 1852, in which a Kagwantan youth from Gue played an important role. This story was told as an illustration of Tlingit customs of war and peace, but it is also of interest in indicating that at this period the Box House Kagwantan were living at Gue, married to the TłukwaAdi.

Two versions of this story were told. The characters in the first may be identified as follows: DaquwAdÉn, the Kagwantan hero from Gue Yiudu’as, his TłukwaAdi father, and QAtsUE or KatsukE, a TłukwaAdi woman born about 1842. The latter was the daughter of a sister of Yiudu’as, and was 10 years old when she saw her uncle rejoicing in his son's triumph. This woman was the paternal grandmother of the narrator, Emma Ellis. The latter was uncertain about the identity of the Cd;Atqwan, knowing only that the people were southern Tlingit of the Eagle-Wolf moiety. It would appear that they were not Kake, but the Nana‘ai of Wrangell. We know the date of the massacre because it is recorded by Tikhmenev (1863, vol. 2, pp. 205–211).

At Sitka, on March 31, 1881, Commander Henry Glass (Report of U.S. Naval Officers…1881–82) secured the consent of the Sitka Kagwantan chiefs and those of their former enemies from Wrangell to a “Treaty of Peace between the Stickeen and Sitka Tribes.” According to its terms, both parties pledged themselves to abandon any claims based on former wars, to permit each other to hunt and fish in their territories, to assist each other in distress, and to refer any future disputes to the senior officers of the United States in Alaska. Those who affixed their marks to this document were for the Stikine or Wrangell natives (see Swanton, 1908, p. 402): George Shckes [sic., Shakes], or Cks, chief of the Nana’Î ‘Big House’ (Eagle-Wolf), and Jake Sha-Kach, probably Sxk!, chief of the Ksq!ague’dÎ Thunder House (Raven). For the Sitka natives, were Annahortz, or Ana’ts, ‘Grizzly Bear,’ the Kagwantan chief of Wolf House, and Woos-kina, probably meaning ‘Over All.’ The last name does not appear in Swanton's list (ibid., p. 406). Yakwa’n, ‘Swimming Wolf,’ chief of the Kagwantan Star House, who was listed by Swanton as the man who “led in the last great fight with the Stikine Indians,” was perhaps dead by 1881. He was mentioned by an informant at Angoon who told the story, but not by those at Yakutat (de Laguna, 1960, pp. 155f.).

[This was told by a Dry Bay Kagwantan informant. The episodes are rearranged in chronological order (July 22, 1952.)]

Cd;At is a place name. It's Kake. The Cd;Atqwan are on the Eagle side.

In Sitka the Kagwantan were killed by the Cd;Atqwan. The Cd;Atqwan went over there. The Kagwantan's wife liked a Cd;Atqwan boy. She run away with him when they go down from Sitka.

She was KIksAdi. The KIksAdi cawAt [women] are crazy—like…[the names of two sibs are deleted]. But Kagwantan, Tł’UknaAdi, and d;akA’ai are good. That's why they run away. They never think they’re going to have [cause] a war.

Then she stay outside. She got her monthly all the time [she pretended]. She tell a lie because she was going with that boy.

The Kagwantan sent some of their young boys to get their wife back. After a while they see the woman. “What's the matter? We thought you had your monthly.”

In the old days they were afraid of monthly. It was bad for a woman to be among men [at that time]. Men are going to die or get poor.

After they found out, the Kagwantan boys try to take her back. The Cd;Atqwan don’t like it. They had a war and the Kagwantan got killed. The Kagwantan got that woman and took her clothes off and beat her. The Kagwantan people did it. They got mad….

…At Gue, Dry Bay, there was a Kagwantan boy, DaquwAdÉn, my cousin. His father was Yiudu’as, TłukwaAdi. When he was small, the boy used to go in the water with his father. It was freezing, and he was stiff, like he was dead. After a while, next time, he do it again. Next time, too. Then he's used to it. He was strong as a rock. Big muscles. Till he was 20, he used to go in the water in winter, and sleep without a blanket.

Yiudu’as's wife was crying all the time, because her people had been killed by the Cd;Atqwan. That‘s why the boy was training to kill the Cd;Atqwan….

…The fight was in Sitka. DaquwAdÉn went down from Dry Bay to Sitka. They were going to have a peace dance, exchange hostages. They put feathers on their head and red paint, łew (or łéd;w), on their face. They call it kuwakan ‘deer,’ and peace dance. Each side takes one man from the other tribe.

“DaquwAdÉn is sick. DaquwAdÉn is sick,” they said, but he just pretended. He's ready for the fight. He hid a spear under his clothes.

He goes over there. “What you go there for? Leave them alone.”

“No, I can’t. My mother is crying.”

He open the door. The people just go to the end of the house, diyE. They just go in the end rooms. It‘s just full of Kagwantan and Cd;Atqwan people.

Then he killed eight people with one spear thrust.

They used tsàÁł in fights—a knife tied on the end of a stick.

He killed all the Cd;Atqwan. All the Kagwantan had knives in their pockets.

On the other side of Sitka, they put the dead bodies there. They call the place FotcIkanu [? obviously an error in my transcription], meaning that the waves sound funny when it [the tide ?] is going out.

Just one Cd;Atqwan was left over there—one little boy. He hid in the gravehouse. He was there without eating. After a while they found him. He was just skinny. The man who found him asked: “What's your name?” The boy told him his name was Qa-tłen, ’Big Man.’ It was his father's name.[71] ‘so the man drop his big knife. He was so down-hearted he don’t want to kill him….

…My grandma [father's mother] was about 10 years old when they stayed with the sister of Yiudu’as. He was my grandma's uncle [mother's brother]. Yiudu’as was laughing and singing that his son killed all those CAtqwan. He called: “Hi…..!” [high pitch]. They call that when somebody kills someone….

They killed them to pay off, to even off….

…In 1922 or 1925 they had peacetime in Sitka, real peace this time. They put two big knives on the dish, one for CAtqwan and one for Kagwantan, and put the American flag over them. Then they take it off.

It was real peace this time. But still they get mad at us. They aren’t satisfied. [The informant mentioned a CAtqwan man of her acquaintance who “even now won‘t shake hands with me.”]

That's why we Kagwantan women, we stay with our husbands. If we see something wrong, we don’t know it [i.e., overlook our husbands’ faults], because we don’t want our brothers to get killed [if a fight starts]. Kagwantan men respect their wives, too. They think about that KIksAdi woman.

[The informant sang a song composed by two Kagwantan men, mourning those slain in this war; 1954, 3–1–A, -D; March 21, 1954.]

Two men made it. It is called KackÉn's song—KackÉn daciyi…. They say it was their own craziness. That's the way the song is. That's her own doing like that, that [caused] the war going on over there. That's why people died over there. Those two, five Kagwantan…. They take the wife away, Kagwantan's wife. That's why those five people go after their wife. That's why they got a war. Some old people tried to stop it. They said: “Let her go, that wife. Those CAtqwan can have that wife.” Those young people want to war about it. That's why this song is sung like that.

[The words of the song seem to mean:]

It's your own fault,

Wolf people,

You wounded yourselves.

[Second stanza:]

Always longing for you,

My uncles,

I want to dream about you.

Just two Kagwantan got saved over there: KackÉn and łxúdaee….

[The following was told by Harry K. Bremner in answer to a query as to whether a peace hostage, kuwakan, had ever been killed. This story properly belongs to the Sitka Kagwantan, but is not much told at Sitka because of the enmity it rouses. (May 2, 1954.)]

[The informant had never heard of a kuwakan being killed.] Never. The only time it happened in the history is in the Sitka war against Wrangell. They killed all the kuwakans at once. That's the only [case I heard of]….

Sitka Kagwantan—they’re the ones. I forget the name of the man, the one that's the cause of the trouble. They [Wrangell people] took his wife away from him. But he don’t care. He called that man his brother, so he don’t care. [The Sitka Kagwantan man and the Wrangell man were the sons of half-brothers, and though in different Eagle-Wolf sibs were “just like real brothers. That's Indian custom” for paternal parallel cousins like this to call each other brother and to share wives. “That's the way it happened over there.”]

That Kagwantan, his [the Wrangell man's] father's brother's son, stay at Wrangell, and [the Wrangell man] took his wife away, because that's the Indian custom. They always take the oldest brother's wife away. It's fine and dandy with him. He went back to Sitka.

So his whole tribe called him a coward [because] he didn’t do anything. So he go back. He change his mind. He don’t want to do anything to his own brother—just want to take his wife back, so everybody would shut up. Instead of that, his brother killed him.

So they reported back to Sitka what happened. So the Kagwantan go over to make peace and pay this man‘s life [presumably to get paid for the Kagwantan that had been killed].

On the way, they find one of the leaders over here [i.e., a Wrangell leader]. His name is AnAn tit (or AnAk tit). Tit—that means “sea bird” [murrelet]. He was one of the headmen of the CAtqwan…. Him and his wife, they found him in a canoe. So they take him in the war canoe, and they do lots of things to him. They take him as a coward [GAtan—’coward;’ berdache or homosexual].

This man said: “If you Kagwantan want to kill me, kill me. [Or] Put a feather on top of my head.” That means peace.

[They were not torturing him.] No, those fellows were just fooling around with him. No harm—just funning with him.

So those CAtqwan, they know it right away. That's why they come in war canoe.

The Kagwantan land…. When they see that Wrangell bunch is coming on the war canoes, they put that feather on the head, but it's too late [i.e., they tried to treat their captive as a peace hostage]. They [CAtqwan] get mad already. When they land, those CAtqwan are ready [for] that war canoe.

AnAn-tit says: “Did you get my gun?” They already had guns at that time. He gets his gun. He shoots the Kagwantan in a bunch. That‘s when they start a war—kill all the Kagwantan. Just one left, I think. He went back to Sitka. No more Kagwantan….

Two Kagwantan canoes were saved. One is named Tcatł yakw—in English it's a ‘Halibut Canoe.’ I forget the other one….

[At Sitka, the elder Kagwantan had a meeting.] Just a few old ones have a meeting, decide what to do. They decide next generation [will seek revenge??]. Anyway this happened.

This man here, he was born at ’Akwe—that Kagwantan baby. I don’t know how many years after. And his grandfather was gray and old when he took this baby. He said: “This is the Kagwantan that's going to revenge, this boy.” [It was DaquwAdÉn].

So he train him. The Indian people believe at that time, [those who] are trained from the icy water become brave and strong. So it's a baby yet, his grandfather took him in the water before daylight—ice water. And that's the way he raise him till he become a man. When this man was old enough to understand things, his grandfather tell him a story, about what the CAtqwan did to the Kagwantan.

And he did it. He killed all those CAtqwan—women, kids, everyone. No one left. No opposite tribe [i.e., he killed all the wives and children, too]. The CAtqwan [women were] coming down with their husbands—he kill them all. He killed everything.

I think it's not too long ago. I don’t know how many years ago. My father tells the story…. This man that took in DaquwAdÉn where they were dancing as kuwakan [peace officers], he's got canoe sails. He put it around him, that man, and he [DaquwAdÉn] hide. That's the way he walk into that house. He's going to fight. And this man [who smuggled him into the peace dance] was still living when my father see him, not too long ago.

The Sitka Kagwantan, some of them didn’t want a war. These Wrangell people were coming to Sitka for peace. So the good time was going on already, peace dance, everything. But this man, DaquwAdÉn, he still want revenge. But his own people don’t want it. He's all by himself in the community house at the time. Everybody goes [had gone] to that dance. He's always by himself….

[The following was added later, to explain how DaquwAdÉn had come to change his mind. He had originally agreed to the peace.]

He give up already, himself. When the Kagwantan were talking to him, they don’t want no war. He already change his mind.

But just those Wrangell people, CAtqwan, carried on their words—talk too wild. That makes the Kagwantan mad again. They talk too wild.

Those Kagwantan boys, young fellows, came to a person. He was working on his fishook, nAxw—fishhook for halibut. And the young fellows, these Kagwantan boys, they come to him and say: “What's the name of your hook?” [All halibut hooks are carved to represent something living, and are named.]

And this CAtqwan said: “It's a brave hook,” he said. “It's brave.” He said: “It's a ’Anda Yeł.” That's where the Kagwantan people got killed—’Anda. That's where the Kagwantan were defeated. And he calls his hook, “It's ’Anda Yeł.” [‘Raven at the End of the Village’?]

And he said again, “That Raven eating the human body at ’Anda That's a Raven,” he said, “eating Kagwantan body—Raven.”

So those boys don’t like it. They reported to their uncles what this man said.

And those other Kagwantan boys coming to the other Wrangell man. Oh, they were just talking to each other. They take up that man's gun and said, “Your gun is crooked.”

“Yes, it's crooked,” he said, “but it was the best gun at ’Anda,” he said. “I get two in one shot with that gun,” he said.

So the Kagwantan don’t like it. And they say that's how DaquwAdÉn has already changed his mind, then he gets mad again….

[DaquwAdÉn was alone in the house, while the others had gone to the peace dance.]

His grandfather was helping him. He had it—tsaAł’, ‘spear’—so long [both arms outstretched]. The handle was wood—something like mahogany. They don’t have it in Alaska. It drifts ashore. Sometimes a lucky man finds it on the beach. They use it for the bow, for bow and arrow. That's what they use it for, that handle [for the spear].

He was practicing all the time. Nobody was around, when they went from the house. He ran around with the spear. When he go into a room like this, it's too long. But it's good to be long, so nobody [can] rush [him]. His grandfather keeps cutting it, until it's about that long [from fingers of one outstretched arm to the elbow of the other]. When he goes in the room with it, it's handy.

He practice from room to room, and [the spear] is just right. It's short.

But his grandfather told him: “It's too short. You’re going to get killed before you revenge Kagwantan.”

But the brave man said, “No. This is just right.”

Before that [before the time that he went to kill them], he was coming to that place, to have a dance. Just to see how the people are [sitting], and who the people were. His song is sung in there. He composed it himself—just half of it.

[The kuwakan (peace hostages) were dancing.] He was coming to that place—in peace. He [DaquwAdÉn] sing a song and he dance—but just half of that song.

After he ended, he said: “The generation after me is going to compose the end of my song.” He already told it [by that] he's not going to be living tomorrow, he's dead today. But just the same, the CAtqwan were too slow. He already tell them: “That's going to be the end of my song. Next generation after me is going to finish my song.” And his song, that's his song tells it to them already, that he's going to have a war with them, but just the same they’re too slow, don’t catch on.

When he finished, he walked right out. He don’t wait.

And he dressed up for war…. I don’t know how he dressed. He had a blanket around him. And he painted his face with black. That's for war. On the eyes. That means war. [The narrator showed how he put black paint on the heels of his palms and rubbed these on his eyes.]

After he [had been] dancing in there for a while, he went in there [outdoors??] just to see the town standing, how it looks.

It was moonlight, at night. Lots of people in the village, on the street. He didn’t mention where he was going, or said where he was going when he dressed up for war.

Every person he meet on the street, he said, “I’m going now.” He said it close to the face [i.e., putting his face close to the face of the person he met]. Nobody say a word. Next one he meet again, in a little while—“I’m going now.” And nobody ask him where he's going.

Just before he came to the door, he met an old man. But that man is grandson of Kagwantan. No matter how old [young] you are, you call them “grandson.”

And DaquwAdÉn said: “Grandson.” But it's an old man, older than him. “Grandson, I’m going now.”

And that old man stopped looking at his face, and encouraged him. And at the same time the old man said: “You’re going to jump into a giant devilfish.” That's all. “You’re going to jump into a giant devilfish.”

Then the big brave man, he's got a tear in his eyes. It's not for his life. He's not going to revenge his tribe. He thinks it's that way—[that] he's going to be killed before he kills anybody. He stopped for a while, and cried. He don‘t hold them back.

After he stopped crying he said: “HU! HU! HU! HU!” That means war. And he put black on his face again. [The narrator made the same gesture of grinding the heels of his palms against his eyes.]

But that man took him [in the house]. I don’t know if he's brother-in-law [i.e., the nakani, or ‘sib brother-in-law’ who officiates at a peace dance]. I don’t know, I can’t tell that one. He had that war canoe sail around him, that man. And he hides that man behind him, that's how he walk in.

As soon as they take him inside, he took his sail—he used it for a blanket—took it off, and put it to the side. He [DaquwAdÉn] had brown bear ears on his head. He tied them up with a string, I think. That means it's for war.

He said to the CAtqwan: “It's your father's slave you got a war with? Is this your father's slave, you had a war with them before? Before you pay the life, you tried to make a peace.” That's the way he said.

[The narrator explained:] In Tlingit, it's that way: Your father's slave, you can do anything to him. You’re the boss. If you want to kill it, you can kill it, because it's your father's slave. [He agreed that DaquwAdÉn was saying “You treat us like dirt.”]

That CAtqwan, that one I don’t know. He's standing by the door. He's a strong man, almost a giant. His wrist, right here—everytime they tell the story, they put their wrists together [to show] they’re so big.

He stands by the door. If there's any trouble, he's going to stop it—on the CAtqwan side. When he look at that man's face [DaquwAdÉn's face], he don’t do anything. He just smile at him. He never move, he never say nothing. I don’t know if he's nakani [brother-in-law] to CAtqwan, or anything.

So that Kagwantan brave, he don’t use his spear to kill that man. He just push him with his spear out of the way. And he fell against the wall and his head is busted. He's so strong, that Kagwantan brave.

Then he use his spear—take two at a time. And every one that's sitting there [is] helping him, all those Kagwantan braves. All those Kagwantan sons help, too, but they don’t mention it afterwards. [These were the sons of Kagwantan fathers.] And Kagwantan sons, they all help, too. It was opposite tribe [i.e., the sons were Ravens].

[The Kagwantan and the CAtqwan, too, we gather, had come with knives and guns.]

Kagwantan on this side, and Wrangell on this side—that's peace. This one dancing, and that one dancing after a while.

[The Kagwantan] had knives ready, under their blankets or their shirts. They’re supposed to search. Nakani in a peace are supposed to search to see if they got anything….

[The Kagwantan kuwakan had knives.] They sew it to the skin before they became kuwakan. Kagwantan did it. To their own skin—right here [inside of the left thigh]. They don’t search for gun here, they search up here [body and chest]. They sew it down here, to the skin…. Kuwakan is 4 day's dance. Two days, I think [they wore the knives]. Supposed to be 4 days. DaquwAdÉn didn’t wait that long….

I forget the name of that one brave man, CAtqwan. He had eagle tails, one in each hand, but he hold two pistols under them when he danced. Way before that DaquwAdÉn came in, he told his people to go ahead, kill the Kagwantan, start another war with the Kagwantan. He knows what's going to happen. But they refuse him….

Anyway, he still there yet. When he had killed about half those CAtqwan, that DaquwAdÉn saw that man on the floor, that CAtqwan brave. He play dead. Soon as DaquwAdÉn come close to him, he sat up with the pistols. DaquwAdÉn thought that's enough, he had killed enough. He just put up his spear like that [holding the spear horizontally above his head].

[The CAtqwan shot at him.] But the gun don’t go off. The hammer's gone. The other one don‘t go off. Nobody knows what happened. I think he lost the ammunition that time.

So then DaquwAdÉn killed him…

That house they had a war in is Qukw hIt,‘Box House.’ It's still there yet [in Sitka]. They said about 4 feet all around [the inside of the walls] is red after that war's over. And that house in Sitka today is still there—not the same house, built not long ago. They paint it red, just like it used to be….

The next one [episode], I don’t know much. They [CAtqwan] came back. They don’t reach Sitka. I don’t know what happened to them…. The Kagwantan just chase them back. [The story of this incident is not told, now that peace has been made.]…If his people were agreeing with him [the CAtqwan], he was going to kill all the Kagwantan again. But his people don’t want it….

[When questioned if the heads of the victims were taken:] Just the hair. Not all of them, just the big ones. CAtqwan took Kagwantan heads off in the first war—just big shots. So Kagwantan got them, too, the big shots, big names. Not small men like me, they wouldn’t bother me, they wouldn’t cut my hair off. Big ones. [The informant was not certain what was done with the scalps so taken.] I don’t know…. They used them in a potlatch—I don’t know the law of that one.

[When the scalp was hung up, the hair moved.] That's just only one person—that brave CAtqwan man. Spinning all the time, hanging up, never stop. All the others are hanging there, but his never stops spinning all the time….

[In discussing this war, Minnie Johnson added, May 23, 1954]

At that ANB convention in Angoon they made peace. They stop talking to one another, they got that argument in their hearts, but at that convention they go together, that ANB, so they have that brotherly love. Make them shake hands with them—1926.

[HKB added:] Still bad feeling even today. Still bad feeling. Even the young ones—.

An Averted War With the Tsimshian

The waters off Icy Bay were famous sea-otter hunting grounds, visited by hunting parties from distant areas, although the hunt was supposedly controlled by the leading Kwacqwan chief. These parties of hunters were often brought up from southern Alaska or from British Columbia on sailing ships, as a White financial venture. Other parties of natives came in their own canoes. It was in these waters that the Yakutat natives nearly had a war with the Tsimshian. The following story was narrated in Tlingit by Annie Johnson, a Kwacqwan woman born about 1875, who also sang the commemorative song based on the incident. These were recorded, as well as the translation by Minnie Johnson (1952, 3–1–C; July 13, 1952). The tune is apparently that of an older song, to which CkInan, Tł’UknaAdi, Minnie Johnson's mother's “brother,” put new words. The characters in the story are Yakutat Chief George Yaodaqet, head of the ranking Kwacqwan lineage, Raven's Bones House, and as such, “owner” of the Icy Bay hunting grounds. His ordinary name was QawAtétc (heard also as Kauqatqétc, etc). He was born before 1862 and died about 1903. B. A. Jack, Wàíx (or Watí), also Kwacqwan, was born in 1860 and died in 1948. Tak-’ic, also Kwacqwan, was called Nanut, and had the English name, Shorty. Clarence Milton, born 1918, is his namesake.

These events occurred when Minnie Johnson, born 1884, was a little girl, and the natives were living at the Old Village, probably after 1890.

[The following version of the story is based upon the recorded translation, supplemented by explanations given later the same day, but not recorded on tape. There has been a slight editing of some of the phrasing.]

This song that we just got through singing, I was asked to translate it in English, so I’ll try…. That's Ckman's song. Somebody composed it, but he put the words for it. Because it's about how those Tsimshian came in four big war canoes. They used to go sea-otter hunting to Ivy Bay, to Yakategy, in little canoes, tÀyác….

I was only a kid when this happened, when those four war canoes came up from Metlakatla to Yakutat. They generally travel all the way up from there to Yakutat…. Chief George is taking care of them. They all start together and went to the place where they hunt….

So the Yakutat people is ready to go to Yakategy and Icy Bay. In the springtime they go there to hunt sea otter. They went as far as Yakategy. They were hunting for sea otter.

You know, long time ago there is no such a thing as gun or revolver here in Yakutat. They use bow and arrow and they go up sea-otter hunting with it. But these Tsimshians got all kinds of guns, revolvers, and big guns, and all that…. The Yakutat people has to load shells themselves, and use tcùnét [bow and arrow], and get after the sea otter until it is short winded, and that is the way they kill it….

So they went out together to kill those sea otters. The Yakutat people know how to hunt sea otter. They get after the sea otter until it gets short winded. It's easy to hit them with bow and arrow…. The canoe is chasing from one end of the water to the other. Sometimes it goes way out of sight of shore….

So this sea otter was hit by Chief George with his bow and arrow. At the same time this Tsimshian got his gun out and take a shot at it. And he claimed that his gun killed the sea otter.

They are way out. They didn’t even see the mountains, they were so far out [when] they chase the sea otter.

Then one of the Tsimshian jumped in Chief George's canoe and grabbed the sea otter and throw it in the war canoe. And Chief George's outfit didn’t like that very good. That's an awful insult the way they do—come all the way up here from Metlakatla to get sea otter from Chief George which he's entitled to it. He is the one—his bow and arrow killed that. Every canoe that's around there—everyone that's around in the canoes sees that Chief George killed that sea otter. The Tsimshians tried to claim it, and then they grabbed that sea otter and throw it in the big war canoe.

Well, this here fellow, his Tlingit name is Tak-’ic, and his English name is Clarence [his English name was Shorty; Clarence now has his Tlingit name]—he took a tumble and jump aboard the war canoe, and he just walk through the Tsimshians and step on the cross pieces of that war canoe, and grabbed that sea otter and threw it back in Chief George's canoe….

Trouble begin. All the Tsimshians got revolvers. The Yakutat people got nothing with which to defend themselves…. And then they start a war right in the water where they can hardly see the mountains. They didn’t even know where they are, but they get in a war. And the Tsimshians are getting ready to get every native in Yakutat killed. The Tsimshians intend that, to kill every native. They took their revolvers and their guns out, but the Yakutats got nothing but bow and arrow. They got guns enough [i.e., muzzle-loaders], but you know they got to load the guns themselves. At that time there's no such thing as ready shells. You have to load it by hand at that time. [See pp. 186–187].

That was a long time ago. I was only a little girl then when I see those four war canoes myself, landed in front of this village.

Then a fellow by the name of B. A. Jack—his Tlingit name is Wàtí (or Wàíx)—being he's traveled around Southeast of Alaska and he happened to be in Metlakatla, I guess. And he knows the meaning of this GÍnò [probably ínau; rendered as inayu in the song]. GIno, that's Tsimshian word. He just got up and say it, raised his right hand and said “Gmo!”

All at once this here fellow that seems to be a head of the Tsimshian—he's big, husky, and got a patch on his eye—he order the four canoe load of Tsimshian to get their weapons down, get their guns down, be quiet.

That means, Mr. B. A. Jack demonstrates to the sea-otter hunters that means “That's enough!” and “No more trouble!”

So this song that we sing here regards to that. The words are about that GIno business. So you hear the song, the song composed by Ckman, he's my uncle. It's composed like that:

“Grab hold of the word that means GIno! so everybody can use it.” That's what the Yakutats captured from the Tsimshian. They know what that means, and find out from Mr. B. A. Jack what that GIno means. So the song is composed like that:

“Grab hold of that word, so everybody can hear it, and keep it, captured.” So that can be remembered by what happened, by what that GIno means to the Yakutats, [when] those Tsimshians intended to get into war with the Yakutat. But this word GIno means “Quit fighting!” So this song is composed about it.

“Grab hold of that GIno! So everybody can hear it!”

So they captured this song. That's when it was composed. That's all I can remember.

And on the way back from Yakategy, before they start to Icy Bay, one of the Tsimshian saw this sea lion…. They went ashore. And he tried to grab his gun out of the canoe. He's supposed to take a shot at the sea lion, but instead the gun went off by accident, and killed his mother's husband, his stepfather—killed him dead.

So they can’t leave the body in Icy Bay…. The Tsimshian don’t want to get one of the people's spirits in the hunting ground.

So this Patch-Eye, big, husky fellow went to work…. He's some kind of doctor amongst the Tsimshian people. They took the body down as far as Icy Bay, where he get operated on. [The doctor] took his insides out from him, and [then] they take his dead body down to Yakutat…. And they put the body in a tent. The boy who shot the man was watching him so the flies don’t get in…. That's all I remember.

The glacier has been a way out. The natives here claim that because they buried human guts in that place, the glacier is retreating now…. Because the inside part of the man that got killed is buried in that ice, that‘s why the glacier is melting away so fast. The glacier used to be sticking out, but now you can hardly see any glacier there…. I suppose warm weather has something to do with it.

Mud Bay is called TutsAn geyi, ‘Tsimshian Bay.’ It's on the west side of Icy Bay. [Pp. 26–28, 95, 97.]

[After listening to a Teqwedi “walking song” with Tsimshian words (1954, 6–I–G), a type used by guests at a potlatch, Louise Peterson, a Kwacqwan woman, observed (May 16, 1954):]

There's one time they have a kind of war with the Tsimshian over to Icy Bay. Mrs. George Johnson spoke about it [cf. the account recorded 1952, 3–I–C, translated above]. There's lots of songs like that they [Tsimshian] gave for forgiveness, and I guess that's the time they got that song.

[Another couple, Olaf and Susie Abraham, who heard this recording, were of the opinion that Old Sampson, Yándułsn (1866–1948), had composed the tune, while CkInan made the words. At that time, if any strangers came to Yakutat, or any ship came in, Chief George used to welcome them to his house as Chief Minaman had done previously.]

Geological Changes in the Yakutat Area

A number of native traditions, as we have seen, report movements of glaciers. Some of these accounts refer to the remote past, and others to events within the memory of living persons. Some are of such a mythical nature that they are discussed in a later section.

Apparently after the glaciers that covered Icy Bay and most of Yakutat Bay at the time of the Kwacqwan migration had retreated, a village was established in Icy Bay. Or, the site may have been up an estuary formed by the Yatse River. This village was overwhelmed by a subsequent advance of the ice. A brief account of this event was recorded by Topham in 1888, and we heard a somewhat longer version. Both of these accounts should be compared with the incident recorded by Swanton (1909, Tale 104, pp. 337 f.) in which a glacier destroyed Shadow House and Sandhill Town, somewhere on the coast north of Cross Sound, and so forced the emigration of the Kagwantan to Grouse Fort. The advance here, and that in Icy Bay, probably culminated in the 18th century. Tarr and Martin (1914, pp. 46 f.), who quote the story from Topham, believe that the destruction of the village in Icy Bay took place between 1837 when Belcher sailed into “Icy Bay” (the mouth of the Yatse) and 1886 when Schwatka saw only a wall of ice (p. 28, map 15, p. 98) and the silted delta of the river. The ice was not quite so far advanced when Vancouver‘s expedition sighted Point Riou in 1791 (p. 000).

ICY BAY

[According to Topham (1889 a, pp. 432–433):]

“I learned too, from George [“the second chief at Yakutat”], the origin of the name Yahtsé-tăh. There is a tradition amongst his people, that formerly there was a large bay running up from the sea to the very foot of St. Elias; that there was a village at the head of that bay; that all around the village was swampy or muddy (Yahtsé) ground; that the mountain was therefore called Yahtsé-tah-shah, tah meaning harbor [t’A, ‘bottom side,’ Boas, 1917, p. 107], and shah [cà] meaning peak; that a river flowed into the bay from the north-west, where there were large glaciers; that the east of the bay was all ice, but the west, sand and trees; that at the mouth of the bay dwelt some Indians, and that one day an Indian came rushing home crying “Quick, quick, the ice is coming,” pointing to the river down which the ice was seen to be rapidly advancing. The Indians escaped along the shore. The ice came on right across the bay, till it struck the opposite shore, when it turned and continued down the bay to the sea, swallowing the village in its course.”

[In a later article Topham (1889 b, p. 350) summarizes the above and adds:]

“The Indian tradition states further that the ice subsequently descended and covered up the harbour, but the river which flows beneath that ice and descends into the sea close to where we were encamped, is still called the Yatséth-hein.”

[The following version was told by William Thomas, July 4, 1952.]

There used to be a village at Mud Bay, just inside Icy Cape [Point Guyot]. My Dad told me: “Don’t say anything bad or laugh at the glaciers.” Here in olden days they had a place like Chicago Harbor [Eleanor Cove on the east side of Yakutat Bay]. There are high mountains, and the glacier is just coming over the mountain. They can see just a little piece of it.

They were cooking king salmon. It was a king salmon stream. The young people who were doing it called to the glacier: “Hey! Eat something!” They did it just like they were giving it out at a party [serving food at a potlatch]. They were young people, just happy young boys. It was a mistake like, to invite the glacier to eat.

They say afterwards, it start growing. It grew and covered everything.

You can tell, too, it's true—all that story. Under the ice are young roots and you can still see the points of the trees just half sticking up. You can see the way the wood was all turned upside down. It's because the young boys invited the glacier out to dinner. It's some place in Icy Bay. There used to be a river there. Maybe it don’t look that way now.

[Additional observations cited as evidence by the informant are quoted on pp. 97–98.]

RUSSELL FIORD

[Tarr (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 128) reports:]

“A very old Yakutat native, without knowing my interest in glacial recession, stated to me, as translated by my boatman Henry, that he remembered the time when this glacier [Nunatak] extended as far as Marble Point [in Russell Fiord].”

[Beasley or Fourth Glacier also cut off the head of Russell Fiord making an ice-dammed lake. About the middle of the last century, this barrier broke, releasing the lake waters, which no longer drained down the Situk River. This event was described by Harry K. Bremner, whose father was a young man at the time. The latter died when his son was 16, i.e., about 1910.]

The people were near the lake, picking strawberries. Great numbers of wonderful, big strawberries grew all around the lake. There were so many that everybody would go out to pick them. The younger men [boys in their teens?] had the job of just carrying basketful after basketful of the picked berries to load them in the war canoes. That was what my father was doing. Every time he came back to the boat, he found that it was going dry, so he would push it off into deeper water before going back for another load. When this happened a few times he realized that the water was really going down. He reported back to the people: “The river is going down!”

Everybody ran and got into the canoes and started down the stream. Suddenly a big wall of salt water rushed downstream. Everybody got away safely. There was still enough water in the stream for the canoes. But after that, Situk River was just a little one. [HKB, July 11, 1952.]

[Jack Ellis, in 1940, when traveling with Harrington in Russell Fiord, spoke of some event which may have been related to the retreat of the ice.]

When telling myths they tell of Tshaa ’iittíi, literally ’the backside of Seal Rock,‘—not the bay, but the land there. Big catastrophe was when four lakes became three. [No further details are given.]

FALLING GLACIERS IN DISENCHANTMENT BAY

One of the small glaciers, 1,000 feet high on the western wall of Disenchantment Bay, opposite Haenke Island, Tarr and Butler (1909, pp. 67 f.) called “Fallen Glacier” because the whole mass of ice fell into the water on July 4, 1905, after a rainstorm. Its crash produced waves that rose and fell for half an hour some 15 to 20 feet on the shore of Russell Fiord about 15 miles away where Tarr was working. Later examination showed that a huge wave, 110 feet high, had broken off the alder bushes half a mile south of the site of the crash, and had also swept to a height of 115 feet on the northwest end of Haenke Island. Bushes a mile away were uprooted for 30 feet above the waterline.

“The Indians stated that this was the third time the glacier had fallen; but on questioning them it was evident that the tradition merely referred to a glacier falling from the west side of the bay, and not specifically to this one. The last fall, which is said to have occurred about sixty years ago [1845], is reported to have destroyed a hundred Indians who at the time of the fall were at the summer sealing camp a few miles south of Haenke Island. It is said that only one of the Indians in the camp was saved. It is fortunate that in 1905 the Indians had left the bay before the glacier fell, for it is hardly conceivable that their canoes could have lived in the floating ice during the passage of such waves as this glacier avalanche generated in their sealing ground.” [Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 68.]

[An earlier catastrophe of this kind was described by Jack Ellis to Harrington in 1940.]

The following WuganiyE story happened long before [the massacre] [see pp. 261–270], and is a legend. The olden people always wanted to see food respected and used in the proper way, and when camped at WuganiyE some of the younger people were throwing young seagulls alive into the fire. The proper way was to cut [the] heads off and pluck them like a chicken. [They] used to eat young seagulls (fledglings) much. And all of a sudden a glacier, now only a tiny canyon glacier straight opposite WuganiyE, and it came as such a sudden slide, it killed many of the young people camped at WuganiyE across the bay. [Compare with the story of the Alsek flood, p. 276.]

THE YAKUTAT EARTHQUAKE, 1899

The most important event within the memories of the older people is the great earthquake of 1899. At that time there were no longer any people living on Khantaak Island, since they had moved to the Old Village on the mainland north of the mission. The graveyard was at Point Turner on the island.

Geologists who studied the effects of the earthquake had to rely on the testimony of residents at Yakutat, both White and native. Thus Tarr (Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 92) reports that the earthquake “was of unusual vigor” with shocks lasting throughout a period of 17 days, those of September 10 and September 15 being the worst. As we know, the center was on the west side of Disenchantment Bay [p. 28].

“The people living at Yakutat, the nearest inhabited point, report long-continued and terrifying shaking of the ground. Some prospectors camping near Variegated Glacier [east of Hubbard Glacier at the northern end of Russell Fiord] make a similar report, adding to it the statement that the most violent shakings were accompanied by noises like thunder, as huge avalanches of snow and rock descended from the neighboring mountain slopes.

…The Yakutat natives declare that in places the ‘face of the mountains was totally changed,’ and my observations lead me to accept this statement as essentially true.” [Tarr and Butler, 1909, p. 92.]

[The following account was given by Minnie Johnson who was a young girl at the time:]

Then they lived at Old Yakutat near the mission. This was when the earthquake came—like thunder. The earth shook and our water barrel fell over. My mother told me not to run into the house. The missionary had a big tent and put it on top of the hill and we stayed up there. [Apparently many native families took shelter there.] The bay was full of logs and stumps and driftwood, and the water came right up to the houses. Some people thought Yakutat would be washed away, and they went off in a schooner. Afterwards they came back. Somebody gave me and some other children a nickel apiece, and we went down to Beasley's store in the Old Village to get cookies. We had to jump over a crack in the ground back of the village where the salt water squirted up. Sometimes it would shoot up as high as a treetop. There was another crack back of the mission. My stepfather came to get me and my mother was just wild.

The quakes lasted about a week, and every night my mother tied her children to her with ropes around our waists, in case something happened in the night. How I hated sleeping in that rope!

My mother's mother and my mother's brother were buried out on the point of Khantaak Island (Point Turner), and my uncle on my father's side got all his people in a big war canoe. They went over there and they dug up the graves to save them from the water that was coming up. Just as they got my grandma's body out, the whole place collapsed into the water. [June 7, 1952; edited.]

You know, my uncle Abraham had a war canoe on hand the time they had the earthquake. Just look how much respect they had for the dead people! This bay here was all covered up with stumps and stuff, and a big wave washed over the houses down in the village. I was at the mission then. And my grandmother and her sons were buried at the point of Khantaak.

They tied them up. Everybody lined up in the water to move my grandmother's body away before that breaks. Just when they got that dug up, that whole point broke off. That whole Khantaak point moved like that. And they carried that body to a high place.

[That reef was made then, it was explained later.]

We all went over to that place, all tied up together with that big rope from my uncle down. UnEtKAnai [opposite moiety] dug the body up, and the opposite tribe pack it back. All I remember is packing it up.

Coming back we had difficulty. The canoe was just going round like that; you can’t steer ahead. Stumps and trees just boiling in the bay. I think about it sometimes at night. They ought to[?] lose their lives putting a dead person in a safe place!

That's why the people, long time ago, they believed, they don’t want to disgrace their tunA KuwAsti [progeny, descendants]. They got to be good, or else there’ll be a mark on their tunA kuwAsti—offspring. Their offspring will be marked if you [they] do anything wrong. Will have no respect. That‘s why you got to be brave and honest, or your tunA kuwAsti will be marked in the face. You have respect for them. [March 24, 1954.]

This informant's brother mentioned a ‘sad song,’ tuwunikw dat cí, which he intended to record, but never did. It referred to the destruction of the graveyard “on S’usA [Khantaak]; it broke down when the earth shook…. My uncle's coffin broke down. Dakeyti kawuł—‘his coffin broke down.’ Two old ladies, Tł’uknaca, made the song.” [Charley White; March 14, 1954.]

History of the Frog House: Trouble Between the Tł‘uknaxAdi and the KIksAdi at Sitka

The history of the Frog crest, and particularly of Frog House, is worth reporting in some detail, since it illustrates so clearly the importance of crests and named houses to the Tlingit, the historical justification for such claims, and the ways in which such rights are defended.

It will be remembered that the Tł’UknaAdi found a huge frozen white frog when they were digging the foundations of a house at Gue, and that in consequence they named the building Frog House, decorating it with Frog House Posts and a Frog Screen (pp. 272–273). Personal names based on the Frog were ‘Old Frog’ (Xixt cAn), ‘Cold Skin’ (Dusa’at), and ‘Drowning’ or ‘Sinking’ (YEnaA). Later houses built at Dry Bay in 1909 and 1915 were also named Frog House and contained Frog Screens (cf. pp. 318–319).

No one in the Yakutat-Dry Bay area disputed the Tł’UknaAdi right to Frog House, but in Sitka it was a very different matter, for here the Tł’UknaAdi found themselves opposed by the KIksAdi, Ravens like themselves, but more powerful. The latter say that they were the first settlers at Sitka and that they were responsible for driving the Russians out in 1802. They also claim the Frog as theirs alone. Therefore, when the Tł’UknaAdi attempted to dedicate a Frog House at Sitka, the jealous KIksAdi were roused to anger. This happened in the winter of 1902–03(?), shortly before Swanton's visit to Sitka in January–March, 1904, and when Jack Ellis, born in Sitka in 1892, was still a small boy. The latter's version of the episode, told in 1949, was: The Tł’UknaAdi at ’Akwe had a Frog House. Some moved to Sitka and built a Frog House there. Then the KiksAdi who also claimed the Frog, came into the house and chopped the frog down. Jack Ellis was scared that his uncle would shoot them and start a fight. The KiksAdi were cowards, for they waited to come until there was only one Tł’UknaAdi there.

[Swanton (1908, p. 416) mentions the event as follows:]

“The frog was a special possession of the KîksA’dî, who claimed it from the fact that persons of their clan had had special dealings with frogs, although the stories told about them at Sitka and Wrangell differ. The nAXA’dî of Tongas tell the same story as the Wrangell KîksA’dî about the marriage of a woman of their clan to a frog, and probably claim the frog also. In recent years the QtcAdî at Wrangell and the T!ł’k!naxA’dî at Sitka have tried to adopt the frog, but in the latter case their attempt to put up the frog carving precipitated a riot.”

Swanton probably heard of this episode from his informant, Katlian, chief of the Sitka KIksAdi, since his note reflects the KIksAdi point of view. Most of the accounts which we heard at Yakutat were from Tł’UknaAdi informants, and so naturally express their side, although some reports are from persons unrelated to either sib. Although the trouble was over 50 years old when we were last hearing about it in 1954, yet it would be rash to assume that it is “settled,” even today.

KIKSADI CLAIMS TO THE FROG

The KIksAdi claims to the Frog are based upon at least two different episodes, one involving marriage to a frog, and the other the finding of a frog. Some of my Tł’UknaAdi informants had read Swanton‘s Tlingit Myths and Texts (1909), for at least one copy had passed from hand to hand before my first visit in 1949, and after this was destroyed in a fire, I replaced it with another copy, at the request of the original owner. Those who told about the trouble with the KIksAdi had read the stories which the latter tell about their frog, and the Yakutat people were apparently also familiar with other versions of the same tales.

According to the first story (Tale 22), told at Sitka by Dekin’kw, a Box House Kagwantan man, a chief's daughter in the Yakutat country said something which displeased the frogs. One appeared to her in human form, took her to the frogs’ home under the water, and married her. When her own people finally took her back and drained out of her all the mud she had eaten, she died. “Because this woman was taken away by the frog tribe at that place, the frogs there can understand human beings very well when they talk to them. It was a KîksA’dî woman who was taken off by the frogs, and so those people can almost understand them. They also have songs from the frogs, frog personal names, and the frog emblem. All the people know about them” (Swanton, 1909, p. 54).

It is hard to understand why the scene of this story is set in Yakutat, which is not and has never been KIksAdi country, unless the woman is supposed to be the daughter of a mother who had married into Yakutat, or unless the narrator confused the KIksAdi with people at Gue. Swanton (1909, p. 53, note a), in referring to Story 76, another version of the same tale, remarks that “This myth is more often localized at Wrangell, and the woman's name is said to have been QałtsI’xk!Î.” In this version, told by the mother of Katishan, chief of the Raven Kasq!ague’dî, the frogs are all killed and the woman survives.

My Tł‘UknaAdi informants did not approve of these stories.

“I read in the book you gave me (Swanton, 1909, Tale 22) how the KIksAdi claim the frog. See how that story is mixed up. They claim right here in Yakutat that man went under the lake and met that queen of frogs. A frog spirit captured that man.”

Another woman to whom this story had been read expostulated that it was “not true…. That one goes that xixt just fell in the lake back there. And that woman went in the lake. And that xixt ’anqawu king—and she married to him. And pretty soon they make that lake dry, and try to take that woman away from that xixt, take that woman in the house. And they say that woman is KIksAdi! No KiksAdi here! Ice was here. They never see xixt until ice was melted away. Just so much they want to claim that xixt, they don’ care [what they say].” The informant had not heard the story until she read it “in that old-fashioned book.”

Tales 66 and 95 tell how a man and his KIksAdi wife, while in a canoe somewhere near Sitka, heard a frog singing. Both claimed it, but finally the man let his wife have it as a crest for her people.

This tale is accepted by my informants, although they feel that their claim is at least equal, if not superior, because they found their frog first; it was found in the ground, not floating on the ocean or washed ashore on the beach; and anyway, two different frogs are involved.

“The KIksAdi found their frog on the ocean beach—afterwards. But TłuknaAdi got theirs from the ground. They just want to be somebody.

“The KIksAdi tried to chase the Tł’UknaAdi back to Gue. They got jealous. They chopped our xixt up. They don’t like to see it. There was a fight through the court. Judge de Graaf is in Sitka at that time. It's in the history.” (July 7, 1952.)

“When the Tł’UknaAdi built the Xixt hit in Sitka, the KIksAdi busted up the Frog. That's the time they went to court. They went to court in Juneau, and the Kosedi and the at’kA’ai said they were going to be Tł’UknaAdi then. Only just that KIksAdi was saying all the time, that they owned the Frog. Everytime they make totem pole they say xixt is theirs.

“We Tł’UknaAdi don’t say much about it. We just keep quiet. And we don’t try to put it in the history….

“Yes, the Frog belongs to the KIksAdi. Long ago they get it out on the ocean in Sitka. They went hunting hair seal, and a big log drift on the ocean and there was a frog sitting on it, and he make a noise. So they claim it, but we don’t try to take it away from them.

“That's ours from inside, from Gue. They weren’t going to call it Xixt hIt, but when they dig up the frog, they call it that [i.e., Frog House]. That's a long time ago. It's before the KIksAdi found that frog in the ocean that they claim.

“The anAtedi also claim the Frog. They told me that in Juneau. But they don’t fight with us. They just keep on making it and keep quiet.”

Another informant, referring to the original Frog House at Gue and its decorations: “They had that Frog for a totem pole [i.e., crest]. They had it for generations. That totem proves honestly that Frog business. It's ours. It's not the KIksAdi's.”

Neutral opinion, that is, as expressed by members of the opposite moiety, is that: “The KIksAdi frog was an old, old one, and they didn’t like the Tł’UknaAdi to get a new one.” Or, there is a grudging admission that the KIksAdi were probably right, “because the Frog is more on their side.”

THE FROG HOUSE AT SITKA

[The following was told by a Tł‘UknaAdi informant at Yakutat.]

X [a visitor to Yakutat in June, 1952] is KIksAdi. He is our enemy. KIksAdi is the one—you hear about it?—when that Frog was chopped up? It just happen 40 or 50 years ago.

[The story of Gue was sketched.]

They [Tł’UknaAdi] built a house in Sitka, Xixt hIt [Frog House]. And they got the finest carvers together and they pay a lot of money. When that Frog goes right in the middle of the house, it sticks halfway out of the house wall. They chop it out, the KIksAdi tribe. Jack Ellis’ mother [Elizabeth or Duqwetc], and his uncle [Stágwàn], and Jack Ellis—he's just a little boy—they were just a few in there. It was after everybody eat, after they potlatch the opposite side.

The KIksAdi just take it down and chop it down. Pretty near there was shooting over that. They went to the law for 2 or 3 years. Finally they settle. [The settlement was never explained.] The Tł’UknaAdi got a lawyer. If it's a long time ago and there was no law, they would have slaughtered them—every woman and child on the next night.

Oh, that was a upset! Everybody was nervous—even up here. They just shove that man around here when he come back. “You coward! Why didn’t you get a gun?” He is “uncle” to Jack Ellis [i.e., one of the Tł’UknaAdi sponsors of the house]…. Oh, his brothers got mad at him. His sisters, too. “Who‘s going to die for you?”

[This man seems, however, to have done his best to prevent bloodshed, and was apparently successful.]

I was home when it happened. They called that house Xixt hIt…. It was the next house to Ya hIt [Whale House].

[The house to be named Frog House would seem to be that which Swanton (1909, p. 406) lists as î’na hît, ‘house at the lower end of the town,’ so-called because of its original position in a “town on Alsek river,” (Gue on the Akwe?). It was one door from Whale House and its chief was Stagwan.]

Daniel Benson and Yeł nawu carved it [the frog image] together. They were the best carvers.

[Benson, Ce’-’ic, later known as Daqusetc, was a Teqwedi artist at Yakutat, born about 1868 and still living in 1940. Yeł nawu, ‘Dead Raven,’ was the Sitka artist who painted the screen for Drum House in the Old Village, Yakutat (pl. 92).]

And every thing was peaceful, but that confounded KIksAdi went in there, nighttime. Just Elizabeth, that Jack Ellis’ mother, and Jack Ellis about that big [a small boy], and his grandmother [Mrs. Daknaqin, ŁtanEt] was down in Xixt hIt.

…They just watch their chance, when everybody's out, just Elizabeth, and Jack, and Stágwàn in there. It‘s a dirty trick. They spend a lot of money on that [frog].

That man got punished for that. He got busted open. He's head of the KIksAdi, almost got into shooting scrape. u-xwatc, ‘Blanket of Tanned Skin,’ was head of KIksAdi….

And everybody get down on StÁgwàn. “Why didn’t he kill that man?” And Elizabeth grab the gun; she was going to shoot it. But he grab that gun away from her and throw it down. She was going to shoot the people cutting up the Frog….

Her name would have been high amongst our people if she had killed that [KIksAdi] man. But that Stágwàn grab the gun away. “You go to jail if you kill anybody.” She just bite her nails. But what can a woman do?

Her name would have been printed in a book. Get her name high…. She would have died in prison, just the same, but her name would have been up amongst us. Oh, it's a big trouble.

A photograph (pl. 209) taken of the Tł’UknaAdi sponsors of the potlatch, shows them posed in front of a big American flag, with a big carved wooden Frog, painted white, on a table. The Frog in the picture is the very one destroyed by the KIksAdi.

AFTERMATH OF TROUBLE AT SITKA

The aftermath of this affair seems to have involved a legal case heard before a court in Juneau. It is not clear, however, whether this was a prosecution for breach of the peace, or, perhaps more likely, a suit for damages. In any case, it does not seem to have settled the rival claims.

Thus, Dry Bay Chief George, the leading TłUknaAdi chief in that area, is said to have taken some Frog emblem to Sitka, but “while they are in the hands of the law there, they didn’t pay any attention….” In 1909, a Frog Screen was taken from Dry Bay to Douglas near Juneau, and Dry Bay Chief George wanted to take another to Sitka, both ventures planned to establish Tł’UknaAdi rights to the Frog. The Frog Houses built at Dry Bay in 1909 and 1915 (or 1925) (see p. 319), the beginning of another Frog House in Yakutat in 1950 by Jack Ellis, the carving of a Frog on the latter's tombstone, and the excitement when boards of a Frog Screen were reported at Dry Bay in 1952, all testify to continued Tł’UknaAdi concern with this crest.

The most interesting consequence was the action taken by the KIksAdi. This was explained by someone who showed me the photograph taken of the Sitka Tł‘UknaAdi and their frog emblem before it was installed in the house:

“u-xwAtc was the KIksAdi that split up the frog. He warned: ‘Don’t put that frog on the outside. I’m going to split it up,’ and he did.

“It was sitting on a platform above the door, they tell me [just as it is in the photograph].

“After he split it up, he went to Ketchikan. Somebody made him a totem pole up high. He put Tł‘UknaAdi stuff [crests] and stuff of another tribe on it to get even with them. He called it Ta ga, Sleep Pole.

“Now the Tł’UknaAdi got it. Before that old KIksAdi die, he said, ’Give it back to Tł’UknaAdi. They’re my grandfathers [i.e., his paternal grandfather was Tł’UknaAdi]. I want to make peace before I die.’ It's in Charley Kitka's house now in Sitka. He gave $700 to KIksAdi for it. He didn’t want to get it free.

“Kitka is a nice man. His Tlingit name is Qànúsgú’ic. Kitka's daughter is a college girl.”

The picture was entrusted to me, so that I could have copies made for the potlatch to be given in Juneau in the fall of 1954, by Frank Kitka, a Tł’UknaAdi man whose mother had just died. While the photographs could be made almost at once, my Tł’UknaAdi friends at Yakutat were disappointed that I was unable to send them, in time for the potlatch, phonograph records of the song for the Frog Screen, composed by Dry Bay George in 1909. They had hoped to play the song at the potlatch, and when recorded (1954, 2–2–D, 6–2–D), the song was preceded on the tape by an account in Tlingit of how the Frog had been found at Gue. I do not know how this potlatch may have affected the rival claims to the emblem.

Sentiment in Yakutat, as expressed in 1952, can be summed up by what a Tł’UknaAdi informant wanted to say to a KIksAdi visitor: “You are our enemy. We don’t forget the Frog House.”

Yakutat Houses

ABORIGINAL DWELLINGS AND OTHER STRUCTURES

Meaning of the House

The house (hIt) of the Tlingit, that is, the real house usually occupied only during the late fall and winter, was more than a solidly built shelter against the cold. It symbolized for the inhabitant the whole social order, his place in lineage and sib, and his family ties with those of the opposite moiety. The house name, which usually referred to a lineage or sib crest, recalled the the days of his ancestors whose great adventures had secured this totemic emblem which, in turn, linked the maternal line of their descendents with the order of nature. Other house names, although not derived from crests, were equally the property of the lineage or sib, and all descended from house to house, just as the names of the inhabitants were inherited from generation to generation.

The house was also an object of beauty and pride, skillfully built. It was often adorned with sib crests, carved and painted on the interior posts and rear screen, which visibly testified to the glory of the lineage (hIt-tan), ’the people of the house.’

While sheltering the living, the house was also a memorial to the dead; constructed upon the death of a former house chief by his successor, it was named and dedicated at the dead chief‘s funeral potlatch at which the new chief assumed the honorable name or title of the deceased. At this potlatch all the dead of the lineage were remembered, and the grandchildren of the houseowners received honorable names, those given to women and girls often referring specifically to some feature of the new house or to the graves of the dead whose memory was being honored.

Probably most of the heavy labor of construction had been performed by the owners of the house, but, in theory, members of the opposite moiety had built and decorated it. They were the guests who were feasted at the potlatch and rewarded both for their labors and for their services as witnesses to the new names. Gifts given to the guests were as liberal as the owners of the new house could afford, and the latter were assisted by all the members of their sib. For this reason, the house was called a “tribal house.” Because of the prestige of building and dedicating a house, it was the ambition of every man to do so and thus become a house chief. Wealthy men were able to build or rebuild (or repair) a series of houses, often on the same site, thereby enhancing their personal status and honoring their dead relatives. As the house often received a new name, in addition to that of the earlier structure, so its owner could claim another hereditary title for himself and bestow additional honorable names upon his grandchildren. The history of the Yakutat area and the fortunes of its lineages can be told in the history of its houses, their locations in the past, and the rosters of their chiefs.

Within the house lived many related families, so that it was with justice called a “community house.” The male owners consisted of the house chief or ‘master of the house’ (hIt Ati), his younger brothers or parallel cousins, and the maternal nephews of these men, all members of the chief's lineage. Some of the daughters of the houseowners remained at home, for it was the custom for a newly married man to live with his father-in-law. Usually these young men were also members of the house lineage or of the sib to which it belonged, but they might be members of any sib of the same moiety. A widowed mother, or even a married sister and her husband, might live in the house, for any relative of a member of the household could claim hospitality and shelter. Sisters of the owners who were married into other houses still reckoned their brothers’ lineage house as their own, even though they might never have lived in it, but would visit it to assist their brothers at potlatches.

The position of the sleeping quarters of these individuals and their families reflected their social standing within the heirarchy of the household-the rear of the house (deyí) was the place of honor, where the house chief had his quarters and where he seated visiting chiefs at feasts, while the front of the house was for those of little or no account. A large house might thus contain 50 or 60 persons: Men, women, children, and slaves.

At the old winter villages (‘an), a line of these great houses faced the beach or the riverbank. Before 1880 or 1890, settlements were not large, and might consist of 3 to 6 (possibly 8) named houses, in addition to smaller subsidiary dwellings and other structures. Over a hundred years ago the threat of war might force small villages or even camps to erect a wall or a palisade about the houses for defence. Such settlements were called ‘forts’ (nu), and a single house might be so protected and named. In front of the houses there was a space for beaching canoes, for drying racks, etc., and for a path or roadway along the shore. Behind the row of houses were caches were provisions were kept, bathhouses, and possibly the huts where women were confined at childbirth. Behind these again, or beyond the end of the village were the grave houses containing the ashes of the village dead. The forest behind the houses served as latrines and also furnished firewood. Water was obtained from a convenient stream, lake, or spring. Within the village, the arrangement of the houses symbolized the social structure, for the houses of the same sib were grouped together, often flanking that of their leading chief. “Daughter houses,” erected by prosperous younger brothers of established house chiefs, stood beside the “mother house” of their lineage head. Even the cemetery or ‘village of the dead’ (ege qawu’ani) reflected the same social pattern in the arrangement of its grave houses.

Despite the importance of the permanent house and the established village, these were occupied for a relatively short period during the year. In early spring people began to move away to a series of hunting and fishing camps, returning in the late fall, when the winter's supplies of food had been gathered and stored. Since autumn and early winter was the time for pot-latches, many households might be entertaining guests, or might themselves be attending a series of potlatches at another village for days on end. The seasons at which people moved from or returned to their village depended upon its situation, for some were located on fish streams where eulachon could be caught in the spring or salmon in the summer and early fall. Those who traveled farther away on the annual food quest often broke up into small groups to occupy temporary shelters, sometimes at scattered camps. Some fishing places where salmon were caught and preserved might have permanent structures, used for smoking fish as well as for dwellings and big enough for the entire multifamily household.

The Aboriginal Winter House

It has been so long since houses of purely aboriginal type were built that it is difficult to secure accurate information about them. Our oldest informants had evidently lived during their childhood in houses which had already been modified somewhat in details of construction, although the general plan and arrangements of the early type had been retained (pl. 81). There seem also to have been variations from house to house, depending perhaps on their relative age, local styles, or the means and tastes of their builders, so that the descriptions we received are not consistent. I shall, therefore, attempt first to give a generalized description of the type of large house built in winter settlements in the Yakutat area between 1870 and 1880, and will later mention various departures from this type. These again may be compared with the descriptions left us by early White visitors.

The old houses were built of wide planks and heavy beams, mortised or fitted together without nails or lashings, and had low pitched gable roofs. They were almost square, sometimes a little over 50 feet long, with a single door at the middle of one end (fig. 9, pp. 296–297).

The doorway (A wuł) was a round or oval hole, cut through the front of the house well above ground level, so that it was reached from the outside by two or more steps, and was so small that one had to stoop to enter (fig. 9h). The interior of the house was excavated to a depth of 3 to 4 feet, so that one descended a flight of eight steps to the floor. Sometimes there might be an outside porch (íi kAáci or ei kaaci) across the front of the house, but this was not common. The door itself (A hat) was a wooden plank, and could be secured on the inside with a wooden bar.

FIGURE 8.—Front of Bear House, Khantaak Island, sketched by Minnie Johnson: a, doorway; b, porch, c, steps.

To excavate the floor a wooden shovel with a blade about 12 inches square was used.

All around the four sides of the central open part of the house was a bench (ta), about 4 feet wide, and approximately at ground level (fig. 9e). Under this were lockers equipped with doors hung on heavy skin hinges. At the level of the bench, but behind it, across the back of the house (deikA), and along the side walls (qAu), were partitioned sleeping rooms (‘itkA). The rooms in the four corners were sometimes storerooms (yee). One informant spoke of houses with a series of eight encircling benches, but this was an ideal never achieved in the Yakutat area, and possibly referred only to the legendary house of some great chief in the south. On the other hand, houses were certainly not limited to one bench, for an informant of Harrington (MS.) described his father's house (in Katalla ?) that had three encircling benches (“thaa”). “The shelf-top inside the door of the house they call ‘iix-tâak,” but the benches at the sides and back had different names, which Harrington did not record.

FIGURE 9.—Aboriginal winter house, Yakutat. a, b, Bedrooms for the house head and the next ranking man, or for two house heads. c, Bedroom (‘itkA). d, Painted screen (in). e, Bench (ta). f, Fireplace (an ’iti). g, Steps from floor to bench and from bench to doorway. h, Doorway (A wuł). i, Steps from doorway to the ground. j, Main posts (ga), k, Corner posts (gukcAtu ga). l, m, Timbers at level of eaves (kiyi kAXAt); m laid first, n, Main beams (‘AkAyi ’Adi).o, Rafters, also gable end pieces (’ AkA súgu). p, Planks (aayit). q, Roof planks in two layers (kA ayi). r Logs on roof to hold down roof planks (‘AkA dAtłi). s, Wooden pegs holding the roof planks and logs in place (‘AkA uwu).

The house chief and his wife or wives traditionally occupied the central room at the rear of the house. “The head of the family has got to be right in the middle” (MJ). But if there was an even number of rooms across the back, the chief claimed one of the two middle rooms, while the next highest ranking man and his wife had the other. The front wall of the chief's room, or of both middle rooms, was often covered with a wooden screen (in), decorated with the crest of the lineage. I do not believe that at Yakutat such a painted partition was ever pierced for a doorway into the chief's room, as it was on some Tlingit houses (see Emmons, 1916, pl. 2). Less important families occupied the rooms along the sides of the house. The rooms near the front might be kept for visiting relatives or poor dependents.

These rooms were about 8 by 10, or 10 by 12 feet, and their ceilings, which reached to the level of the eaves, formed a platform (yac, yackA) below the roof of the house which could be used for storage or as a sleeping place. In the story of Chief Fair Weather, his unmarried daughter slept on the platform at the rear of the house, and there was a slave appointed to take away the ladder after she had gone to bed. The same woman who told the story cited a girl in her grandfather's house at Dry Bay who slept on the platform. “That's the way olden time—young girls stay up there so they couldn’t get down [and so] some boy can’t get up there until they get married.” Her son believed that only boys would sleep above, and that a chief's daughter would have a bedroom. “She can‘t be on the platform, because they store a lot of things up there and people are going back and forth all the time.”

Unmarried youths, poor relations and probably slaves, sometimes slept on the bench. On it there might be spaces marked off with “curtains” (mats?) or partitions of some kind, but these were always cleared from the bench when a potlatch was given. One informant said, however: “The slaves had their bedrooms at the corner by the door. I never heard of letting them sleep in the main part of the house.”

Those living near the front of the house, ‘dwellers by the door’ (Aaq kU-’u)—“they’re the ones really worked. ‘Go get some water!’ and they’re supposed to get up and get it. The name means ‘the people that live on the door side.’ They’re the ones have to work for the house people,” that is, for the chief and his family living in the rear.

In the middle of the main room, in the sunken floor, was the square fireplace (an ’iti), filled with gravel, small rocks, or sand, and sometimes with broken shells to look nice, the gravel held in place by a frame of boards around the sides. One informant described the hearth as raised from 6 to 12 inches above the floor and about 5 feet square, but all others indicate that it was a large sunken pit. Outside the hearth, the floor was covered with planks about 4 feet wide. During the day persons might sit on the floor with their backs against the front of the bench, or on the bench leaning against the walls of the sleeping rooms.

Above the fireplace was the smoke hole (gankA). This was provided with a movable board screen (ganyétłi, gankA t’ayi, gankA yii). This could be tilted on one side or the other, depending upon the direction of the wind. This had to be done by someone who climbed onto the roof by means of a ladder (tét); a log about 2 feet in diameter, notched for steps.

The framework of the house was supported by heavy posts (ga) (fig. 9j). There were four very large posts inside the house to hold the main weight of the roof (hrtkA), one at each corner of the bench. These were actually flattened logs, shaped more like huge planks than pillars, about 4 feet wide, and probably 12 inches thick, to judge from photographs. One side was hollowed out, but the convex surface that faced the middle of the house was often carved with crests of the lineage. Sometimes only two posts (at the rear?) were so decorated. As old houses were torn down and replaced by newer ones, the old carved posts were transferred to the new buildings. Often the posts had become so rotted that they could only be set up as carved shells around or in front of the actual supports.

There were also four smaller and shorter posts (gukcAtu ga), one at each outer corner of the house. These did not, as in southeastern Alsaka, rise above the level of the eaves, which our informant implied was a modern style, nor were these posts decorated. It is uncertain whether there were any other posts along the side or end walls, for while one man said that a large house might have additional posts at the front and back walls, others denied this, specifying that the eight posts already mentioned and the walls themselves were strong enough to support the roof, or that such wall posts were employed only in the modern type of construction.

The four main posts inside were notched at the top to support two huge beams (‘AkAyi ’Adi), 2 to 3 feet in diameter, that ran from the front to the back of the house. The corner posts were similarly notched to hold the frame of squared timbers (iyi kAXAt), about 2 feet wide, that ran around the house at the level of the eaves. The pair at the sides or eaves were laid first, resting in the notches of the corner posts, and these supported the pair across the front and back. The beams at the eaves were grooved on their lower surfaces to receive the upper ends of the wall planks, and on their upper sides were notched or grooved to hold the lower ends of the rafters (’AkA súgu) that ran from the ridge of the roof to the eaves. The beams across the front and back were similarly grooved on the lower surface to hold a lower tier of wall planks, and also on their upper surface to hold the planks that filled the gable ends. The tops of these upper planks fitted into grooves cut into the lower surfaces of the outer pair of rafters that formed the gables.

The rafters were described as poles about 6 inches in diameter, although it is almost certain that those at the ends of the house were heavier planks. I do not know how many were used. Above these again an unspecified number of longitudinal planks (aayit), ran the length of the roof, parallel to the main beams below. The innermost and highest pair formed the sides of the smoke hole, and presumably two shorter poles formed the two sections of the ridgepole between the smoke hole and the ends of the house. No pole crossed the smoke hole.

The roof itself was composed of planks (kA t’ayi), about 2 inches thick and 12 inches wide (fig. 9q). There were usually two, sometimes three, rows of these, laid like shingles, sloping from the roof towards the eaves. The planks were set close together in two layers, those of the upper layer covering the cracks between the planks below. At the ridge, one set of roof planks projected beyond the ends of the other side to keep out the rain.

On top of the roof a few lines of logs (’AkA dAtłi) were laid, parallel to the side walls, in order to hold down the roof planks. Holes were drilled through them so they could be held in place with wooden pegs (‘AkA uwu). The pegs were presumably driven into the rafters below. If the pegs were omitted, or thought insufficiently secure, the logs were braced by poles that ran between them and between the lowest line of logs and the ground. Stones were not used to weight down the roof.

The informant from whom most of these details were secured indicated that the roof had the same steep pitch as on modern framehouses at Yakutat that are built to shed the heavy snows. Another man, however, maintained that the roof was almost flat, as on Tlingit houses in southeastern Alaska.

The walls were made of planks (a), about 4 feet wide, set vertically (yindE tcun, kIndE tcun ’ata). Their lower ends were said to have been simply buried in the ground, not set into a grooved frame like that which held their upper ends. Sometimes the wall planks were set horizontally (tładÉn, tładÉn ’ata). Presumably in such a case, they must have been mortised into longitudinal grooves in the corner posts, and probably additional posts, similarly grooved, were needed for the middle of the side and end walls. My informant, however, did not know how the planks were secured. The name ‘Sidewise House’ (tładÉn hrt), belonging to the Tł’UknaAdi Raven sib, may once have referred to this type of construction, although the last house of this name, a frame building erected in 1916, was said to have been so called because it stood at an angle to the row of other houses that faced the beach.

“For the doorway they are looking for the biggest tree they can find, and cut the hole through it.” That is, a very wide plank was used for this purpose. With one possible exception, (see Bear House, at Diyaguna’Et, p. 317), doorways were not cut through totem poles set in front of the house, as they sometimes were much farther south. The facades of other old houses seem to have been undecorated, although two modern houses (Bear Paw House at Lost River, and Thunderbird House at Yakutat, pp. 321 and 327), built in 1918 and 1921, had carvings above the door (fig.10).

Two very old style houses described to us were the Beaver House at ałyA (Kaliakh River) and a smaller house of the same name at Strawberry Point west of Controller Bay. They were both standing in 1900, although the second house fell down in 1908. They belonged to the ałyr-Kagwantan, and the peculiarities of their construction may reflect either the local style, or their age. In the main, however, they were like the large Yakutat houses, and my informant believed that they represented the original Yakutat form. Their most distinctive feature was that instead of pairs of straight rafters there were large curved pieces that formed the gables and the two ends of the smoke hole. On these rested the two sections of the ridgepole (fig. 11). There were no other longitudinal beams, except the two at the eaves and the two main beams supported by the four interior posts, and the roof planks were said to have been laid directly on these. The carved rafters were described as “a pretty fancy job…big logs, maybe four-or five-foot logs,” but it was not clear whether each was a single piece that arched over the entire roof, or whether it was simply a curved middle section that joined the tops of two shorter straight rafters. The ones at the gable ends were grooved on the lower side to receive the upper tier of wall planks. The lower ends of the wall planks at the Kaliakh River house were set into grooved planks at the bottom, but my informant gave conflicting reports about this feature for the house at Strawberry Point.

FIGURE 10.—Bear Paw House, Lost River Landing, built by Jim Kadetoo in 1918. (Front view and floor plan sketched by Edward Malin in 1949; detail of carved wooden paws, after Malin.)

JG told Harrington in 1939 or 1940 that as a small boy he had seen the old house at Strawberry Point. It was then abandoned and rotting. It was made of heavy timbers, 2 by 12 inch planks of spruce, shaped with axes and adzes. The stringers were 6 inches in diameter.

“My mother and I were picking strawberries at Strawberry Point, and my mother took me over to that rotting house, and she cried, and she said, “This is your paternal grandfather‘s house.” [The informant, Tcicqedi, was evidently the grandson of ałyr-Kagwantan]. A couple of years later my mother and I went again to Strawberry Point and the roof of the old house had already caved in. The name of that house was IkkeedÍi-hhÍt, Beaver House. They said that that house was built when there were White people already in Alaska.”

Other houses in the Yakutat area varied from the large house described above in the number and arrangement of the sleeping rooms; in the use of a room at the front for the sweat bath; in the absence of a bench; in the use of central poles at each end of the house to support a single ridgepole; in possessing two, not one, fireplace; or in lacking a planked floor. I suspect that some of these variations were due to the expense or labor of building a house of the classic type with excavated plank-covered floor and heavy twin roof beams, to the smaller size of a household that did not need so many bedrooms, and also to the fact that some of these houses seem to have been at fishing places, serving to smoke fish, and therefore dispensing with such amenities as the bench in order to have two hearths. On the other hand, the single ridgepole crossing the open smoke hole was reported for the Eyak houses at the mouth of the Copper River, and may well have been the original type at Yakutat before the introduction of the heavy paired beams (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 39, 367; de Laguna, 1947, pp. 111, 279). That this may have been the case is also suggested by the appearance of a small archeological house on Knight Island (de Laguna et al., 1964, figs. 7 and 8, pp. 73–74).

FIGURE 11.—Detail of roof construction of Beaver House, Kaliakh River, sketched by Harry K. Bremner. a, Curved crossbeams, b, Ridgepole. c, Smokehole.

One informant, for example, suggested that large houses had two main roof beams as well as additional ones, three or four (possibly more) sleeping rooms across the back and one in each front corner, but none at the sides, and no bench. There were two fireplaces. A small house, he said, might have a single ridgepole, a single fireplace, a single sleeping room at the rear, and have the floor only partially planked. His testimony cannot be accepted as completely reliable or clear, since he denied the existence of a smoke hole, saying that cracks in the roof were sufficient for ventilation and light. Perhaps he was describing smokehouses.

Another man specified a bench all the way around the house, steps up to it from the floor at the back as well as at the front, but a row of bedrooms only at the rear (fig. 12). He believes that there was a single ridgepole across the smoke hole, but is not sure. He also said that in the fall, when all the fish had been smoked and put up for winter, they moved the fire from the center of the house towards the two side walls and had “something like a Thanksgiving feast.” This was called ‘moving the fire back’ (an dAq yusixix). While the fish were being smoked, the people had to be careful not to have the fire too hot, but when the dried fish had been packed away, they could have two fires, or build up the central one for greater warmth.

FIGURE 12.—Winter house, sketched by John Ellis. X indicates the fireplace. The entire center area was dug down 3 feet beneath surface level. The break in the outside diameter indicates the doorway. The house was probably longer than is shown here; i.e., longer than it was wide.

However, neither of the last two men had ever lived in an old-style house, as far as I know, and informants who had done so insisted that there was only one fire. As for two fireplaces—“they just use that kind for smoking fish” (MJ). Probably the two fires were pushed together into the center, not to the sides, when the fish were cured.

Three Old Houses

I secured diagrams of three houses in which some informants had lived as children. The most recent house, built about 1903 and occupied until at least 1907, was the Kagwantan Box House in Dry Bay (fig. 13). This had an excavated floor covered with sand, a bench all around, a fireplace in the center, three rooms across the back, and one room in each front corner. In the right rear corner room (A) (as one faced the rear of the house), lived the owner and his young wife; in the center rear room (B) lived his daughter, and in the left rear room (C) his old wife. In the right front room (D) lived the owner's married son, his wife and their small daughter (the informant). Another granddaughter (and an unmarried son?) slept on the platform above the rooms. The left corner front room (E) was either a bathroom or a storeroom.

Bear House, one of the Teqwedi houses on Khantaak Island in the 1880's, had a front porch with a railing at the sides (fig. 8), a bench around the walls with lockers under it, a central fire, three bedrooms across the back and four along each side (fig. 14). The central rear room (A) belonged to the owner, the noted shaman Te-’ic, and his wife. The two corner rear rooms (B, C), three on the left side (D, E, F) and one on the right (G) were occupied by the owner's three full brothers and his two half-brothers and a male parallel cousin (all counted as brothers) and their families. Another room on the right (H) belonged to a brother's married daughter and her husband, a ałyI-Kagwantan man. The remaining three side rooms near the front of the house (I, J, K) were “extra rooms,” in case some of the other married daughters and their husbands should want to move in. Two married sisters of the shaman seem to have lived here fairly regularly. I gather, however, that younger brothers, nephews, married sisters and married daughters were not necessarily permanent residents.

FIGURE 13.—Diagram of Kagwantan Box House, Dry Bay, 1903–07. a, Owner, Qatan, and his young TłukwaAdi wife, Desku. b, Owner's TłukwaAdi daughter, Ła’at (unmarried ?). c, Owner's old wife, ŁusiEt, mother of Desku by a previous husband. d, Owner's TłukwaAdi son, Qeduatc, and his Kagwantan wife, Qanatin, and their little daughter, CawAtxus (EE). e, Storeroom or bathroom. The younger son of the owner, utcda, and a granddaughter of the owner‘s old wife, Nacawu, slept on the platform above the rooms.

FIGURE 14.—Diagram of the Teqwedi Bear House, Khantaak Island, about 1886. a, House head, the shaman Te-’ic or Łagusa (died ca. 1890) and his Kwacqwan wife, Diyaładzu. b, Half-brother to the house head (by the same mother, but a different father), Sisdjakw or Ca-kuwakan (1831–99) and his Kwacqwan wife, Nacaqet. c, Xen or Qadaqe-’ic, full brother of the house head, and his Kwacqwan wife. d, adane Johnstone (1843–88), full brother to the house head, and his two T’łUknaAdi wives, CawAt and her younger sister, Qatcqaket. e, HadłIs-nakw or Kuye-’ic, half brother to the house head (same mother, but a different father) and his two Kwacqwan wives, Atkiya and Qesiyax, daughters of his older brother, Ca-kuwakan. f, NexiIte or SAqwantia-’ic, parallel cousin to the house head, probably an unmarried boy. g, ‘Awca’ or DjakcA-’ic, full brother of Ca-kuwukan and halfbrother of house head, and his Kwacqwan wife, Qadałiyak or DjakcA-tła. h, SA’Ał or Wanisé’ (Yakategy John, ałyI-Kagwantan), and his Kwacqwan wife, Sisgexw, daughter of Xen; i–k, rooms available for visits of married sisters of the house head, such as ’AntcawU-cú (GAwk-tła or CanAtł-’At) and her Kwacqwan husband, Qadaqet; or KaxgawUłtIn and her TłUknaAdi husband from Sitka. Children of these couples are not indicated. (After a sketch by Minnie Johnson.)

Thus, one of the younger brothers who sometimes, or at one time, had lived in this house, assisted his father-in-law to build the Teqwedi Coward House at Situk. This was occupied until the death of the son-in-law in 1888. This house had a plank floor and central fireplace, but lacked the bench. There were three bedrooms across the back and three on each side (fig. 15). In the central rear room (A) lived the elderly head of the family, and his wife, as well as his daughter's little girl (Minnie Johnson). The corner rooms on either side at the rear were occupied by an unmarried son (B) and by the two unmarried sons of a daughter (C). On one side (D) lived the house chief's son-in-law (probably a “nephew,” although the exact relationship was never specified), together with his two wives and small sons. This man (my informant's father) had done most of the work of building the house. The other side rooms were occupied by this man's sister and her husband (F), by his sister's daughter, her husband, and little girl (G), and by three maternal nephews (E). There was also another maternal nephew who slept in one of the side rooms, and at least three little maternal nieces who slept on the floor. One or two vacant rooms near the door (H, I) were available for visiting relatives. There was a plank walk from the house to the river, and a fence that enclosed a shallow pool where the children could play safely. This house was decorated inside with four posts, carved to represent women's faces, that is, the “Coward” or berdache, for which the house was named.

FIGURE 15.—Diagram of the Teqwedi Coward House, Situk, 1888. a, Head of the house, Łuso, and his TłUknaAdi wife, KUsIna-tła (maternal grandparents of MJ, who slept with them). b, YakwunaEn (Charley or John Brown), unmarried son of the house head, c, Łdain, unmarried grandson of the househead (oldest brother to MJ) and his little brother Natsi (Jim Blaine). d, adane Johnstone and his two wives, CawAt and Qatcqaket, daughters of the house head, and baby, John. e, “guestroom” for unmarried nephews of adane (Peter, Teet, and Johnny Milton, all Teqwedi). f, Sister of Xadane, GAw-tła or CanAtł-’At, and her Kwacqwan husband, Qadaqek. g, Sister of adane, CUkwin, and her Kwacqwan husband, SAna-’ic and their daughter, Sophie Milton, and the baby, William. h, Spare rooms. Three daughters of GAw-tła and Qadaqek (Cawu-tła, Kitty, and Josie) slept on the floor in the main room. It was not specified where the small boy, Charley White, slept. (After a sketch by Minnie Johnson.)

My informant's older brother, Charley White, who had also lived in this house as a small child described it as lacking decorations, and as possessing only four bedrooms across the back, and none at the sides (fig. 16). There were two fireplaces. In the rear left corner room lived his maternal grandfather (the house chief) and his grandmother; in the next room slept his father, mother (no co-wife was mentioned), his little sister, two brothers, and himself; next was the room of his unmarried older brother; and in the right rear corner was the room of an unmarried paternal cousin or uncle. Probably this informant remembered the house before it was refinished and dedicated as a named house, and when it was still used for smoking fish, but I suspect that his memory is less accurate than his sister's.

FIGURE 16.—Diagram of the Teqwedi Coward House, Situk, 1885. Note that the arrangement of this house is that of a smokehouse, with two fires. a, House head, Łuso, and his T’łUknaAdi wife, KUsIna-tła, maternal grandparents of Charley White. b, adane Johnstone and his wife, CawAt, daughter of the house head, and their children, Charley, Minnie, Jim, and John (the other wife, Qatcqaket, was not mentioned). c, Łdain, oldest unmarried son of Xadane. d, Qeł-’ic or Peter Milton, unmarried sister's son of Xadane, who later married his widow. e, Fireplaces. (After information given by Charley White.)

Smokehouses

Smokehouses (‘At an hIdi, ’At an dakA hIdi) were built either for the sole purpose of curing fish or to serve also as dwellings at the fish camps. These were smaller than the large “community houses,” and were less carefully made. It is doubtful whether they had benches or plank floors, and they sometimes had two fireplaces but only a single smoke hole. If the smokehouse was also a dwelling, there were (or might be) partitioned sleeping rooms. Above the fire (or fires) was a false ceiling or “table” (ganigédì), made of boards, to catch the soot and the direct heat and to spread the smoke throughout the upper part of the house. Above this were the racks for drying fish. The houses faced the river, and the permanent poles of the fish racks (hung from the roof beams?) ran parallel to the sidewalls. The fish themselves were hung over smaller movable sticks (djIkA qa), set across the poles so that the heads of the fish were turned upstream as they dried. There were also racks (anÁs) outside the house for preliminary drying (pl. 27).

FIGURE 17.—Smokehouse with moveable screen at William Milton's fish camp, at the reputed site of the Russian Fort, Ankau Lagoon, as sketched by Edward Malin in 1949.

Recently built smokehouses, to judge from those we saw, were not used as dwellings and lacked partitioned rooms (fig. 19). These buildings were located either behind or beside a regular house, or close to a small cabin or shack at the fishcamps (fig. 20). On some smokehouses the smoke hole was equipped with a large movable wooden screen, fastened across the middle to a pole that was set on the ridge of the roof in such a way that the pole could rotate and the screen be tilted from side to side by means of ropes that hung down inside the house (fig. 17). Other smokehouses had a permanent, louvred, wooden wind baffe set above the smoke hole like a chimney (figs. 18, 20). To judge from a picture of Sitka in 1827 (Lütke, 1835, Atlas, pl. 7), this was an arrangement copied from the Russians.

FIGURE 18.—Smokehouse beside Bear Paw House, Lost River Łanding, sketched by Edward Malin in 1949. The eaves at the corners stand 68 inches above ground level. The doorway measures 31 by 62 inches.

FIGURE 19.—Smokehouse. a, Smokehole. b, Racks for finishing drying. c, Racks for first drying. d, False ceiling or “table” for catching soot. e, Fireplace. (After a sketch by Maggie Harry.)

Camps

In the old days there were also cabins or shacks at hunting camps, as there are today. These were not described in detail, but were said to have been made of “shucks” (shakes), that is, roughly split boards or shingles, and were big enough for two or three families (MJ). These camps were usually near the headwaters of the rivers east of Yakutat, from which the men went hunting mountain goats and bears in the late fall and early winter. Sometimes families moved here earlier in the season so that the women could gather berries.

FIGURE 20.—Modern smokehouse at the mouth of Lost River, sketched by Edward Malin in 1949.

At the sealing camps near the head of Yakutat Bay, occupied in early summer, the people formerly lived in small bark houses (tiy hIt, łùn hIt). These were rather flimsy rectangular structures with a gable roof, and have been admirably described and photographed by members of the Harriman Alaska Expedition in 1899 (see p. 314, fig. 22). Already by this time the people were camping chiefly in ordinary canvas wall tents, and the bark houses were primarily used for smoking seal meat. The hemlock bark, used for the walls and roof, was gathered in the spring when the people were moving to the sealing camps, and the sweet inner layer was scraped from the bark sheets to serve as food. (I believe that spruce bark was also used for these shelters.) Such bark houses were also erected at other camps (MJ, SJ). The emigrants from the Copper River were supposed to have built shelters of yellow cedar bark when they reached the coast near Icy Bay. Sheets of such bark were formerly carried in the canoe when people traveled, to serve as tents (cf. p. 230). When one elderly informant was taken as a child from Katalla to visit relatives on Khantaak Island, the party camped along the way in such bark shelters (KDI).

FIGURE 21.—Log cabin at William Milton's fish camp at the reputed site of the Russian Fort, Ankau Lagoon, as sketched by Edward Malin in 1949. The doorway of the cabin, which faces the doorway of the smokehouse, is 69 inches high. The cabin itself is made entirely of logs up to the height of the door. Plank cedar boards form the roof. The entire top (x) is comprised of cedar shakes.

Caches

A stock of food for current use was kept in the houses, but the main supplies were stored in pit caches (cAł), behind the dwellings. These were holes dug deep in the ground and lined with logs or planks. On top was a roof of bark, covered with mud, sometimes arched over like a Quonset hut; others had a gable roof made of planks, presumably also covered with earth. There was a wooden door at one end and a ladder for entrance. It was the men's job to put things into the cache. The top of the cache was sometimes as high as 5 feet above the ground, and the hole was perhaps sometimes as deep. There are said to have been two stories in the cache. The bottom one was used for dried fish, preserved meat, and other foods that were not supposed to freeze. The upper story was used for less perishable items, such as dried berries. Each woman in the multi-family household had her own special place in the cache for her wooden boxes of food and for her bundles of dried fish. The latter were sometimes tied up in special ways to distinguish each woman's property, informants recalled.

“Sometimes they have a little log cabin on poles—four posts, high up, so dogs, wolverines, crows, and wolves can’t get at the grub. They may do this when they are out hunting. They call it by the same name as the hole to store grub in.” (MJ)

At the prehistoric site on Knight Island, a number of rectangular, boxlike caches were found, apparently all originally lined with bark or planks, and ranging in size from 3 by 1 feet to over 12 by 6 feet. There were also innumerable basin-shaped pits, some of which had been lined with bark. These various pits were used for storing food, trinkets, and other objects; some were probably ovens for baking, or pits in which fish heads and fish eggs were allowed to rot or ferment. Eventually all served as refuse dumps (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 45–51). Similar pits were common also at abandoned sites of the historic period.

Bathhouses

In the old settlements there were also bathhouses (a, ayi) for steam baths. Some were small—“just for a small family. Sometimes, though, they have it big. They‘re going to invite all the chiefs, all the big shots. They sit around in there and have a meeting.” The various house chiefs would take turns each night in providing the bath.

These bathhouses were built in a slightly excavated pit. Rocks heated in a fire outdoors or in the main house were used to produce steam from water thrown over them, and the bathers used fine shavings like sponges to scrape off sweat and dirt. The bathhouse was illuminated by a small window of bear gut skin, called ‘the eye of the bathhouse’ (ayi WAE), a word now applied to any window. The bathhouse at Eagle Fort on the Situk River was apparently an annex of one of the houses. It was a hole dug in the ground and had a bark roof. The chief slept there, at least on one occasion (pp. 263, 265). Bathhouses built approximately 100 years later were like small log cabins behind the main house. They had wooden floors and were scrubbed out after each use.

Sometimes a bath room might be simply partitioned off in one front corner of the main house. This was the arrangement in Box House at Dry Bay. “The bath room, a, is in the corner. It has its own fireplace…. They put water on hot rocks to make steam because they don’t want to see each other. [Hardly the reason, even though several persons of the same sex bathed together.] Some men would run in the water [outdoors] after a sweat bath, but the ladies would just put on big blankets. They might put roots on the hot rocks, as a medicine for the chest—some kind of gray thing.”

The bathhouse or bathroom was, as already indicated, a meeting place for house chiefs. Other men, too, were accustomed to take baths every evening. “The old men used to get together, too, to take baths. I used to listen to them, in the corner of the house. They would tell stories, and talk about their hunting experiences” (MJ). Women also took baths together, apparently inviting each other. They would call: “a wa.wea—the sweat house is already heated up!” (MJ). At Dry Bay, the shaman sometimes performed in the bathhouse.

At camps, bathhouses were made of alder branches, arched over like the frame of an inverted basket, their sharpened ends stuck into the ground. They were covered with “blankets and anything else they can get ahold of” (MJ). This woman went on to describe a childhood escapade in which she and some other little girls built a bathhouse of branches and blankets, and made a fire inside. When the rocks were hot, they took the coals outside, and undressed, but then discovered that they had neglected to bring any water. When using such a small temporary bathhouse it was more customary to have the fire outside and to bring in the rocks with wooden tongs.

Archeological evidence from Knight Island would indicate that the larger separate bathhouses had their own interior fireplace at one end in which the rocks were heated, as was the arrangement for the bathroom in Box House at Dry Bay (de Laguna et al., 1964, figs. 11 and 12). When the rocks were hot, the bathers would cover the fire and pour water over the rocks to make steam (MJ). Other informants said, however, that there was no fire inside, and that rocks were always brought in. There was disagreement as to whether the water was poured directly onto the pile of rocks, or whether it was first heated by putting some hot rocks into a container of water.

Sweat baths are no longer taken at Yakutat.

House Furnishings

There was no furniture in the old houses, although wooden boxes might serve for seats as well as for storage. There were no tables, for example, and food was served into dishes set on the floor.

In the sleeping rooms the beds were made of piles of dry grass, about 2 feet thick, with boards set up in front to hold them in place. The grass was apparently the coarse ryegrass(?) from the edge of the beach. “The grass is plentiful. They gather it up when the westerly winds blow.” It was not tied up in bundles. “Then feather beds on top. Nice and soft and warm, too. Blankets on the feather beds.” (MJ) The feather beds or “feather matresses” probably had a cloth cover, and our informant remembers how her mother used to pluck swansdown to fill them. The blankets were either Hudson's Bay blankets or robes of fur and birdskin. At a still earlier period, before commercial blankets became available, only fur and birdskin robes and mats of grass or cedar bark were used.

Rooms in some houses had windows. My informant mentioned a gut skin window in her father's sister's house or smokehouse at Nesudat, where she stopped overnight in 1888. It was here that she lost her hair ornament, because her mother stuck it in a hole in the gut skin window that night to keep out the cold, and forgot it when they left the next morning. “They used bear guts for windows—big pieces sewed together with porpoise sinew. It‘s sewed fine and never show. And it rain on it and it swells up, and the rain never goes through.” (MJ) Since no one else mentioned windows in connection with the house or its bedrooms, it is possible that my informant and her mother actually slept in the bathroom, since the house on that occasion was said to have been crowded with visitors.

Sleeping rooms were, however, more regularly illuminated with stone lamps (i—‘dish,’ tIna tEi, tE tIna). These were evidently in common use in the Yakutat and Dry Bay areas to judge from informants’ reports and archeological specimens (de Laguna et al., 1964, pls. 11 and 12). Like the lamps seen by Abercrombie in 1884 among the Copper River Eyak (BirketSmith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 43), most of the archeological specimens from Yakutat were simply limestone cobbles in which a shallow concavity had been pecked. This is said to have been done with hammerstones or with stone chisels. The more carefully finished lamps were circular or slightly oval, sometimes with lips or grooves in the rim to hold the wick, and a deepened reservoir in the center of the bowl. Seal oil, or occasionally mountain goat fat, was used as fuel; rags, formerly strips of twisted beach grass, served as wicks. If the wick was twisted tightly and well soaked it would not smoke, informants assured me.

Lamps used in the bedrooms had only one wick, “because they don’t want to get no fire in there,” but in the main room of the house there might be a lamp in each corner, each with two or three wicks. “They give lots of light. You light as many [wicks] as you want to. The women folk weave baskets like that. They make a pretty good light.” (MJ) The woman who had lived in Box House in Dry Bay said that the same kind of lamp was used there. “But when I was getting about 7 years old [about 1901], they have regular oil lamps.” We found no archeological specimens with more than one groove in the rim to support a single wick.

Little girls used to play in the corners of the big houses with clam shells which they lit like lamps in imitation of the larger stone vessels of their elders. My informant's mother was always cautioning her to be careful of the fire in her little lamp (MJ). Several archeological stone vessels that were too small to have been useful as real lamps were probably similar toys.

When going outdoors at night, people carried pieces of pitchy wood as torches.

The fire in the middle of the main room served for light, warmth, and cooking. The gravel or sand under it retained and radiated the heat even when the fire was low. There were no draughts because the house was built in a pit. It was customary to burn large logs, pushing the ends into the flames as they were consumed. The fire was kept overnight by shoving two big logs together, and shavings (kayeAgu) were kept handy to build it up in the morning.

Firewood was piled up near the door of the house. It was “Tlingit law” for the men to cut wood for the fire every morning—“can’t miss a day.” Apparently this heavy work was done by the young able-bodied men, while an older man might gather up the chips for kindling. From one historical account, I infer that the logs were formerly cut just long enough for two men to carry, and were (sometimes? usually?) deeply notched to form four easily detachable sections (pp. 263, 265). Cutting wood “before the Raven calls at dawn,” clad only in a belt or breechclout in winter, was part of the physical and magical conditioning of a young man. It was also a service rendered by a youth to his prospective or newly acquired father-in-law and to his uncle (cf. pp. 472, 480).

Before matches were available, fires were kindled with a drill, or by striking two stones together. Apparently the drill was more commonly used, for one informant had never heard of the strike-a-light (dàtsí). Another, in describing the strike-a-light, said that the stones were of flint. “They used to hit it together and make sparks. And they have dry stuff they keep it in all the time, dry grass. They use pitch off the trees for kindling, like a creosote piling. They make a shaving of it. They use the dry grass and then the pitch.” (MJ)

The drill was of red cedar, as was the hearth. The latter was a board with a pit in which the drill revolved, and the hearth was held steady by kneeling on it. The drill was rotated between the palms of the hands, or with a bow, or with a cord twisted around the shaft a few times and operated by two men. The fine roots (kis) of an unidentified plant, and pitch wood were used to catch the glowing dust. Wax from the ear might be put on the tinder to make the fire catch better. Once fire was obtained it could be kept in punk (Unana tEtł, ’Athabaskan grease’). This was obtained from old rotted stumps and would hold fire for a long time, although my informants did not know in what the glowing punk was kept (SJ and friends).

In addition to the wood piled at the front of the house, there were also wooden buckets containing water. “They know how to keep water in the houses. In each front corner they put water. They got buckets and cover it up. No matter how dark it is, they light pitch torches to pack water at night. Over at Khantaak, it's a long ways to pack water. They don’t use that lake [behind the village], because the Government folks [men from Coast Guard vessels?] wash clothes in there and swim there, so they dug a hole for a well back near the woods. They got slaves to pack water.” (MJ) The informant recalled how her small brother refused to fetch water as a menial task, but how she herself, as a little girl, liked to bring water in her little bucket. The water buckets (łAkt, ’box,’) were square wooden boxes, probably provided with handles. They were made, like other waterproof boxes, with a piece for the bottom and another bent around for the sides. That fetching of water was a customary evening task for slaves is indicated by the story of the man who married the daughter of Chief Fair Weather, for the slave brought water at night in a wooden bucket, and purposely spilled it to extinguish the fire as he came down the steps inside the door. The “servant” of the Owner of Daylight also fetched water in a square wooden bucket, using a pitch torch in the dark. Raven concealed himself as a spruce needle in the corner where the sides of the bucket were pegged together (see p. 853).

Boxes of urine, used in the old days for washing and as a mordant for dyes, were kept by the door.

In the house would also have been found watertight boxes and baskets for cooking, spits for roasting meat and fish, tongs for handling hot rocks, wooden dishes and platters for serving food, basket cups, dippers and spoons of wood and horn. Boxes and baskets and skin bags, of various sizes and shapes, were used for storing and preparing food, for holding sewing materials, clothing, and ornaments. There would also have been mortars and pestles and large grinding slabs for preparing food, medicine, tobacco, and paint. Hammerstones were undoubtedly common, to judge from the archeological evidence. The women would have had bundles or skeins of split spruce roots for baskets and cordage, prepared grass stems for decorating baskets, and also such sewing materials as awls, sinew thread, ulos, and scrapers of various kinds. The men‘s tool chests would have held wooden wedges and mawls for making planks, adzes, knives, chisels, whetstones, drills, and paintbrushes. These and other domestic utensils and tools are described later (pp. 412–431).

With the coming of the first Europeans, a few iron pots for cooking and a few silver spoons became available, and by the 1880's and 1890's the well-to-do household would have had metal pots and frying pans, galvanized iron buckets, 5-gallon kerosine cans (the indispensable and ubiquitous container today in Alaska), glass bottles, barrels, Hudson Bay porcelain dishes, metal tableware, and imported Chinese camphor chests.

Boxes and chests with clothing, blankets and personal ornaments were piled in the sleeping rooms, and probably also served to mark off sleeping spaces on the bench. The valuable china dishes, used only for feasts, as well as bundles of dried fish, were put up on top of the platform above the rooms. Other food and dishes for daily use were kept in the lockers under the bench, and spoons were stacked in big baskets hung on the wall. Precious objects children should not touch were often put in small boxes suspended from the roof.

How much clutter and confusion there was in the old houses it is impossible to tell. While the usual impression of the White man who visited Tlingit houses during the 1880's and 1890's is one of filth and disorder (cf. p. 194, Topham at Yakutat in 1888, as typical), I believe that they were misled by the unfamiliar sight of plates and other culinary utensils on the floor, not on a table, and also by the unfamiliar smells of cooking, especially of seal and fish oil. Probably a stranger to one of our houses would find them equally confusing and strange smelling, if he came in while housework was being done and the paraphernalia for daily living were lying about. It should be remembered that such apparent confusion would have been greater in a multifamily house with members coming and going, cooking, eating, and engaged in various tasks at different times. In Sitka at this period, the Tlingit were already demoralized by long contact with the Whites. Their homes were those of the economically underprivileged, corresponding to our slums, and therefore cannot serve as a reliable guide to standards of housekeeping maintained in the homes of more secure and independent Tlingit in less acculturated communities.

In the old days, allowing for cultural differences in the definition of cleanliness and in methods of housekeeping, the standards were fairly high. Thus, the gravel in the fireplace was said to have been changed every day, and the floor, if not planked, was covered with clean sand every 3 or 4 days. “It's the ladies’ job to bring in sand in a bucket…. They dig the fireplace out everyday…. They dig a trash hole [outdoors] and put trash in it. When it's full, they cover it with sand.” The archeological evidence suggests that abandoned cache or house pits were used for this purpose, and that refuse was also thrown on piles. One informant mentioned a “little hill where they dump the ashes…in front, right on the path to the river” (MJ). This was at her father's hunting camp on the Arhnklin River. At coastal settlements refuse was probably thrown on the beach to be carried away by the tide, as is the modern practice, but it is doubtful that it was ever thrown into fish streams for fear of offending the salmon.

The area around the houses in the old villages may well have been cleaner than it is in most modern settlements, where glass bottles, tin cans and heavy metal objects present difficult disposal problems. One informant said that on Khantaak Island in the 1880's her grandfather (chief of Mountain House?), and the chiefs of Moon House and Fort House would take turns cleaning the village streets. “It was in the evening when the kids were through playing, and just before the older people were ready for bed. They used bushes for brooms. They used a bush called itAn (or itÀn). Sweet stuff grows on the leaves. They got that in bundles, tied up like a broom.” They dumped the dirt down by the low tide…. The old men themselves did the work. They got nothing else to do.” (MJ) I also heard a tradition about the village on Knight Island, supposed to have been swept clean with eagle wings.

No such cleanly standards applied, however, to temporary hunting and fishing camps, as is made clear from the reports of travelers, both in the 18th century and at the end of the 19th; the Yakutat people littered the ground as we do our highways.

Dogs undoubtedly acted as scavengers in village and camp, since there was no taboo against their gnawing animal bones. On the beach the gulls, crows, and ravens were waiting, and some of the latter came tamely up to the houses. Spring, when the snows had melted but before the grass and bushes were grown, was probably the time when the ground around the houses was cleaned of the winter's litter, because it was at this time that we observed an old-fashioned family raking their yard and burning the trash. A prospective son-in-law was particularly assiduous at this task.

Domestic Life

We get a few glimpses of life in the old houses from reminiscences of informants.

“They used to get up early in the morning, just before daylight. They believed that they’d die if they are in their bed before [i.e., after] that big crow [raven] calls. That would be 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning in winter.” (SJ) “And in summer?” he was asked. “Well, July is the only month when it's really light at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, and then in summer the ravens fly around but don’t call. I guess they go to bed pretty early. Even the old people today, they get up early.” “My mother likes to get up at 5 o’clock but then sometimes she goes to bed at 7,” added his wife. “But they didn’t eat when they got up. They were supposed to be doing things—like chop wood.” (SJ) “Without breakfast!” his wife exclaimed. “Then they’d eat” (SJ).

“Did the slaves have to get up first in the morning?” I asked an elderly woman. “Not when my grandfather's alive. Not that I know of. And he's got five slaves. My grandfather got up first. He used to get up early. I used to watch my grandmother. That tIna tEi, that ’[stone] lamp,’—she gets that ready in the morning—without fire[?]. She’d be weaving baskets before anybody would get up…. My grandfather gets up. He can’t sleep. They got wood, already chopped, and he started [up ?] a fire. They got a fire going all night…. He always looks after our mukluks [skin boots] and gets our clothes ready and packs us around.” That is, the old man would help his little grandchildren to dress and would take care of them (MJ).

When the early morning chores were over, and the young men had returned from wood cutting, bathing in cold water and other hardening exercises, they had breakfast. “Dry fish is our breakfast. They soaked it overnight and boiled it.” All persons did not necessarily eat at the same time, however. “In the community house, you mind your own business—sleep late and get your own breakfast.” Little girls about 12 years old and approaching adolescence were fed after the others, for fear that they might have begun to menstruate during the night which would mean that anything they had touched would be contaminated.

Apparently there were no regular mealtimes during the day, but people ate snacks when they were hungry, as Tlingit children do today when not constrained by school hours. Some persons, of course, did not eat at all, if they or their husbands were engaged in occupations requiring fasting. There was always plenty to do, and both men and women kept busy, the women apparently working on baskets when they had no other tasks, and the able-bodied men going hunting or fishing as the winter weather permitted. “My father used to be out hunting all the time, but he didn’t hunt so much in the winter, especially when my older brother grew up” (MJ). Only old men do not seem to have had regular occupations, except for playing with their small grandchildren or supervising the labor of others. “The old people can watch the grub [in the cache behind the house]. They have nothing to do. They don‘t go hunting. They have slaves to do the work, and nephews to cut all the wood they want to burn.” (MJ) Late fall and early winter was the time for festivities, when potlatches, as well as their elaborate preparations, filled hours and days.

There was, of course, visiting back and forth between the houses, for families that might have been scattered at different hunting and fishing camps during the early fall were now reassembled in the main villages. It was not etiquette to knock on the door. “You notify the people you are coming, if they don’t know you…. [Some member of the household would introduce the stranger]. You got to invite them before they go in. You go in with them. Suppose if I know you, I don’t knock at the door—just walk in to see you. Or, if you come to my house—’Nèłgú, nèłgú—Come in!’ they say.” The informant went on to tell of her extreme embarrassment at entering the wrong house in Sitka when she was looking for her cousin who had invited her for a meal.

“I never get so embarrassed and ashamed! She count the houses which I’m going to go in, and I just went to the wrong house. I went in. Nobody offer a chair. The house is chock-a-block full of kids. Nobody offer me anything to eat. I stand there like a totem pole…. I’m never so ashamed in all my life. The palms of my hands is just full of water. I’m standing there, so ashamed—and nobody offer me a chair…. So finally a man got up and said, ‘You’re quite a stranger in here?’ ‘Sure, I’m looking for my cousin.’ ‘Next door,’ he said. She lived next door. Tears almost run out of my eyes when I left there.” (MJ) This episode occurred about 1900.

When one leaves, one says, “Deqágùt—‘I am going’.” (cf. Boas, 1917, p. 75: gÙquàgú, ’I shall walk.’) “That's the proper way to say good-by. You can’t just go and not say anything.” And the polite response is “TsuwAn hàgÚ’—’again ! come.’”

In the evening, perhaps after the men had taken their sweat bath, was the time for the main meal of the day.

“At mealtimes each family brought out its own grub. Sometimes they would share the specially good foods with each other. My father was a great one for that. He would nudge my mother and tell her “Give him some!” or “Give him some! He hasn’t got any.” My father didn’t like to see anyone go hungry. He always had lots of food stored up…. The slaves have their own grub. They put up all the grub [put up their own ? helped with all ?]. They ate when the others did.” (MJ)

Sharing of food was customary. “When you open your winter supply, everybody eats. In 2, 3 days, the next woman opens hers. There are 50 or 60 people in a community house [who share]. The same thing is done when someone brings in something fresh. They divide it up with all…. Not all the food, but just so everybody gets a taste…. And I’ll tell you something: it's funny but that hIt Ati [house owner] eats very little. His nephews cook. His wife is making clothes. She is too busy to cook. She never cooks and her husband never cooks. They take a big plate, all full of food. [The informant gestured to indicate a long, rather narrow platter, about 9 by 24 inches.] Each boy comes with his own little wooden dish and helps himself. [She again gestured with delicate sensitive hands, suggesting a dainty picking up of pieces of food.] And the chief and his wife eat the little that is left. They wait till the boys get their dishes full, because the boys have been out working. When they finish eating, then the boys wash the dishes and put them in the cupboards, kAyác [’platform’].

“Of course, we got some stingy people—no doubt about it. We have them today and we had them then….

“Sometimes they cook the food all at once. They cook the meat on spits. Then each one takes a spit, and when very one has one, the house chief gives a signal[?], and they all eat together.”

This woman went on to explain that when people ate in the old days, they sat on the floor with the dishes of food in front of them, and helped themselves from it “like White people.” They didn’t stuff a big chunk in their mouths like the Eskimo and cut off a bite. (This had been suggested as a joke.) But another woman said she had seen the kids cut off pieces of dried fish this way, but that it wasn’t at a regular mealtime.

[On winter evenings in the big houses,]…“they would build a big fire so it would light up most of the house. And in the corners they used seal oil lamps. Some would be sitting in the corner playing itu [chair dice], and others play checkers. The Wolves and the Ravens usually played against each other. They gambled, but it wasn‘t always Wolves and Ravens.

“The women would sit in groups of two or three, working spruce roots, holding them in their teeth and splitting them. You could see all those hands splitting them, working one after the other….

“Only the old people would sit and tell stories. And the quiet ones would turn their backs to the fire. Wonderful! No White people; no stores to run to!” (MJ)

“Lots of people in olden days, they had all kinds of games—Indian games. As soon as it is getting dark they make a fire—a big fire—pile them up so high. They call it ‘evening fire,’ ana gAni. When the fire started burning good, that's the time the chief telling a story. Not only him, sometimes [the one] next to him is smart as him, sometimes smarter than him. They’re telling the stories.” This was when the children were taught the traditions of their people and the correct rules of behavior.

One informant wondered if I had heard all the Raven story. He doubted that there was anyone alive now that knew it all. His grandfather told him that his father used to tell it. “It would last 4 days. But he didn’t tell it all day—just in the evenings. When they’d finished eating at night, they would make a big fire and all sit around, and then he's telling stories till bedtime. That was the time he’d tell about their cAgún [origin and destiny], and wars, and so on.” (SJ) A woman added that the houses were warm, the fire blazing up 6 or 7 feet high.

CAMPS AND HOUSES IN THE 18th CENTURY

Houses in Lituya Bay, 1786

The early explorers have left some descriptions of native settlements on Lituya Bay and Yakutat Bay, yet these were almost entirely camps that were occupied only during the summer fishing season. It is not until about 100 years later that descriptions of winter houses are available.

LaPérouse (1799, vol. 1, pp. 399 f.) has given us a rather vivid description of the summer huts and camp life in Lituya Bay, although the artist who illustrated this account redrew the original sketches, so that these are not completely accurate (pls. 34–39).

“I have given the appelation of village to three or four sheds of wood, twenty-five feet long, by fifteen or twenty wide, and closed with planks or bark of trees only on the side exposed to the wind. In the middle was a fire, over which hung salmon and halibut drying in the smoke. Eighteen or twenty persons lodged under each of these sheds, the women and children on one side, and the men on the other. It appeared to me, that each hut contained a small tribe unconnected with it's neighbours; for each had it's canoe, and a sort of chief; each departed, left the bay, and took away it's fish and it's planks, without the rest of the village appearing to take the least concern in the business.

“I think I may venture to affirm, that this place is inhabited only in the summer, and that the Indians never pass the winter here. I did not see a single hut, that afforded shelter from the rain; and though there were never three hundred Indians collected in the bay at one time, we were visited by seven or eight hundred others.

“Canoes were coming in and going out continually, and each brought or carried away it's house, and it's furniture, which consisted in several little coffers containing their most valuable effects. These coffers are placed at the entrance of their huts, which are so filthy and stinking, that the den of no known animal can be compared to them. They never go two steps distant to obey the calls of nature, of which they make no mystery, and for which they seek no shade; continuing the conversation in which they were engaged, as if they had not a moment to lose; and if it happens at meal-time, they quickly resume their place, from which they do not retire even a couple of yards.”

That the huts on the shore of the bay were only for summer occupation is also clearly indicated by the report made by Ismailov and Bocharov in 1788 (Coxe, 1803, p. 339, 340). The Russians called these “temporary summer huts,” and when they went to what I believe was Huagin River, saw their “winter habitations…and found these dwellings much larger than the summer huts.” There is no further description.

Houses in Yakutat Bay, 1787, 1788

Beresford (1789, pp. 172–173) gives a very similar description of the native settlements at Port Mulgrave and the vicinity, which he saw in the summer of 1887.

“Their habitations are the most wretched hovels that can possibly be conceived; a few poles stuck in the ground, without order or regularity, enclosed and covered with loose boards, constitute an Indian hut, and so little care is taken in their construction, that they are quite insufficient to keep out the snow or rain: the numerous chinks and crannies serve, however, to let out the smoke, no particular aperture being left for that purpose.

“The inside of these dwellings exhibits a compleat picture of dirt and filth, indolence and laziness; in one corner are thrown the bones, and remaining fragments of victuals left at their meals; in another are heaps of fish, pieces of stinking flesh, grease, oil, &c: in short, the whole served to shew us, in how wretched a state it is possible for human beings to exist; and yet these people appear contented with their situation, and probably enjoy a much greater portion of happiness and tranquillity, than is to be found under the gilded roofs of the most despotic monarch.

“ ‘Tis probable, that the chief reason why these Indians take no greater pains in the structure of their habitations is, that their situation is merely temporary: no sooner does the master of a tribe find game begin to grow scarce, or fish not so plentiful as he expected, than he takes down his hut, puts the boards into his canoe, and paddles away to seek out for a spot better adapted to his various purposes, which, having found, he presently erects his dwelling in the same careless manner as before.”

Colnett the following year saw only temporary summer huts in “Foggy Harbour” (quoted p. 131).

Ismailov and Bocharov, however, who also visited Port Mulgrave in 1788, describe what would appear to be winter houses (Coxe, 1803, pp. 247–248). These were presumably on Khantaak Island, but may have been at the mouth of the Ankau River.

“Their scattered habitations are square, the outside made of earth, and the inside of wood; the top is covered with the bark of firs, and provided with a square opening in the midst of the roof, which serves the purpose of a chimney. The wooden part is made by driving into the ground four poles of about two arshines in height [58 inches, or less than 5 feet high!], to which cross beams are fixed. The roof is sloping and formed of planks, resting on the cross beams, which meet in the square opening. The entrance is on the side, and instead of a door is covered with mats twisted from grass and other materials.

“The greater part of the inhabitants had quitted their winter huts,” [and had gone out in their canoes to hunt and fish.]

This suggests houses seen by Seton-Karr at Kayak, in 1886, rather than Tlingit houses (see p. 103).

Houses in Yakutat Bay, 1791

Malaspina found native houses at Yakutat miserable hovels that let in the wind and the rain (quoted p. 143). Suría gives a spirited description of these huts and of domestic life (Wagner, 1936, pp. 253 f.).

“Their dwellings or habitations are very poor. Here can be seen their disorderly filth, for they are more like pigsties than the habitations of human beings. This causes such a fetid and disagreeable odor on their belongings and persons that you cannot stand it. The houses are on the bank of the sea at the point which the channel for leaving the port forms (i.e., near Point Turner, Khantaak Island]. They are of boards placed over the trunk of a tree without any order. This traverses it and forms the ridge pole on which the boards rest on one side and the other, the tree trunk being held up by others, perpendicular ones, sunk in the ground. On the top of the roof all their belongings can be seen, canoes made, others in skeleton [frames for skin canoes?], skins half-cured, wood, and other various rubbish. Inside you see the same. What cannot be put outside is put inside. Here you can see some square wooden boxes…. In another place you can see a great quantity of fish, which seemed to us like our conger eel, curing at the fire, and hanging from some sticks. In the same way they treat their salmon. Many skins are hung about, bows here, arrows there, knives, cuirasses, bundles of clothes; many children, all naked, and some men, other suckling children in their cradles, the women at their work, so that everything appears in the greatest confusion. They are always eating and heating themselves at the fire in the middle of the hut.”

There is evidence, however, that at this period the Yakutat people were building large winter houses of traditional Tlingit type. The framework of such a house stood near the cemetery on the Ankau River. It had decorated house posts and seems to have been dedicated by a potlatch which may have involved human sacrifice, for the chief, Juné, indicated by gestures, as I interpret them, that a slave (?) had been stabbed at each post. There are three descriptions of this interesting structure.

According to Malaspina (1885, p. 161), Suría, Espinosa and several other officers had gone to examine the grave monuments on Ankau Point, where they found several plebian natives gathering strawberries. “After first measuring them, D. Tomás Suria drew in perspective the posts and beams that supported [or enclosed] a large habitation that seemed to be intended for the winter.” Then he went on to sketch the nearby sepulchres. Unfortunately, we have no picture of this house. Malaspina (1849, p. 290) also writes:

“In the same field [as the sepulchres], there was a piece of squared ground, enclosed (fenced) by some very heavy timbers, forming what was like a house without an opening. There were in it some very robust pillars. On these were painted with red ochre the faces of men of extraordinary size; we observed likewise that they had several cracks (splits) from top to bottom. We expressed to the Ankau who had accompanied us on this visit our curiosity to know what was the use of this edifice. With sufficient efficiency he indicated to us (by signs) that it was covered on all sides with telas [’cloth’ or ‘covering,’ but probably planks], as the high roof was also made; that various men were placed each at the foot of a pillar, and dancing all to the same beat, each one drove his knife into it [the pillar]. Yet we were not able to understand if this rite was a religious ceremony in honor of his victories, or a diversion which was repeated at a determined season. We were inclined to believe that it had something of the practice of religion; yet our efforts to find out were useless.” [free translation]

According to Suriá (Wagner, 1936, p. 258):

“Farther on along the same beach [from the Ankau grave monuments] there is a skeleton house which is reduced to three frames, each one of three sticks placed parallel to each other at a proportionate distance, the one in the middle [a single ridgepole] being higher than the other two [eaves beams]. On the base of the poles which face inside there are various designs. The chief whom we found there made various signs to us which nobody could understand, but which we thought was that either before or after the funeral ceremonies they have a dance in this place, which must be of some particular significance, as after pointing out that they covered these poles with something he took out his knife and stuck it into the stick and at once began to dance with a very happy gesture, making various movements and emitting an “O” with his throat. Some were of the opinion that it might be that after some important victory against their enemies they celebrated in this place and they founded this opinion on his action in sticking in the knife…. ”

One wonders whether the building had been erected only for the purpose of celebrating a potlatch in honor of the dead, or whether the planking had simply been taken from the framework for constructing summer shelters and would be returned in the fall. We should remember that somewhere in this vicinity, the Chatham observed an Indian village which had been deserted for the season. This was in July, 1794 (Vancouver, 1801, vol. 5, p. 396).

HOUSES AND CAMPS IN THE 19th CENTURY

A brief description of what was perhaps Diyaguna’Et on Lost River in the 1860's or 1870's has already been quoted (p. 181), as has Abercrombie‘s account of the village on Khantaak Island in 1884 (p. 185). Aside from these scraps we really know nothing about native dwellings in the Yakutat area until the end of the 19th century.

Houses on Khantaak Island, 1886–90

Seton-Karr (1887, p. 156) was apparently inside Shark House on Khantaak Island (p. 319), to judge from the following description:

“At Yakatat there were six houses, each forty feet square and fifteen in height, accomodating several families. In front of each house was a platform from which one entered the building by a small round door, requiring some considerable squeezing to accomplish. By a flight of steps one descended to the floor, which was strewn with gravel and sunk to increase the space inside. In the very centre was the fireplace, from which the smoke ascended through a large square hole in the roof. Round three sides ran a broad seat, on which one stepped to enter the low, draughty, sleeping-place behind. Four large wooden idols graced the chief's house, like ‘totem poles,’ carved in the usual style.”

[Another reference to Yakutat houses of this date is found on page 190.]

[W. Williams (1889, p. 389) described the same village in 1888, and his observations might be compared with those of Topham (quoted p. 194):] “It is exclusively an Indian settlement and consists of just five houses, each covering an area of perhaps thirty square feet. They are quite picturesque, a distinctive feature being the oval door, which is none too large and situated a foot or more above the outside platform, so that in order to enter one must reduce one's height at both ends. The houses are all of a size, and contain a large central space which serves both as parlor and kitchen; opening out on it are several smaller rooms, which are allotted to the different families.”

[Mrs. Shepard also visited the Port Mulgrave village in September 1889 (1889, p. 220):]

“We landed on the beach in front of half a dozen solidly built log cabins; constructed after the style of most of the Indian houses farther to the ‘so’thard.’ These were generally about thirty feet square. Inside was a bench resembling a counter, but lower, and extending around the four sides of the room, used to sit and lie on—a species of divan—which served as chair, sofa and bed, and from this level opened, though rarely, an extra room or two, not much larger than a closet. The architecture of the whole house greatly resembles a huge dog kennel, even to the door, which is simply a round hole large enough to confortably admit the body. I was surprised at the size of the houses and the small number of people that occupied them, but still more surprised when I heard that in these half dozen houses lived about three hundred Indians, then all away hunting and fishing. Imagine fifty of sixty persons of all ages and sizes living in one room!

“There were no ‘totem poles’ about the houses, though I was told inside the chief's house there were two or three [ibid., p. 227].” [But it will be remembered that she found the door padlocked (see p. 192).]

[Russell (1891 b, pp. 79–80) described the six houses on Khantaak Island, and commented that those at the Old Village were of the same type (see p. 202):]

“The houses are made of planks, each hewn from a single log, after the manner of the Thlinkets generally. They are rectangular, and have openings in the roofs, with wind guards, for the escape of smoke. The fires, around which the families gather, are built in the centers of the spaces below. The houses are entered by means of oval openings, elevated two feet above the ground on platforms along their fronts. In the interior of each there is a rectangular space about twenty feet square surrounded by raised platforms, the outer portions of which are shut off by partitions and divided into smaller chambers.”

Eyak Houses at Kayak, Controller Bay, 1886

The houses seen by Seton-Karr at Kayak (pl. 68), probably on Wingham Ialand, apparently resembled those described by Ismailov and Bocharov for Yakutat Bay a hundred years previously. Seton-Karr (1887, pp. 156–157) contrasts the houses in the two areas:

“The Kaiak houses were differently constructed. After much constriction one manages to insinuate oneself into a windy hovel barely five feet high. It is necessary to keep crouching to avoid the shelves full of dried salmon skins…. Small rounded holes eighteen inches in diameter lead to the sleeping places, built out from the main walls.”

The pencil sketch (pl. 68) (ibid., p. 157) shows two houses built of dovetailed planks, with very low walls and mansard roof sloping from the central smoke hole. On each side of the door, and also presumably on the two rear corners, project small shedlike additions, each with a little rectangular window. These were the sleeping rooms. A wooden wind screen, like a flaring square chimney, shelters one smoke hole. This type of house was like that built by the neighboring Chugach Eskimo.

FIGURE 22.—“Primitive bark shelter, Yakutat Bay.” Sketched from a photograph(?) or sketched by Louise M. Keeler at the sealing camp just above Point Latouche in Disenchantment Bay during July of 1899. Note the sealskin bag for holding blubber and the sealskins drying on frames. (After Grinnell, 1901, p. 159.)

Bark Shelters, Disenchantment Bay, 1899

In June, 1899, the Harriman Alaska Expedition visited the sealing camps north of Point Latouche in Disenchantment Bay. Here they found the Indians living in tents and bark huts (fig. 22; pls. 72–80). “This was their summer camp; they were laying in a supply of skins and oil against their winter needs” (Burroughs, 1901, p. 60). The square bark-covered shelters were, according to Grinnell, like those used for summer huts in ancient times. He describes them (1901, pp. 158 f.):

“These shelters consist of a square frame of poles, loosely covered by strips of spruce bark, from a foot to eighteen inches wide and eight or ten feet long, laid on the framework, and held in place by slender poles placed over them. This bark must of course be brought from a distance, since trees large enough to furnish such bark do not grow in the neighborhood. At most of these bark shelters, skins of the hair seal still on the drying frames, were leaning against the wall, outside, and in some cases had been thrown up on the roof.

“In the center of this shelter is the circle of stones forming the fire place, and over the fire, resting on the stones, is the pot full of strips of seal blubber, from which the oil is being tried out. The woman who watches the pot from time to time ladles out the oil into small kegs and old tin cans, or rarely into ornamented rectangular boxes of a primitive type. .

“From the poles which support the roof of the shelter hang delicacies of various sorts, all from the hair seal‘s body,” [while outside was a large skin container, made of a sealskin hung from a frame set on posts, in which the blubber was kept] [Ibid., p. 160].

[A general description of this camp has already been given (pp. 67–68).]

HISTORY OF YAKUTAT HOUSES

From about 1900 to 1918 the Old Village (pls. 82–84) at Yakutat was an imposing line of great frame-houses along the shore of the cove north of the mission, facing the dark forested lowland of Khantaak Island and, beyond this, the snowy summit of Mount Saint Elias and her sister peaks. The names of many (of all?) the houses were old, repeating and preserving the names of houses which had formerly stood at ancient settlements along the Gulf of Alaska or in southeastern Alaska, and thus serving to keep alive the histories of their lineages.

While various informants listed the names of houses at the former villages, I find it impossible to determine the exact number of houses at each settlement, for a single house might have one or more names, either given simultaneously on construction, or successively as the house was rebuilt or replaced by a newer structure on the same spot. Probably none of our information is accurate for periods prior to 1880, except for the location of the sites themselves.

Tcicqedi and ałyIx-Kagwantan Houses West of Cape Yakataga

At Katalla there was a Tcicqedi house, called Eagle House (ta hIt) and ‘On a Platform House’ (kA-yackA hIt). The chief was Duwanik-kA-wuł-qa, and this house was probably occupied until 1874 or later, because his daughter, Mrs. Katy Dixon Isaac, was born here. This house had two carved interior posts, Eagle Posts (ta ga), which were described by GJ to Harrington and illustrated by Barbeau (1950, vol. 2, fig. 376). These posts were of spruce, 10 feet high and 3 feet wide, each carved and painted in various colors to represent (from top to bottom) the Eagle, Beaver, and Beaver Dam. Harrington's informant did not know who made them, but believed that they were “more than one hundred years old.” Keithahn (1963, fig. on p. 57) has published the photograph of a pair of decorated posts taken from a house near Katalla. The most prominent figure on both is evidently Eagle standing on the head of an unidentified animal (Mud Shark?). What appears to be the same head is represented upside down on the Eagle‘s body. These poles were lost in a fire.

The Tcicqedi are said to have had an Eagle House on Bering Lake, destroyed in a flood together with the Beaver House of the Gałyi-Kagwantan. When the Tcicqedi tried to build a lineage house on Strawberry Point, they were prevented by the latter sib.

The houses of the ałyI-Kagwantan have been consistently named for the Beaver and the Wolf. Aside from the “original” Beaver House (egédi hIt), already mentioned, there were others of this name at Chilkat on Bering River, at Kayak on Wingham Island, at Okalee Spit (abandoned about 1890?), at ałyA on Kaliakh River (abandoned but still standing in 1900), and at Strawberry Point. A Beaver Dam House (egédi edu hIt) was on Strawberry Harbor or Redwood Bay.

The old-style houses at Strawberry Point and Kaliakh River have already been described (pp. 298–300). When the old house at Strawberry Point fell down in 1908, it was replaced that same year by a modern structure, built by Chief John, Łde or Kałiya-‘ic, and his nephew John Bremner II, DałEnk or Qatsa, who was a son of John Bremner (White). The house was given two names, Eagle House and Beaver House, and its dedicatory potlatch honored the memory of Chief John's uncle and father-in-law, ’Aaqudułu, ‘Make It Smaller.’ This man had been chief of the Beaver House at Qatalé, at the base of Okalee Spit. I know little about that house, except that it was abandoned about 1890. The chief was the man who stabbed his little nephews when they were afraid to bathe in cold water, but his sister, Cakwe, a powerful shaman, brought them back to life (see pp. 714–715). As a young girl she had seen the Russians.

Knight Island Houses

While the oldest settlement on Yakutat Bay was supposed to have been on Knight Island, I have no consistent or reliable information about it. Fort House (nu hIt) of the Kwacqwan and Bear House (xuts hIt) of the Teqwedi were mentioned by informants, but none of the house pits at the site of Old Town could be identified. The village was supposed to have been abandoned before the Russians established themselves at Yakutat in 1795. Certainly there were only grave monuments here when the island was visited by Malaspina in 1791. Later, the island was used as a camping place. The Teqwedi Chief Minaman or Daqusetc (1810–90) is said to have built a Shark House (tu hIt) here, but the report has not been verified, and if true, the structure was probably erected only for the sake of the dedicatory potlatch, and was never occupied, for we found no trace of it.

Nesudat Houses

After 1805 (perhaps before), the main Kwacqwan village was Nesudat on the western branch of Lost River. Prior to this it had been only a summer fishing camp. Here the leading Kwacqwan chief, Yaodaqet (I), was head of Raven's Bones House (yeł qe hIt), also called Big House (hIt tłen) because of its size. The next chief was his nephew, CÁłwú (or CtAł’eu), who was succeeded by Yakutat Chief Yaodaqet (II), grandson of the first. This man married QákEnAkuÈ, the Drum House Teqwedi girl nursed by her uncle (see pp. 277–279), and was the father of TawA-’ic or eyeAtqin, Skin Canoe George (1855–1900) and his younger brother, Daknaqin, Ned Dok-na-kane, both chiefs of Drum House. Yaodaqet (II) was also the mother's father of an informant who remembers seeing him once. He may have built a Raven's Bones House on Khantaak Island.

At Nesudat there were also the Kwacqwan Fort House (nu hIt) and Moon House (dIs hIt), and other smaller houses. Mountain (Saint Elias) House (ca hIt) is also mentioned, but this may be simply another name for one of the above. Emmons reported that there were three Kwacqwan houses here, and one of the Qa-u-hIt-tan from southeastern Alaska in 1884, but the last was never mentioned by any of our informants.

The last chief of Moon House was Cada (died about 1908 or 1909), who moved to Khantaak Island when Nesudat was deserted. He was the father of Jim Kardeetoo (1862–1937) and of Henry Shada (1865?–1935?), both Teqwedi house chiefs in the Old Village. His daughter was ’AnésU’, Mrs. Mary Abraham, who married Ananék, chief of the Tł’UknaAdi Boulder House.

Moon House had four decorated house posts, Moon Posts (dIs ga), which Cada took to Moon House on Khantaak Island, and which still later were moved to a house of the same name in the Old Village. Emmons photographed them there in 1901 (pl. 88) and described them as very different in design, character, and coloring from any others on the entire coast. They were flat and each had a finely adzed and slightly depressed cartouche, in which appeared a figure and a part of the moon's disk, shown in different phases. On two posts this design is oval, almost circular, with the moon shown as a young and as an old crescent. Beside this is a naked human figure, painted red, with human hair pegged in. This represents a boy who was blown up into the moon when going to fetch water during a storm. The other two designs have a semicircular field on which a nearly half-full waxing and waning moon is shown, beside which is an animal figure, painted in red (and other colors?), which Emmons identifies as a bear. The jaws are, however, toothless, and the Bear is not a crest of any Raven sib. How the Kwacqwan should have come to use a crest normally associated with the Teqwedi I cannot explain.

From Nesudat and ’Aka, the Kwacqwan moved to Khantaak Island (see p. 319).

Diyagana’Et Houses

We do not know what houses the Ł’uedi may have had at Diyaguna’Et before this town was taken over by the Bear House Teqwedi. It was founded in prehistoric times and abandoned, I believe, before Nesudat. According to informants, the Teqwedi had four houses here, occupied all the year round, because the town was on a good salmon stream. Emmons was told that it had originally contained eight large houses surrounded by a palisade. The house names given by my informants were: Bear House (xuts hIt); Valley House (canA hIt), Bear Den House (xuts kudi hIt), Coward House (gAtan hIt), Shark House (tu hIt), and Bear Paw House (xuts djIni hIt), all belonging to the Bear House Teqwedi. Bear Paw House may have been the same as Shark House; it should not in any case be confused with the Bear Paw House built in 1918 at Lost River landing, near Diyaguna’Et. One person (MJ) also mentioned that a Golden Eagle House (gIdjuk hIt) was built here by the Drum House people after they had abandoned the Ahrnklin River village and before they moved to Khantaak Island, but this house was not mentioned by anyone else. Probably a Mountain (Fairweather) House (ca hIt), also called Sidewise House (tł’adÉn hIt), of the Raven Tł’UknaAdi were here.

Bear House (xuts hIt) is said to have had the carving of a Bear with threatening forepaws at the entrance. Emmons was told that this was a totem pole through which the doorway was cut. A man belonging to this lineage, who had heard about but had never seen the pole, described it as “a big one, like a bear. His hands like this—” and he bent forward from the waist and opened his arms as if about to hug something to him. The doorway was between the legs of the bear, or through the body, so that one had to pass below the grasping arms. “When somebody see it, they get scared. Go back.” (NM) From remarks of another informant, I supposed that there might have been a “painting” of a Bear (a painted rear screen?) in this house, which was later taken to Bear House on Khantaak Island, and still later was put on the grave house of its chief, the shaman Te-’ic, who was entombed near Diyaguna‘Et. The information was confused and could not be verified. It is just as likely that the Bear painting on the grave house was simply the decoration made for this structure.

Shark House was also known as Bear Paw House because of its two sets of house posts, and it seems likely that these originally came from two separate houses. While all four have a Mud Shark at the bottom two are surmounted by a Bear that holds the Shark in his paws while he bites the Shark's tail (pls. 86, 87). These were apparently called Bear Paw Posts (xuts djIni ga). The other two, known simply as Shark Posts (tu ga) are not alike. One (no. 3) has an Eagle above the Shark, while the second (no. 4) represents a man catching a Shark. According to Emmons, who photographed them in Yakutat, they were carved “five generations back, early in the 19th century by Sha ke ish and Koon tisch.” The artists were presumably Ravens. Is the first Caka-’ic, ‘Caka's Father,’ Caka being the name of the Teqwedi son of the Tł’UknaAdi chief at Gue, Deudu’u? In other words, was the carver Deudu ’u himself? Both posts were of red cedar, painted red and black. After a varied history, they were reputedly sold to some New York museum.

A Teqwedi man, Łuso or KUtIna-‘ic, husband of the Tł’UknaAdi woman KAnyegełtsín or KUtIna-tła, and grandfather of my informants (Minnie Johnson and Charley White), is associated with the names of both Bear Paw House and Shark House at Diyaguna’Et. At the potlatch dedicating Shark House he had a baby girl slave killed. This probably happened about 1855. Later, as an old man, he was head of Coward House at Situk. Another chief associated with the building of Shark House was his “brother,” Ka-da-xétł, apparently the uncle of Chief Minaman (1810–90) who eventually assumed his name.

Nothing is known about the other houses at this village.

From Diyaguna’Et the Bear House Teqwedi apparently moved to Khantaak Island and to Situk.

Ahrklin River Houses

Still farther east, at ’An-tłen, there are said to have been Drum House (gau hIt), Golden Eagle House (gIdjuk hIt), Thunder or Thunderbird House (xetł hIt), and one other, all belonging to the Drum House Teqwedi. This village was abandoned before the middle of the 19th century, and we have already noted that the only surviving girl married the Kwacqwan chief Yaodaqet (II), and reestablished this lineage through her children.

Tł’UknaxAdi Houses on Johnson Slough

Meanwhile, the Tł’UknaAdi had been moving northwest from the Akwe-Dry Bay area, towards Yakutat. The most important of the older houses to be reestablished was Boulder House (‘itc hIt), said to have been originally located in Dry Bay. “ ’Itc hIt and Dekina hIt—Far Away House—go together” (HB). “ ’Itc hIt is the same as Ta hIt [Sleep House]. We call it that because Raven is our head, and Raven is made of ‘itc [a hard stone].” (MJ) The members of this lineage were not as numerous as those of Whale House, who apparently moved from Gue to Sitka.

I am uncertain of the correct meaning of the house name, Dekina. It would logically seem to be ‘Far Out People,’ i.e., Haida or Tlingit of Dall Island (Henya or Klawak, see p. 216). Yet such an interpretation was rejected by some of my informants. The ending -na could mean ‘side,’ and I have therefore left the translation simply as ’far out.’

One Boulder House was built at Aniyac on Johnson Slough by Natski. He married a Teqwedi woman, KasIstan, while the latter's brother married Natski's sister. Natski and KaIstan were the parents of Situk Jim (died 1912) who built Bear Den House at Situk (see p. 321). After Natski committed suicide, he was succeeded by his nephew, Anané, baptized Abraham. The latter was said to have been the first, or at least one of the first, to be baptized at the Yakutat mission. Abraham married Mary, ’Anésù’, the Teqwedi daughter of Yaodaqet (II) and QakEnAkue from Ahrnklin; they were the parents of the Abraham brothers, chiefs of Drum House in the Old Village.

When Abraham became old, his younger half-brother CkInan became chief of Boulder House and for a time lived at Johnson Slough. But this house was abandoned before 1884. I do not know where the occupants lived after that, for there does not seem to have been any house of their sib on Khantaak Island. Later, both Abraham and CkInan lived in Mountain (Fairweather) House in the Old Village, and Abraham occupied a small house of his own near the mission. He died before 1900, and CkInan died about 1910 or a little later. Their successor as head of the Tł’UknaAdi in this area was Jim Nikita, who eventually built a Boulder House at Situk (see p. 321).

Dry Bay Houses

The houses which supposedly stood at Gue have been mentioned (pp. 272–273). Of these, Frog House (xIxt hIt), with four Frog Posts and a Frog Screen, is the only one specifically reported to have been decorated. Houses in this town belonged to the Tł’UknaAdi and the TłukwaAdi. It is doubtful that the CAnkuqedi or the Kagwantan had any named houses here. After the abandonment of Gue, the Tł’UknaAdi chief at Dry Bay seems to have been the leader of that branch of his sib which did not emigrate to Hoonah or Sitka. In the early 20th century, this man was Dry Bay Chief George, Qawua or Quun, who died in 1916 and is buried at Situk. Both of his names had belonged earlier to his father's father, a TłukwaAdi shaman who was entombed on the Akwe River below Gue. Dry Bay Chief George was also named for his mother's brother, a Tł’UknaAdi man who was said to have been shot to death in the war with the anAAdi of Chilkat (see pp. 273–275). Qawua of Dry Bay was in fact believed to be this slain warrior's spirit reborn as a son to his own sister. If Dry Bay Chief George were born about 1840 or 1850, and if his uncle had been killed in the war, this could date the war to the early part of the 19th century, and not to pre-Russian days.

In Dry Bay there were houses belonging to the Tł‘UknaAdi, TłukwaAdi, CAnkuqedi, and Kagwantan, but only the names of those standing in 1900 or built after that date are known, and even the locations of some are uncertain. When the missionary, Albin Johnson, took the census at Dry Bay in 1900, he counted 167 persons in 3 large, old-fashioned houses on a tributary of the Alsek (1924, p. 132).

One of the earlier houses was Far Out House (dekina hIt), already occupied in 1902 and 1903, and probably belonging to the noted TłukwaAdi shaman, utcda, ‘Wolf-Weasel.’ An earlier house of the same name had been reported from Gue. Somewhere on the eastern shore of Dry Bay, a Kagwantan man, Qatan, ‘Man Sea Lion,’ one of whose wives, QAtsUE (atsukE ?), was utcda's sister, built Box House (qukw hIt) about 1903. This house has already been described (p. 300). The son-in-law of Qatan, a TłukwaAdi man named Yełida, Qedu’axtc, and GA-tłen, ‘Big Rabbit’ (1879 1907), and who was also a nephew of utcda, was said to have belonged to Canoe Prow House (cAka hIt). This may have been another name for his uncle's Far Out House, or may have been another house of that lineage.

There was also built at Dry Bay. prior to 1900(?), a Frog House. In this was the “original” Frog Screen from Gue. The “builders” of the house were said to have been Lituya Bay George, ètín or CíyÀkw (1854–1926), and John Williams, senior (1887–1943). The latter would have been too young to have built the house, but may well have been considered one of the owners. Lituya Bay George was a akA’ayi man, born in Sitka of a Kagwantan father, who acquired his English name because he used to live in Lituya Bay, although he was finally buried at Situk. His wife was a CAnkuqedi woman, Mary QatuwatiqIn or Qakwate. Two of her daughters, born 1900 and 1903, are now living at Yakutat. An older daughter was the wife of John Williams, Sr. The latter was a TłukwaAdi man, son of the Kagwantan Yandu’En (brother of Qatan, chief of Box House), and of (Łitkwe, a daughter‘s daughter of utcda the shaman. John was named u-watc and also SÉtÀn, after a long-dead shaman, an uncle of utcda.

In 1909, after the Tł’UknaAdi in Sitka had tried to dedicate a Frog House there (some time between 1900 and 1904), but had been prevented by the local KIksAdi, who claimed exclusive rights to that crest, the Frog Screen was taken to Douglas near Juneau. It was put into a house belonging to Charley Benson, Da-tłen. ‘Big Road’ (1857–1933). The latter was a Tł’UknaAdi man from the Yakutat area, the son of Natski's sister, Qu’usan, and of ŁkUtke-’uxwIxtc, ‘Never Gets Lost,’ the brother of Natski's Teqwedi wife. Although he was nephew to the chief of Boulder House at Johnson Slough, it is not clear why Charley Benson was entrusted with the Frog Screen. The motive for its removal to Douglas was, of course, to establish Tł’UknaAdi rights to the Frog. The screen was destroyed in the fire which burned a large part of Douglas.

On the west side of Dry Bay near the cannery, Blind David Dick, QałdjAqe or DaquwAdEn, the CAnkuqedi son of utcda, built Thunder or Thunder-bird House (xetł hIt). It seems to have contained a “totem pole,” that is, a crest representation of some kind, probably a screen. This house was dedicated with a potlatch in 1909.

Nearby, and slightly later that same year, Dick's brother-in-law, Dry Bay Chief George, Qawua, built a house which he named both Far Out House and Frog House. Situk Jim (chief of the Teqwedi Bear Den House at Situk) painted a new Frog Screen for this house, in honor of which Qawua composed a song. This was recorded by his son, Frank Italio, and by his daughter, Maggie (Mrs Frank Dick) (1954, 2–1-G, 2–2-A; p. 1164). Somewhat later, Qawua wanted to take his screen to Sitka, in order to demonstrate the claims of the Tł’UknaAdi to use the Frog, but he was dissuaded or prevented by John Williams, senior. Instead, the painted boards were taken down and moved into Canoe Prow House. This was an ordinary frame building, erected about 1915 (?, the date 1925 was also given), by John Williams and his father-in-law, Lituya Bay George. This house was near the cannery, and was probably the last to be built at Dry Bay, for the cannery was abandoned in 1912 and most of the Dry Bay people had died off or moved to Yakutat. John Williams and his family apparently continued to live a good deal of the time in Dry Bay up until his death, although they also had a house in the Old Village. The painted boards of the Frog Screen were reported in the summer of 1952 to be still in Canoe Prow House, but when Francis Riddell and Kenneth Lane visited the abandoned house in 1953 they could not find them.

Khantaak Island Houses

We should now return to the Yakutat area, to follow the fortunes of the lineages that settled there. On the shores of Port Mulgrave, just inside the southeast point of Khantaak Island, people began to build permanent houses about 1880, or possibly earlier, for this was becoming a regular port of call for trading schooners. This village was called S’ukA. In 1883 (or 1884?), when Emmons first visited this village,

“there were six large houses of the old type, built of heavy hewn spruce timbers, with the low oval doorway, the central open fireplace, and the corresponding smoke hole in the roof, and in the chief's house ornamentally carved and painted interior posts supported the roof. These were as follows:

Toose hit (Shark house)_ _ _ _ _ _Ta qway di

Hootz hit (Brown-bear house)   ″

Gau hit (Drum house)   ″

Dis hit (Moon house)_ _ _ _ _ _Qwash qwa Kwan

Nu hit (Fort house)   ″   ″   ″

Goutc kaulye[?, koudye?] hit (Wolf Den house) Ka gwan tan.”

The last must have been ałyI-Kagwantan, but was not mentioned by my informants, and I suspect that Emmons was confusing a Kwacqwan house on Khantaak Island with the ałyI-Kagwantan Wolf Bath House which was later built at the Old Village.

According to my informants, who are probably remembering the village on Port Mulgrave as it was in 1888, there was there a Bear Paw House (xuts djmi hIt), whose chief was Ka-da-étł from Diyaguna’Et. This house was replaced by or renamed Shark House (tu hIt), whose chief was Daqusetc, Billy Merryman, etc. (pl. 62), and who eventually took his uncle's name, and is buried as “Chief Minaman, Kawh-da-whealh, 1810–1890,” on the hill above the mission. Daqusetc, whom we have previously met as “Yen-at-set’l” and “Yanatcho,” had himself come from Diyaguna‘Et. His house, which Mrs. Shephard found locked up in 1889, contained the four Shark Poles from the original Shark House and Bear Paw House on Lost River (pl. 87). When the house on Khantaak Island was given up, these poles were taken to the Old Village.

The second Teqwedi house on Khantaak was Bear House (xuts hIt), also known as Valley House (canA hIt). The house head was the shaman, Łagua or Te-’ic (pl. 65). The latter died about 1890, or shortly after, despondent at the death of Daqusetc. He was succeeded by his brother, Sisdjakw, usually known as Ca-kuwakan, ‘Mountain Deer [Peace Dancer],’ or Jack Shaw-coo-kawn (1831–99). Inside and above the door of Bear House, was a post, 5 feet high and 29 inches wide, carved to represent the figure of a Bear, holding a small human figure under its forepaws (pl. 89). Both figures are painted red, with dark blue faces, the features accented in black and red, and both have eyes of silver metal. The small anthropomorphic figure also has teeth of the same metal, and pegged-in human hair. The background of the pole is light blue. The small human figure was identified as Kat, the Teqwedi man who married a female bear (see Swanton, 1909, Tale 19). According to one informant, however, this figure symbolized a little female bear cub. This post was carved for Bear House by a TłUknaAdi man, YAndus-’ic (died about 1887), mother's brother to the two wives of Johnstone, a younger brother of Te-’ic, who for a time lived in Bear House. The post was taken to a Bear House at the Old Village, then to a Shark House, and was finally sold to the Alaska Historical Museum in Juneau. Bad feeling, especially between Johnstone and Ca-kuwakan, perhaps prompted the former to move to Situk with his father-in-law, Łuso. This house has been described (p. 301).

The last Teqwedi house was Drum House (gau hIt), built by Skin Canoe George, eyeatqin, (1855–1900), and his younger brother, Ned Dok-na-kane, Daknaqin. It will be remembered that they were sons of Yakutat Chief Yaodaqet (II) and his wife from Ahrnklin. This house apparently marks the establishment of the Drum House lineage in the Yakutat area and its growth after virtual extinction. (The name of the house chief was recorded in 1949 as KunI; this may be an error, or may be the name of an older brother, or possibly of Skin Canoe George).

The Kwacqwan from Nesudat were reported to have had three houses on Khantaak Island. The principal one was Raven's Bones House (yel sae hIt), not mentioned by Emmons, and possibly built after 1883 or 1884. On the death of the chief, Yaodaqet (II), he was succeeded by his nephew, Yakutat Chief George, Qakoqetc (pl. 64), also known as “Naa-kaa-nee,” who took his uncle's name, Yaodaqet. He died in 1903. The successor of Chief George as leader of the Kwacqwan was Cada (1827–1908, or 1909). The latter was said to have been head of Moon House at Nesudat and was later the builder of Fort House on Khantaak Island. Since Fort House was also called Raven‘s Bones House, it is possible that there was never a separate building of that name on Khantaak Island.

The only Kwacqwan House known to have been decorated was Moon House (dIs hit), also known as Mountain House (ca hIt) for Mount Saint Elias. It contained the four Moon Posts brought from Nesudat. The house was built by John Nishka (died 1896). He was called Níckà, or Nicga, and Cagau-’ic, and was probably the composer, TánÁAci (1952, 3–1-B; p. 1257). He was the Kwacqwan ‘deer’ chosen as the opposite of adane Johnstone in the peace ceremonies settling the killing of the latter's uncle on the Situk (see p. 603). Nishka married YuxwakAndu’Aq, Shra-gun-ta-ack, (1869–1904), the Teqwedi sister of Sitka Ned. After Nishka drowned sea-otter hunting, his uncle Stagwan took over the house. This succession is very unusual. I cannot explain it, and wonder if I have not misunderstood my informants. Stagwan was, of course, Kwac-qwan, though he had been given this Russian name of his Tł’UknaAdi grandfather. Stagwan was succeeded by his son's son, Kayak Tom, also known as Tom Ellis, De-tłen (‘Big Road.’), and Kactan-’ic. His wife, Nora, Dayúquwa’èk, was the daughter of Tom Coxe, only child of the shaman, Te-‘ic. Kayak Tom took the Moon Posts to the Old Village when he built Moon House there.

Situk Houses

The village S‘ukA on Khantaak Island was being abandoned after 1888 in favor of the cove on the mainland, now known as the Old Village. Before this, however, some families had settled on the Situk River, between the present railroad bridge and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Station. Some of the settlers we know came from Khantaak Island, and perhaps others had come from Lost River. A number of persons from Dry Bay were eventually buried between or behind the houses at Situk village. Eventually the inhabitants of this settlement, like those of Khantaak Island, all moved to Yakutat. Before discussing the houses at Old and New Yakutat, therefore, those at Situk and the vicinity should be mentioned.

Situk had apparently been a fishing camp when Diyaguna’Et was occupied, but in 1886, Emmons reports that there were some 40-odd persons living here in 4 houses, which he unfortunately does not name. Here, Łuso from Bear Paw House at Diyaguna’Et and his son-in-law,adane Johnstone from Khantaak Bear House built Coward House (gAtan hIt) about 1882. This was said to have been the first named house at Situk. The name, Coward, was chosen because an uncle of Johnstone, QadjAdAqina, a shaman, had been killed farther up the river, and had never been avenged. This was because, according to one informant, the murderer was another Teqwedi, and obviously no legal satisfaction could come from the further killing of a sib “brother”. According to another informant, the murderer was a Kwacqwan. At least, the latter sib was in some manner held responsible, for adane Johnstone was seized as a ‘deer’ and so prevented from taking any revenge. (Nishka of the Khantaak Island Moon House was his “opposite.” I wonder whether Johnstone's older brother, Sisdjakw, acquired his name Ca-kuwakan in the same ceremony.) The body of the murdered shaman was put in a grave house near Diyaguna’Et, where that of Te-’ic, his nephew, was later placed. Another intralineage murder which may have had some bearing on the dispersal of the Teqwedi, was that of the maternal uncle of ’Andes-tła, Mrs. Bessey, who died in 1916, at the reputed age of 100. Her uncle was also a shaman and belonged to Bear Paw House. His grave house was built on the point just north of the mouth of Ankau Creek, and when his niece was buried nearby, this started the modern cemetery at that place. Mrs. Bessey was the mother of Sitka Ned, who became chief of Coward House in the Old Village.

Coward House at Situk has been described (p. 301), and since there are conflicting descriptions of it, the building may have been made by remodeling an older smokehouse. After Johnstone's death in 1888, the house was abandoned. His “nephew,” Sitka Ned, took two of the four carved Coward Posts to the new Coward House at the Old Village, where they were displayed at a potlatch honoring the memory of adane. Then they are believed to have been put on the latter's grave on Khantaak Island. The other two posts are supposed to have been so rotted that they were left behind in the old house at Situk. No trace of these posts now remains at either place.

Meanwhile, Johnstone had persuaded his son-in-law, Situk Jim, Kat, to build Bear Den House (xuts kudi hIt) next to Coward House at Situk. Kat was married to osał-tła, the Kwacqwan daughter of Johnstone by his first wife whom he had long since left in favor of the two Tł’UknaxAdi daughters of Łuso. In Bear Den House besides Kat and his wife and children, there lived the owner's two married younger brothers, a married sister, and their families, as well as the mother of Kat, the aged widow of Natski of Boulder House on Johnson Slough. Bear Den House was rebuilt and rededicated as Bear House in 1905. It was described as a new building again in 1910, made of commercial lumber, and having only one room. An informant who visited it that year called it “Coward House,” suggesting a second rebuilding and renaming. When Situk Jim died in 1912, his younger brother, Situk Harry, Kusat’kw, (died 1945) became the house head. The latter, about 1910(?), had taken advantage of the railroad from Yakutat to Johnson Slough to haul out commercial lumber for a house on Black Sand Island, near the mouth of the Situk. He had intended to name this Valley House, but since he failed to give the necessary potlatch, he used the building only as a summer fish camp. The house washed away the year after his death. A Valley House (canA hit) was also mentioned at Situk, and may possibly refer to Bear Den House after Situk Harry‘s succession as house chief.

About 1910, a Tł’UknaAdi man born about 1850, brought commercial lumber out on his hand car on the railroad to build a Boulder House at Situk, in memory of the older one at Johnson Slough. Jim Nikita, YacnAłU (or YacnAłAq), ‘[Silver Salmon] Skimming the Surface,’ was probably a nephew (or cousin) of Dry Bay Chief George and of the latter's older brother, Dry Bay George, Qankida-’ic, ŁIngit’ani-kina, ‘On Top of the World,’ for Jim Nikita assumed Dry Bay George's grandiose title after the latter's death about 1887 or 1888. He also married Dry Bay George's ałyI-Kagwantan daughter, Susie, Guc-tłen-tła (‘Big [Killerwhale] Fin's Mother’?] (1875–1908), and in 1910 married Susie's young niece. Jim Nikita had perhaps been living with his relatives at Dry Bay, and it was possibly his building of Boulder House at Situk that brought Dry Bay Chief George and Lituya Bay George to Situk where they were buried. Nikita's house at Situk was built primarily as a place in which to hold a potlatch, rather than as a dwelling, and there was already a Boulder House in the Old Village at Yakutat.

The last house to be built in this area was Bear Paw House (xuts djIni hIt), with an adjoining smokehouse at the railroad landing on Lost River (fig. 10). This was erected in 1918 by Jim Kardeetoo, and his nephew, Sitka Ned, by that time both prominent Teqwedi men at Yakuta. These buildings are of commercial lumber and were apparently used only as a fishing camp. The house commemorates the earlier one of the same name at the near-by site of Diyaguna‘Et. It is interesting in that the lower floor consists of a single large room, with a bench about 30 inches high that runs across the back, along the two sides, and partially across the front. It is 4 feet wide at the back, about 3 feet wide at the sides, and very much narrower at the front of the house. There are lockers under the bench, and from one side of it a ladder leads to an attic above. A small sleeping room, about 7 feet long, is built on the middle of the rear bench. The house has ordinary door, stove, and windows, one window illuminating the sleeping room. Above the level of the door, and below the attic windows in front, were two large wooden Bear Paws, measuring 12 to 14 inches in width, and about 16 inches in length, and painted red at the wrist, green at the middle, and black at the claws. These were stolen by White men in August, 1952.

Houses in the Old Village

The biggest and most impressive settlement was the Old Village, or “Village,” which grew up on the mainland cove between the store to the north (built by W. C. Mills of Sitka), and the graveyard hill above the mission to the south (pls. 82–84). The movement from Khantaak Island to this site began in 1888 or 1889 and was completed by 1899. Emmons reports that the natives at first ferried over materials from the old houses on the island in order to build new ones, but my informant states that they did not build on the mainland until they acquired lumber from the sawmill on the lagoon, operated by the Reverend Hendrickson. According to information secured by Harrington from the Reverend Axelson, the sawmill did not begin to operate until 1890, and oxen were used to haul the logs. Some of the wealthier natives used lumber imported from Seattle. By 1899, there were about 100 persons living in the Old Village in some 8 to 10 framehouses (Burroughs, 1902, p. 34). Gradually, as the older settlements east of Yakutat were abandoned, more and more people came here.

At the head of Monti Bay, about half a mile south of the Old Village, a saltery was built, converted into a cannery in 1905, and also a dock (1902), at which steamers called regularly. Already by 1906, tourists on these ships looked forward to the chance to buy Yakutat baskets, and also by this date the railroad had been built from the dock to the landings at Lost River and Johnson Slough on which salmon were hauled to the cannery. A number of natives owned handcars on the railroad.

In addition to the trader's residence, store, and warehouse, and a few small private homes of more acculturated natives who had been educated at the mission or at Sitka, the Old Village consisted of a line of large framehouses. In all, 17 “tribal” houses were built, although they were not all standing at the same time. Some of the later houses had to be erected behind the front row because there was not enough room along the waterfront. Behind the houses were smokehouses and bathhouses, and in front were flagpoles on which the American flag was hoisted for holidays and potlatches. On the beach beyond were drawn up the owner's canoes, for which special ‘boat ways,’ (yakw deyi) had been prepared by rolling aside the boulders. These houses were named and dedicated at potlatches; the earliest of which we have any record was given in 1905, and the last in 1916, but there were undoubtedly earlier ones as well as others during this period about which we heard nothing. This was a time of prosperity when many could afford to build and dedicate houses and to furnish them in the White man's style, for the natives were fishing and working for the cannery, and the salmon runs were then still abundant.

To judge from photographs taken in 1912 and 1916 (pls. 82–84), from descriptions, and from the few houses which still survive (pl. 26), these modern “tribal houses,” while outwardly like the white man's in appearance, still retained a few of the earlier interior arrangements. There was one large room, occupying the front two-thirds of the house, in which there might be one stove for warmth and another for cooking. In the rear were perhaps two small bedrooms, but extra beds were set around the walls of the main room. There was also a second story under the high, steep roof, presumably partitioned into additional rooms for other families in the household. The houses, of course, had ordinary doors and windows. There was a porch across the front. These buildings were set up on short heavy posts, above the ground, and had high ceilings, so that they were not nearly as warm as the old-fashioned houses on Khantaak Island. The walls were finished inside with boards, sometimes covered with wallpaper. Kerosine lamps, some hung from the ceilings in chandeliers with glass pendants, furnished light. Outdoors, kerosine lanterns were hung up for street lights.

According to Emmons, there were in 1901, 10 large houses and an equal number of smaller ones. He gives a census for that year of 130 inhabitants: 54 Kwacqwan; 43 Teqwedi; 22 Tł’UknaAdi; and 11 Kagwantan (presumably of the ałyI branch). He also gives the following 13 house names, but we cannot be sure to what year he refers: Kagwantan—Wolf Den [Bath?] House; Teqwedi—Bear House, Shark House, Thunder Bird House, Hawk [i.e., Golden Eagle] House; Tł’UknaAdi—Rock [Boulder] House, Mountain House, named for “a volcano back of Dry Bay” [i.e., Mount Fair-weather]; and Kwacqwan—Mountain [Saint Elias] House, Moon House, Fort House, Play House, Raven's Bones House, and Owl House.

When Hardy Trefzger (1963, pp. 21, 28–29) arrived in Yakutat in 1911 (where he was later to become United States Commissioner), there were about 300 natives, 7 White men, 2 White women, and a few White children. One of the White men was Steve Gee, a prospector; another was Beasley, the storekeeper. Trefzger mentions three named houses in the Old Village: “Kuuch Hit or Wolf House” (probably Wolf Bath House, No. 1, below); “Seek Hit or Black Bear House,” obviously a Teqwedi house although we did not hear that name (sik hIt); it may have been one of the many names of Shark House (No. 13), or of Brown Bear House (No. 17); the last is “Chaad Hit, the Salmon House,” (at hIt), which was almost certainly Kwacqwan, and was perhaps another name for Moon House (No. 5), or Raven's Bones House (No. 7). In two of these houses, according to Trefzger, were totemic paintings made by D. S. Benson, a hunchback who had been educated at Sitka and served as court interpreter there from 1878 to 1885, and later as interpreter to the missionaries at Yakutat. He is known to have painted the screens in Wolf Bath House and Moon House.

The 17 native houses about which I was told are numbered below according to their location from north to south, not in the order in which they were built.

1.—Wolf Bath House (utc a hIt), also known as Beaver House, (egédi hIt), was originally built in the 1890's(?) by a Tł’UknaAdi man, Ckman, for his ałyI-Kagwantan wife, Mary Skinan, Uyá, after their son had been accidentally shot by CkInan's “nephew,” Łdaxin, the oldest son of adane Johnstone. CkInan was the son of a ałyI-Kagwantan man, and was perhaps living in Shark House on Khantaak Island at the time, since his sister, Gauyu-tła (pl. 80), was the wife of the Shark House chief, Daqusetc, and the peace ceremony to settle case was held on Khantaak Island. CkInan was nephew to Natski of Boulder House on Johnson Slough, and successor to his older brother Abraham, Anané. He was a parallel cousin, and so a “brother,” to the wives of adane Johnstone. His wife, Mary, was the daughter of a brother of Yakutat Chief Yaodaqet (II).

We do not know who was the first chief of Wolf Bath House, but Yakategy John rebuilt it and gave a potlatch here in 1905. This man, S’A’Ał, Tł’ate, WanisE’, was the husband of Sisgexw-tła, the Kwackwan daughter of En, a brother of Te-’ic of Bear House. Yakategy John had lived with his wife in Bear House on Khantaak Island, along with his father-in-law, En. At the potlatch in Wolf Bath House in 1905 a painted screen was installed (fig. 85). This had been painted by Daniel S. Benson (born 1869), Ce-’ic, Daqusetc, in return for permission to marry Annie, Daodzu, the adopted daughter of Yakategy John. The painter, a Teqwedi man, was crippled and deaf when Harrington saw him in 1940. I gathered that the financial arrangements permitted Yakategy John to return part (all?) of the bride price to Benson at the potlatch as payment for the screen. Since Benson and John belonged to the same moiety, the money was actually paid to Annie, Benson's wife. The screen represents Łayakw, the youngest of eight ałyI-Kagwantan brothers who went into the sky. He is standing on showshoes at one end of the Milky Way (his tracks), while he shoots at a muskrat with bow and arrow. Below is a large Beaver, sitting on a beaver dam and eating a willow branch, and below this again are two crouching Wolves. This painting is executed with commercial oil paints on what Harrington described as looking like an old barn door, measuring 8 feet square.

At first a good many people lived in Wolf Bath House, but by 1910, when another potlatch was held here, there were so few members of the lineage that one woman had to take a man's role as one of the principal speakers. By 1921, Yakategy John had sold the house to Hardy Trefzger, a White man, who remodeled it and moved the screen to the ceiling of the living room. The house was again resold, and while occupied today, it no longer belongs to a member of the original sib.

2.—Owl House (tIskw hIt), also called Raven's Nest House (yeł kudi hIt), was built next door to Wolf Bath House by the brother-in-law of Yakategy John. The builder and house head was B. A. Jack, Qadałe, Wàíx (1860–1948 pl. 90), the Kwacqwan son of En of Bear House on Khantaak Island. This was probably one of the later houses to be built at the Old Village. It was undecorated. Finally, the owner tore it down and used the lumber for a new house in the present town of Yakutat.

3.—Boulder House (‘itc hIt), was built by the Tł’UknaAdi man, Charley White, Yaniki (born about 1879), son of adane Johnstone of Situk Coward House. This house was built early in the present century, before Jim Nikita had built Boulder House at Situk. By this time, his “uncle” CkInan was already dead, but the latter's widow, Mary, who is said to have died shortly after the earthquake of 1899, freed her husband's slave at the dedicatory potlatch for this house. This act was to honor the builders, her dead husband's “nephews and niece.” Charley White's wife at that time was Jenny, Qakułsik;i (or Kaqułsike), (1874–1918). She was Drum House Teqwedi, and the fourth child of Abraham Anané of the earlier Boulder House.

This house was probably not occupied for very long, for Charley White moved into a house given him by the superintendent of the cannery, and Boulder House was bought by his sister, Minnie, then Mrs. Gray, for the lumber.

4.—Mountain House (ca hIt), named for Mount Saint Elias, a crest of the Kwackqwan, was said to have been built by three men. The first was known as QAqwłI-’ic; the second was Yakutat Charley, S’isdjAkw-’ic or wAtdAł (1862–1920), who married the widow of the first, SIawUłqEn, a Kagwantan woman. The third was Shorty, Nanut or Tak-’ic (see p. 284). They were assisted by Mrs. Sitka Ned, ‘Atckwe, Kwackqwan daughter of Ca-kuwakan of Bear House on Khantaak Island. Mrs. Sitka Ned (died 1926) inherited the house. It was sold to a White man for a store, and finally burned down.

5.—Moon House (dIs hIt) of the Kwackqwan, was perhaps built by Cada, although his successor, Kayak Tom (Tom Ellis) and the latter's brother, Sticklew Hansen, CtAtł’eu, are usually named. This house was evidently already standing in 1901 when Emmons noted the house posts which had come originally from Nesudat on Lost River. Obviously in this house of modern construction they could only be set up for ornamentation. A potlatch was given in this house in 1905. My informants did not describe the posts which Emmons photographed but mentioned only one pole, about 5 feet high, carved with a round face and ivory teeth that represented the Moon. Possibly a song leader's baton was meant, not a house decoration. However, I was also told that the house had a Raven Screen, called a yAna ku-łI-tUł Yeł, ‘Raven Made the King Salmon Come Ashore,’ illustrating the story of how Raven lured a king salmon ashore by pretending that a greenstone boulder had insulted it (see Swanton, 1909, p. 5). This screen was painted by Daniel S. Benson, the same Teqwedi artist who made that in Wolf Bath House. It was paid for by Cada, perhaps at a potlatch given in 1905 for Chief George. Another potlatch was held in this house in 1909 when it was “new” (renovated?). A photograph taken about that time shows wallpaper and chandeliers. In 1916 or 1917, fearing that the Moon Posts and Raven Screen might be sold, Kayak Tom and Sticklew Hansen chopped them up and burned them. The lumber from this house was used to build a new Moon House in Yakutat.

6.—Fort House (nu hIt), Kwack’qwan, was probably built at the same time as Moon House, and was also used for the big potlatch in 1905. It was built by Bear Bit Billy, Qank’ik’-ic, (1862–1902), who had formerly lived on Khantaak Island. He was assisted by Young George, or George Young, Yanukt-łAtsin (1870–1915), and by Billy's son-in-law, George (or Frank) Martin, Tankw (1892–1915), who had married Lily, Kinigi (Kmigi) Billy's Teqwedi daughter. Jack Shakokon, Nukwané (or NÁgòné) (1884–1912), who married B. B. Billy's Teqwedi widow, Qestł‘eq, and who was the only son of Ca-kuwakan of Bear House on Khantaak Island, is also associated with this house. The grave markers of these men, plus that of Robert Funton (1901–15) stand on the hilly point north of the Old Village (pl. 30). Young, Martin, and Funton all drowned in 1915. The house is still standing, although it was sold and is now used as a boarding house.

7.—Raven's Bones House (yeł aqe hIt), the principal house of the Kwack’qwan, was said to have been the first house built in the Old Village. It was built by Yakutat Chief George, Qakoqetc, Yaodaqet (III) who died in 1903, and by his three younger brothers. These were Yakutat Charley (who later became chief of Mountain House), Qa’A, and Old Moses, DjInuk-’ic. The latter gave an elaborate potlatch in 1905 for his dead brother Chief George, and on that occasion assumed the name or title of Yaxodaqet. He was at one time married to Kaxgawułtín, sister to Tek’-’ic of Bear House on Khantaak, and was succeeded by his nephew, Tom Coxe, T’aw-ka’, ‘Chicken Feathers,’ Q’atsIti (pl. 90), the only son of the shaman Tek’-’ic. Tom Coxe had many Teqwedi daughters, of whom one was Nora, wife of Kayak Tom of Moon House. Tom Coxe sold Raven's Bones House to a White man for a store. It burned about 1945.

8.—Coward House (gAtxan hIt) was built by the Teqwedi Jack Shaw-coo-kawn, Ca-kuwakan (1831–1899), at that time chief of Bear House on Khantaak, and by his nephew and son-in-law, Sitka Ned, Qáctàn (Kactan?), who assumed the title of Kaxdaxéł (pl. 214f). He was the son of Mrs. Bessey, ’AndEs-tła, and of the Tł’uknaxAdi man, YAndus-’ic, who had carved the Bear Post for Bear House on Khantaak. Sitka Ned is said to have been a boy at Diyaguna’Et. He and his wife were drowned in 1926, by which time he must have been quite elderly. To this new Coward House in the Old Village, Sitka Ned brought two of the house posts from his uncle's Coward House at Situk, but only to display at the mortuary potlatch for the latter. Cakuwakan brought over the Bear Post from Bear House on Khantaak, so that the house acquired a second name, Bear Den House. At the death of Cakuwakan, this post was supposed to have gone to Peter Milton, Qudenaha, and his brothers, nephews of Cakuwakan, but the latter's widow tried to keep it. Eventually the Milton brothers obtained it and installed it in a new Bear House (no. 17). Frank Brown, son of Nicqa of Moon House and of Sitka Ned's sister, YuxwakAndu’Aq, inherited Coward House, but sold it to a White man. It is now remodeled and, though occupied, has passed out of the lineage.

9.—Foggy House (kAgwas hIt) was a Kwack’qwan house built by Mrs. Sitka Ned behind the house of her husband. She gave a potlatch for this building, but used it only for storing property. After her death in 1926, Naxca-’ic Peter Frank (1897—   ), the son of Peter Lawrence and Mrs. Sitka Ned's sister, GAłtel, inherited the house, and moved it to the new village of Yakutat, where it is now occupied by a young man of the Kwackqwan sib and his family.

10.—Golden Eagle House (gIdjuk hIt) of the Drum House Teqwedi was built by Jim Itinisku, also known as Old Jacob, or Jim Tanuk, Tanux, Nacawu-’ic (pl. 214k). He was a nephew of Sitka Ned, apparently acted as a chief in the potlatching of 1905, and died before 1925. He was assisted in the building and succeeded as house head by his nephew, B. B. Williams, Jr. (born about 1889). The latter was named Yanatcuk, and also Xadanek, since he was believed to be the reincarnation of Johnstone. Golden Eagle House was built before Drum House (No. 11), but both were used for a potlatch in 1905. The house had a Golden Eagle Screen (gIdjuk xin), said to have been painted by Tom Coxe. When Williams sold the house to a White man, the screen was removed, and although I obtained a photograph of it, no one knows where it is now (pl. 93). The house, remodeled, is now occupied, but not by a member of the original lineage.

11.—Drum House (gau hIt) of the Drum House Teqwedi was built by Skin Canoe George, also known as George Ki-ye-quat-kene, Xeyegatqín, Taguqw’ic (1855–1900), and his brother Ned Dok-na-kane, Daknaqin (pl. 214 j), previous builders of Drum House on Khantaak. The latter rebuilt the house, apparently after Golden Eagle House had been built, and gave a potlatch in memory of his dead brother. He also rebuilt the house again in 1910. The house had a storm entry in front, as shown in photographs taken about 1911 or 1912, but this has since been removed. There was also a bell (gau, ’drum, bell’) that hung before the door, taken from a Japanese schooner that drifted ashore, perhaps the one that came to Dry Bay in 1909. This bell was later taken to the schoolhouse at Yakutat.

The house also had a Golden Eagle Screen (pl. 213), painted at Sitka by a Tł’UknaxAdi man, Yel nawú, ’Dead Raven’. This screen, about 8 feet square, is now in the Alaska Historical Museum in Juneau. It represents the Golden Eagle with a broken wing, standing on a rock, and holding two baby groundhogs in its claws. The two wolflike figures on each side represent the spirits of the mountains, showing that the scene is in a valley. Above the bird's head are faces symbolizing the spirit of daylight. When I was in Sitka I obtained a photograph of the artist painting the screen although no further information was available (pl. 92).

After Daknaqin's death, the next house chief was his nephew, Henry Shada, Cxa’e (1865?–1935?) (pl. 214i), son of the Kwacqwan Cada of Fort House on Khantaak. He sold the screen to the museum and took the inside lumber from the house to build a house at Yakutat. The outer shell was sold to a White man who remodeled it, and it was eventually bought by a man of the Bear House branch of the Teqwedi, who lives in it today.

12.—Thunder or Thunderbird House (xetł hIt) of the Drum House Teqwedi was built behind Drum House by nephews of Ned Daknaqin who had lived in Drum House when they were younger. These were Joseph (pl. 140), also known as Yáqwàn, Tuné, and eyegatqín (1867–1917), Martin (pl. 214e) also named Qeldjakw or NusnE (now deceased), and Olaf Abraham (pl. 218), known as anan-’ic, Qaugu, and eyegatqín (born 1886). These were the sons of Abraham from the Tl’uknaxAdi Boulder House on Johnson Slough, and of Mary, daughter of Yakutat Chief Yaxodaqet (II), by his wife from Ahrnklin River. The house was eventually torn down, and Olaf Abraham, youngest of the three brothers, used part of the lumber to build his present home in Yakutat.

13.—Shark House (tus hIt), also known by other names, was one of the most important Teqwedi houses in the Old Village, although not the first. It is uncertain when this house was built. Thus, there is evidence that a house of this name was standing near Drum House in 1895, and that it was occupied by Sitka Ned, his mother, Jim Kardeetoo, and Situk Harry. However, this information is unclear, for the same informant also stated that Shark House was built (about 1905?) by Teet Milton, and Jim Kardeetoo, after the death of Peter Milton and the collapse of the latter's Bear House (No. 17). Teet Milton, Ka’u or Detxun (1878–1920), and Jim Kardeetoo, Kaidutu or atgawet (1862–1937), were considered “nephews” of Ca-kuwakan of Bear House on Khantaak Island. Kardeetoo (pl. 86) was son of Cada, the Kwackqwan chief. When Teet Milton died, Kardeetoo inherited the house. It was built and rebuilt several times, and it contained the Shark Posts that had come from Diyaguna’Et, as well as the smaller Bear Post from Bear House on Khantaak Island. The latter had been transferred to Coward House (8) at the Old Village, and from there to Bear House (17). There was apparently a series of houses built on the same site by Jim Kardeetoo: Bear Den House, Shark House (when the Shark Posts were installed ?), Bear House (when the Bear Post was put in ?), and Bear Paw House. There were probably two other rebuildings, for Kardeetoo is said to have built seven houses in all. The last was the Bear Paw House at Lost River landing in 1918.

Of the two Bear Paw–Shark Posts (numbers 1 and 2), the first was inside the house, the other in a shedlike shelter under the eaves on the left front corner of the house (pl. 87). Number 3, representing the Eagle above the Shark, was in a similar shed on the right front corner of the house. The fourth pole, representing a man catching a Shark, was also indoors. The inside posts were said to have flanked the door. Above the door, inside, was the Bear Post.

As already reported, Kardeetoo sold the four Shark Posts to the missionary, Axelson, for some museum reportedly in New York.

Eventually he tore the house down, taking some of the lumber to build a house in Yakutat. He also took the small Bear Post with him. After his death in 1937, his widow reluctantly surrendered it to the younger brothers of Teet Milton, that is to William Milton, Neut (1888–1950?), and Nick, adane or WAnga-’ic (1896–1966). They sold the Bear Post to the Alaska Historical Museum in 1950, shortly before William's death.

14.—Mountain (Fairweather) House (ca hIt) of the Tł’UknaAdi was occupied by Abraham and his brother, CkInan, and for a time by his nephew, Charley White, before the latter built Boulder House. At that time Charley White was married to Jenny (1874–1918), daughter of Abraham, and widow of a Tł’UknaAdi man, Ned James or Stagwan. Also living in the house was Clarence Peterson (pl. 141), Skínyà (1890–1942), a Tk’UknaAdi man who was married to Violet, Teqwedi daughter of Jenny and Ned James, and thus stepdaughter of Charley White. Another “nephew” of Abraham was T. Max Italio, K’wAni (1874–1940), the son of Mrs. Abraham's brother, Qacdé’udaqa, the Teqwedi son of Yaodaqet (II). T. Max Italio's mother, TłeqwAtsi, who was buried as “Mrs Jenny Paddy, 1854–1926,” also lived in this house. In fact it was she who forced her son and his wife, Jane or Jean, to give up their own little house and move into Mountain House. This large house no longer exists.

15.—In 1916, Max Italio (pl. 216) built a large house on the site of his small private house. The new building was called Sidewise House (tł’adÉn hIt), and also Lullaby House (‘Anku hIt), and sometimes Mountain House, after the earlier Tł’UknaAdi house which it replaced. This was probably the last house to be built in the Old Village. Downstairs, there was a large front room, in one corner of which was a store, and in the rear were two bedrooms for the owner and his family. His wife, Nayá, Jean or Jane Mary, later Mrs. Benson (1871–1945), was the daughter of Dry Bay George, Łmgit-’ani-kina. Upstairs were rooms for the owner's daughter and her husband, and also for the owner's “nephew,” Jack Ellis, TcànI or Qadjakw (1892–1952) and his wife. The house burned down in 1951–52.

16.—Play House (qusAw hIdi) was build by the Kwacqwan man, Jimmy Jackson, AgÁłE or KusÁxkw-’ic (1861–1948), and his nephew, Dick Harry, Cada (died about 1919 or 1920), the son of Situk Harry (Teqwedi). The name of the house refers to some children who were playing potlatch at Kaliakh River, but whose game was transformed into a serious affair. The house was sold to a White man, but after resale is now occupied by a woman of the original sib.

17.—Bear House (xuts hIt) of the Teqwedi was built in front of the present site of Play House, on what is now the beach. The builders were the Milton brothers, Peter, Teet, Johnny, and William. The lumber for the house was brought from Seattle and the house was built in order to house the Bear Post which had come to the brothers after the death of their uncle, Ca-kuwakan, in 1899. I believe the house was built about 1900 or 1901 when Emmons listed it. After Peter's death, Teet Milton became the head, but the heavy surf in winter undercut the foundations, so part of the lumber was used to build, or rather rebuild Jim Kardeetoo‘s Shark House, to which Teet Milton transferred the Bear Post.

Yakutat: the Present Town

By 1905 or 1906, a community was already growing up at the head of the bay near the dock. The steamer called regularly, and a visit to Yakutat was advertised as a tourist attraction, especially because of the excellent baskets which could be bought here (p. 430). A popular article describes the new settlement:

“There are two towns of Yakutat. Steamers land at the new town, but passengers have time to walk through the forests to the old village, if they desire. The new town is the western terminus of the Yakutat and Southern Railway, a line recently built to move the vast amount of timber in this vicinity [and to carry fish to the cannery from Lost River and Situk]. Here is a store, a cannery, a saw mill, and a number of houses. The many tents and cabins of the Indian Village nestling among the trees and the stumps at the left of the town add a picturesque touch to the place.” [Higginson, 1906, p. 18.]

To refer to Yakutat as “behind the breakers” or “among the stumps,” as is done sometimes by the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska, is interpreted at Yakutat as an insult.

About 1919, people had begun to move from the Old Village to settle permanently at the present town of Yakutat in order to be near the cannery (pl. 22). They already had summer houses here, and the younger people, especially, were anxious to build small houses of their own. The move was bitterly opposed by some of their elders. A few “community houses” were built in the new village. However, in 1921 the Yakutat Camp of the Alaska Native Brotherhood was founded, and this organization was opposed to potlatches and other manifestations of sib organization. Instead, for a time the people devoted themselves to building the large ANB Hall next to the church; native dances were given in it to raise money for the new organization.

The first of the “tribal” houses built at Yakutat was probably the CAnkuqedi Thunder or Thunderbird House (xetł hIt). This was erected by Jack Peterson (pl. 215e), Unakw or Anakw (1870–1938), son of the shaman utcda, and younger brother of David Dick who had built Thunderbird House in Dry Bay in 1909. At the dedicatory potlatch for the house, Jack Peterson is said to have worn a blanket decorated with the enormous buttons that had been given to his father as part of a fee for professional services. In the house was a screen, xetł in, painted by a Tł’UknaAdi man of Douglas, named WUcdjIo-’ic, ‘In Everybody's Arms-Father,’ The paint is commercial, but Frank Italio said in 1949 that the screen was then 52 years old, suggesting that it had been simply repainted for the Yakutat house. He may, however, have been referring to an “original” screen of which this was the copy. The house was said by one informant to have been dedicated at a potlatch in 1916; others said it was not built until 1921. In painting the screen, the artist used a paintbrush to which were bound the fingernail parings of a Yakutat boy, in order to transfer to the child some of his artistic skill. Since the boy was born in 1914 and a practice of this kind usually takes place when a child is very small, it suggests that the screen, but not necessarily the house, was made in 1916.

The screen, 10 feet square, has a large Thunderbird in the middle, carved in the round from separate pieces of wood (pl. 91). On the screen itself, below the wings, are two representations of the CAnkuqedi boy who was found by the Thunderbird on the Alsek River (pp. 249–251). Four stylized raindrops (like double petals) fall down the sides of the screen. Two long black clouds are above the wings. The faces all around represent either hailstones or the faces on the walls of the Thunderbird's home in the mountains. The various faces on the body of the Thunderbird represent its bones and joints. A wolf's head is shown on each wing, because when the Thunderbird makes a noise the wolves always stop. The colors employed are gray, tan, black, yellow, white, blue green, and red (see Grovesnor, 1956, p. 741). Outside above the door of the house, was a carved figure of a Thunderbird, also on a board, but smaller. The bird was about 4 feet high, with wings bent forward and downward.

After the death of the first owner, his nephew, Frank Italio, KwutcEn (1870–1956), the son of Dry Bay Chief George, became owner of the house (p. 215a). He first sold the outside Thunderbird “to someone in the States,” and in 1950 sold the inside screen to the Alaska Historical Museum in Juneau. The house collapsed shortly after that.

Far Out House was built by Dry Bay Jack, Qadjaq-’ic, a Tł’UknaAdi or TłukwaAdi man, who was married to a daughter, Uqawudu’u or Maggie, of Dry Bay Chief George who had built Far Out House in Dry Bay in 1909. Dry Bay Jack died about 1923, and the house is now occupied by his great niece(?) and her husband. The house is not decorated.

Moon House of the Kwacqwan was built by Billy Jackson, Ginneq, WatUq (1883–1951). He is reported to have been born in Cordova, the son of a ałyI-Kagwantan father, and to have previously owned a house (named?) at Kaliakh River. In building his Yakutat house, he was assisted by his nephew, Dick Harry (see Moon House in the Old Village). The new Moon House was erected on the site of a small house in which a venerable and respected Kwacqwan woman, ’ItIsi, Mrs. Atsezy Jack, had burned to death in 1919 at the reported age of 98. This house served as a memorial to her. The house was finally torn apart after the owner's death.

Play House was built by Jimmy Jackson, Billy's older brother, to replace his house of the same name in the Old Village. This was built beside his brother‘s Moon House. It burned to the ground in 1948, and Jimmy Jackson perished in the fire.

The house built by Henry Shada, Teqwedi, with lumber taken from his Drum House in the Old Village was called Baby Drum House (gau hIt yAdi), although I doubt that it was dedicated in a potlatch. Since 1952 it has served as a chapel for the Church of God, a revivalistic sect with Alaskan headquarters in Sitka.

The last named house in Yakutat is Eagle House (ta hIt), built by George Johnson, ŁucwAq or CItłwAk (1892–), a Tcicqedi man from Katalla. He is the only representative of his sib in Yakutat. The house contains a painting of an American Eagle, made by Harry K. Bremner, Kwacqwan (1893–), in lieu of an old-style screen.

The Future

The old houses and even their large modern successors are thus virtually gone, rotted away, torn down, burned, sold, or remodeled into modern buildings. The older totemic house decorations have with one exception been destroyed, stolen, or sold to museums or private collectors. But the memory of past glories still remains, at least for the older people. They speak with pride and affection of the houses in which they once lived or had built, and mourn the loss of the old buildings and screens. It is sad that some of the more influential older people, who only a few years ago supported the Alaska Native Brotherhood in its condemnation of all ceremonies and customs that emphasized sib solidarity and thereby intersib rivalry, now would like to revive old ways. The old ceremonies, centering around the dedication of sib houses, symbolized Tlingit values and gave a meaning to the lives of the people which is now lost. Thus, Jack Ellis who in 1949 talked against the folly of potlatches, had, just before his death in 1952, saved money toward a potlatch, and had sunk the foundations for what was to have been a new Frog House. In the late summer of 1952, when a visitor to Dry Bay reported seeing the boards of the Frog Screen still piled up in John Williams’ Canoe Prow House, a number of Tł’UknaAdi elders wished bitterly that they had the funds to fetch the screen to Yakutat and install it in a proper building.

Now it is too late to turn back the clock. Many of the men who could have been sib leaders have died recently and their successors are too young to know how to conduct ceremonies, indeed have not seen real potlatches since they were little children. The salmon runs upon which the entire community depends for its livelihood have been failing for a number of years, and the people lack sufficient wealth to build houses and to dedicate them at potlatches. The younger people, whose support would be necessary, are either discouraged or demoralized. Lacking interest in or comprehension of the past traditions, they have turned their hopes to the White man's world beyond Yakutat.

Travel and Trade

CANOES

Introduction

Within relatively recent historic times the Yakutat Indians made several different kinds of canoes (yàkw). These dugouts (fig. 26) were the small forked-prow sea-otter hunting canoe (tÀyác), the small thick-prowed canoe with ram for sealing in the ice (gudiyÉ or gudiyí), the so-called “village canoe” (’andé yagu) with rounded prow and stern, the large canoe with plain slanting prow, called ‘spruce’ (sit) from its material, and the large “war” canoe, called ironically ‘canoe's child’ (yàkw yAdi). Most of the last were imported from the Haida, and there were also a few examples of the imported Nootka canoe, with straight stern and the high narrow prow like a bird's head which gave it the name ‘goose canoe’ (awAq yàkw). At Dry Bay a river canoe was made of cottonwood (duq) and was named for this material. These types are described in more detail below.

There is also the tradition that at a still earlier period skin canoes were made, some like umiaks, others like kayaks and baidarkas, and comparable to those of the Chugach Eskimo. As we shall see, reports of 18th-century explorers confirm the existence of such skin boats on the Gulf of Alaska. However, the wooden canoes which they saw at Lituya Bay and at Yakutat Bay cannot easily be identified, especially since the terms used to describe them are often unclear to us today.[72] While some of these old canoes were probably similar to those made 100 years later, others clearly were not. The material in the following sections has been revised and expanded from an earlier description of Yakutat canoes (de Laguna, 1963).

Skin Boats

In prehistoric times skin canoes (dugu yakw) were in use at Yakutat and along the Gulf Coast of Alaska. Some of these were large open boats, said to have been nearly as large as the big wooden “war” canoes (pp. 340–341). These skin boats were compared to the Eskimo umiaks and were called djaku (Boas, 1917 from Swanton, p. 126, djaqó). They were covered with sealskin, according to an informant who believed that sea lion hide would be too heavy. In Swanton's version of the Kwacqwan migration story (pp. 241–242), both these Athabaskans who had come from the Copper River and the [ałyi-] Kagwantan who joined them from the west used skin boats, presumably of this type, to reach Yakutat. Most of my informants, however, said that they crossed the ice on foot or used dugouts, and only two believed that the ancestors of the Kwacqwan came in skin boats to Yakutat. One of these said that when the people came over the mountains from the Copper River to Icy Bay, they were unable to proceed further because the glacier stuck out so far. “So the Aleuts loaned them the skin canoe.” This statement must be interpreted in the light of this informant's belief that the original inhabitants of the Yakutat area were “Aleuts.” The Copper River people had tried to build a skin boat, but lacked the materials. With their borrowed canoe they went as far as Point Manby, where they knocked a hole in the bottom, and had to return to Icy Bay. Apparently they then succeeded in making another boat, and eventually reached the the eastern shore of Yakutat Bay. The account is, however, unclear at this point (MJ). Another informant believed that skin boats must have been used for this trip because “not very long ago they [began to] use that tree canoe [dugout].” Of skin canoes, she said: “They just dry it when they’re going to go again, and they pack it” (SW). There is also a story that the inhabitants of the prehistoric or protohistoric site on Knight Island used “a big skin war canoe,” carrying 20 men, in a race with Tlingit from southeastern Alaska who had a Haida dugout.

That skin canoes may be very ancient in the Yakutat area is also suggested by the Wrangell myth about the cannibal Ay’i (Swanton, 1909, Tale 31, pp. 89–91), which begins with the statment that Raven went to ŁAxa’k (Yakutat country), “and told the people that they were to make canoes out of skins.” Here, the sons of the cannibal make a large canoe out of the skins of his victims, sewn with human hair, and go in this to avenge their mother‘s uncles whom their father has slain. “It was the first of the skin canoes…. Nowadays these canoes are made of all kinds of skins, but the hair used is always human hair and they sing in the same manner when they put them into the water” (ibid., p. 90).

The Copper River Eyak also made large canoes of sealskin or mountain goatskin. These canoes were called yàxÀqÉ’ or yànxÁqÉ‘, and differed from the Chugach umiaks in having pointed bows instead of the usual Eskimo “horns” (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 45, 550). Presumably the Yakutat skin boats were similar, as were the mooseskin boats made on the Copper River. The Chilkat Tlingit formerly made large canoes of moose or caribou hide, with pointed, curved bow and stern. These were paddled, not rowed like an umiak. They were made and used chiefly on trading trips in the interior, although Chilkat traditions report that this was once their only type of craft (Drucker, 1950, p. 254, Item 390). Such skin boats were probably known also to the Southern Tutchone, and may conceivably have been used on the Alsek River, although my informants knew nothing to this effect.

In view of this wide distribution of skin canoes among these northwestern Indian groups, it would be rash to conclude with LaPérouse that the skin boats in Lituya Bay must have been Eskimo or Aleut. It will be remembered (p. 123) that the frame of a large skin boat, the only one of eight that had escaped the perils of the entrance, was found at one of the native cemeteries or morai. Seven others had been wrecked at the mouth of the bay, and this canoe, LaPérouse was given to understand, had been dedicated by the survivors to the memory of their lost companions.

“This canoe did not resemble those of the country…. [It] had timbers and wales like our boats; and the frame, which was well made, had a covering of seal-skins, which served instead of planks, sewed together with such nicety, that the best workmen in Europe would find it difficult to imitate” [LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, pp. 390–391]. “These canoes, a draught of which was taken from the only one saved, were thirty-four feet long, four broad, and six deep. Dimensions so considerable rendered them fit for long voyages. They were covered with seal-skins, after the manner of those of the Esquimaux….” [Ibid., p. 407.]

The illustration (pl. 36) shows that the skin cover was composed of hexagonal pieces stitched together. However, we cannot tell whether the frame resembles more that of the typical Eskimo umiak, or one of the Indian canoes with more pointed prows. Unfortunately we have no examples of skin boats from Yakutat with which to compare it. Since the Yakutat people are known to have visited Lituya Bay, it is more reasonable to suppose that the eight skin boats were theirs, rather than belonging to Chugach who had come all the way from Prince William Sound. The latter, as enemies or at best aliens, would hardly have been permitted to deposit their dead or a memorial to them in a local Indian cemetery, since the Indians grouped their dead according to sib. Still, detailed information about the construction of all these skin covered craft would be necessary to solve this puzzle.

The Yakutat people report that their ancestors formerly made one-hole kayaks and two-hole baidarkas (dugu qayakw ‘skin kayak;’ or gayex guk, the latter term possibly referring to the prow as an ‘ear,’ gukw). The type with one man-hole was called ‘one hole’ (tłe kAwùł). Another word, deyaguwułet (de yagu wułet ?),may possibly refer to the two-man baidarka, (cf. de ’two’), but my informants were very uncertain of the words.

These boats were covered with sealskins and were said to have been like Chugach Eskimo kayaks and baidarkas (fig. 24). With the one-man craft a double-bladed paddle was used in ordinary Eskimo style. Although one informant said that this type of paddle was also used with the two-man baidarka (MJ), it would appear from Suría's description (see below) that the occupants used single-bladed paddles, dipping them two or three times on one side and then shifting to the other. This is the Chugach manner of paddling the baidarka, and also the Yakutat way of paddling the two-man sea-otter hunting canoe of wood. Since the constant shifting of paddle from side to side would result in dripping a good deal of water into an open dugout, it is probable that this style of paddling originated with the baidarka, since the skin deck of the latter would shed the drip. We should note, however, that on clear days, when a dugout was likely to check in the sunshine, the Tlingit were accustomed to splash a little spray on the canoe with their paddles, so perhaps the drip into the hunting canoe was not a great disadvantage, even though the style of paddling was quite unlike that employed for other dugouts.

Most of my informants, it should be noted, denied that skin boats were made at Yakutat, and thought that they were used only by their enemies, the Chugach and Aleut. I believe, however, that they were really thinking of a later period when dugouts had supplanted the skin umiak and kayak, and when the only kayaks or baidarkas seen were those of the Chugach, Koniag, or Aleut hunters employed by the Russians. My informants described how their grandfathers used to watch the “Aleut play around in the breakers,” skill-fully capsizing and righting their watertight craft. Such maneuvers were evidently to prevent the waves from smashing the thin frames of the kayaks.

The last kayak was made at Yakutat by the Teqwedi head of Drum House on Khantaak Island, George Ki-ye-quat-kene (eyegatqin, 1855–1900), which earned him the nickname “Skin Canoe George.” This was a two-man craft, copied from one that he had seen among the Chugach or Eyak. It had wooden ribs about 2 inches thick and was covered with dehaired sealskins, “as smooth and classy as can be…. He cured the skins himself, but a woman sewed it for him. It was sewed with porpoise sinew.” He used double-bladed paddles with it (MJ).

In the 1880's the Eyak had two-and three-hole baidarkas for hunting sea otter. While we believed that these had been purchased from the Chugach (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 52 f.), it now seems probable that the Eyak also made them. (The three-hole form was an innovation introduced by the Russians who wanted to be able to ride as a passenger in the middle, but was also adopted by the natives.)

We are indebted to Suría for descriptions and sketches of small canoes seen at Port Mulgrave in 1791 (pls. 40–43). Of these, the skin kayak or baidarka, used by the Ankau, seems to have excited the most interest and is more fully described.

“They use canoes of different sizes. The ordinary ones are of wood shaped like a weaver's shuttle and of this figure.” (fig. 23.) The picture in his journal shows a small canoe with two men paddling on the same side. [For a further description, see p. 334.] “Others are of skin sewed to a framework of poles well constructed and tied, and are like this [fig. 23]….” [The sketch is of a two-hole baidarka with forked prow, somewhat like those of the Chugach.] “The two holes in the center are for entering. Half the body from the waist down is inside and they seat themselves on their heels as is their ordinary custom, and thus they manage the canoe with the oars [single-bladed paddles]. They use no rudder and in order to keep going straight they paddle the same number of times first on one side and then on the other with great speed. Their oars are very curious and are painted like the canoes with various marks and masks. They have some leather thongs which pass through the entire deck of the canoe and are tied on the sides. They are like stay rods where they put their lances and arrows and their oars when they are moving along.”

Then follow some undecipherable notes, and seven sketches, which Wagner has not attempted to reproduce (Wagner, 1936, p. 259).

The decorated paddles would appear to have been used for both skin and wooden canoes, One would assume that the painted canoes would have been the large named canoes (see “war” canoes, p. 340), since they evidently bore sib crests, yet the context suggests that they were the small baidarkas. The thongs across the deck of the latter, under which the hunter's gear is tucked, are similar to those on Chugach hunting craft.

Suría describes the two-hole baidarka (pl. 40) in another passage:

“The king or chief went about directing his canoes in one made of skin, shaped like a weaver's shuttle [referring to the graceful bifurcated prow of the Chugach type] with a deck of the same material in which there were two perfectly round holes by which they enter and leave, and which reach to their waist, where they tie them [evidently referring to the waterproof jacket which is tied around the manhole coaming]. In these canoes they pass from one island to the other, and when there are bad storms and heavy seas they get inside them and leave them to the force of the waves, and are very secure as water does not enter anywhere.” [Wagner, 1936, p. 248.]

That Chugach kayaks and baidarkas had the same shape in the 18th as in the 20th century is established by comparing the excellent sketch made by Captain Colnett in 1788 (fig. 25) with photographs taken in 1933 (Birket-Smith, 1953, figs. 18 and 19).

Dugouts of the 18th Century

Before attempting a description of more modern craft, we may review the observations made of wooden canoes seen at Lituya Bay and Port Mulgrave in the latter part of the 18th century.

Aside from the illustrations (pls. 35, 37) LaPérouse's report gives little information about wooden canoes at Lituya Bay in 1786. The explorer was much more interested in the remains of the single skin covered boat which he found there. The latter “did not resemble those of the country, which are formed only of the trunk of a tree, hollowed out, and heightened on each side by a plank, sewed to the bottom of the canoe” (LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, p. 390). These canoes were evidently large, for each hut or household of 18 to 20 persons had such a canoe, in which they came and went through the dangerous entrance to the bay, transporting not simply the members of the household but their stores of dried fish, household effects, and even the planks which formed the summer shelter (cf. p. 311). These canoes must have been seaworthy, yet LaPérouse writes that the Indians “…are very unskilful in the construction of their canoes, which are formed of a trunk of a tree hollowed out, and heightened on each side by a plank” (ibid., p. 406).

Plate 37, “Pirogue du Port des Français,” shows such a dugout with eight paddlers (four men to a side), three men in the stern and three women in the bow. The occupants appear to be sitting on seats, probably several thwarts in the middle; the man aft is certainly sitting on a raised seat set into the angle of the stern, like the triangular seats described for modern canoes. The planking forming the raised sides of the canoe is carried beyond the ends to form the long, narrow protruding bow and still longer stern, each pierced with two holes and decorated with painted faces, evidently crest designs. The same type of canoe, probably exaggerated as to beam, is shown in the illustration of the Indian camp, “Vue d’un établissement, etc.” (pl. 35).

This is the only type of dugout described or pictured; if there were smaller canoes used for fishing in Lituya Bay, they are not mentioned.

These dugouts seen by LaPérouse at Lituya Bay can almost certainly be matched by at least one of the varities of wooden canoe encountered at Port Mulgrave and in the vicinity during the next few years.

The canoes that met Dixon's Queen Charlotte in Monte Bay were described by Beresford as made “altogether of wood, neatly finished, and in shape not very much unlike our whaleboats” (Beresford, 1789, p. 167, quoted p. 125).

There were evidently two kinds of canoe here, for Beresford also writes:

“I before took notice, that their small canoes were neatly finished; the very reverse is the case with their large ones; they are made entirely of one large tree, rudely excavated and reduced to no particular shape, but each end has the resemblance of a butcher's tray, and generally are large enough to hold twelve or fourteen people” (ibid., p. 173). A footnote informs us that one of the small canoes was brought back by Captain Dixon and given to Sir Joseph Banks. If the specimen has not disappeared, how valuable it would be to compare it with Yakutat craft of a later period!

These larger canoes evidently did not have the sides raised by additional planking, and were apparently alike at each end. Although I do not know the shape of an 18th-century English butcher's tray, I would hazard that it resembles the long oval wooden “chopping bowl” of contemporary Maine. If so, the ends of the Yakutat canoe would have been simply rounded off and rounded up, rising only a little above the level of the gunwales, and the canoe would have resembled shovel-nosed craft used on rivers.

The Yakutat canoes did not compare favorably with Tlingit examples seen farther south: “The canoes here [Sitka area] are constructed in much the same manner as those at Port Mulgrave; but the large ones are finished in a more compleat and workman-like manner, and hold from sixteen to twenty people” (ibid., p. 190).

When Captain Colnett came to Yakutat the following year, 1788, he saw “three or four kinds” of wooden canoes (p. 130). Two of these varieties were small; two were larger. A small canoe which would carry only three or four men was like a “neat-built ship, Galley-fashion,” and probably corresponded to Beresford's small, neatly finished canoe. Colnett's phrase “galley-fashion” Professor Baird thinks means “sharp at both ends.” Howard I. Chapelle, to whom at Professor Baird‘s suggestion I submitted a draft of this section, has written (letter of February 9, 1965): “I would think this describes a long, low and rather straight top hull having fine ends and, perhaps, sides raised by plank from the stern to a few feet short of the bow—so the canoe looked like a galley.”

The other small(?) craft was described by Colnett as like “a half Moses dug out of a Log.” Again I am indebted to Professor Baird (letter of February 27, 1965) for the following information. “Chapelle (1960, p. 16) says: ‘The moses boat was a square-sterned rowing boat having marked rocker in the keel and great sheer, used originally in the West Indian trade as a ship's lighter to handle casks. These boats were also used in the Maryland and Virginia tobacco trade.’ Other sources add that the moses was broad and flat and very seaworthy.” Although none of the Northwest Coast canoes has a rocker in the keel or is really broad of beam all have considerable sheer (i.e. are highended), but only the Nootka canoe suggests a square stern. However the only canoe to which Colnett's description might apply is the type pictured by LaPérouse in Lituya Bay, for this had the gunwales raised and widened by the extra plank on each side, and these planks made an angle with the bottom log at the stern, which may have suggested the rocker. Dr. Baird concludes: “I can only speculate that Capt. Colnett merely means to say that the dugout canoe had the marked sheer of a moses boat but was only half as wide.”

One of the two larger types of canoe seen by Colnett at Yakutat was evidently an imported Haida canoe, described as “Queen Charlotte Isles built.” The other reminded Colnett, as it had Beresford, of “a Butcher‘s tray cut out of a solid piece of timber,” yet could carry 20 to 30 persons, plus their baggage.

Although Colnett thought the natives of Port Mulgrave were rather timid navigators, still they did not hesitate to go some distance out into the open ocean to follow or intercept his ship. One of these canoes carried 30 men, women, and children (p. 131). It had three poles set up like masts with bird tails and a piece of fur hanging from them, evidently signals that the occupants wanted to trade.

A few weeks after his departure, Ismailov and Bocharov were met at the entrance to Yakutat Bay by “two large wooden baidars. The sterns were much lower than the prows, which were high and pointed, and perforated with large round openings, and three smaller holes. In the middle of the baidars a pole was fixed, to the top of which sea-otter skins were fastened. Each baidar contained fifteen men….” (Coxe, 1803, p. 322; see p. 133.)

FIGURE 23.—Yakutat dug-out canoe and two-hole baidarka as sketched by Suria in 1791. (MS. sketch, courtesy Yale University Library.)

Evidently this was the same type of canoe which the illustrator for LaPérouse was attempting to depict, and this must also have been one of the kinds seen by Colnett, even though I may have been mistaken in the particular identification attempted.

There were also small canoes at Yakutat, for the natives visited the Russian ship “in large and small baidars with their wives and children” (Coxe, 1803, p. 328).

Although no Tlingit canoes at that time were equipped with sails, one wonders from the descriptions of the poles set up to display skins whether the canoes may not already have had a perforated thwart and bottom cleats to secure these poles, arrangements which could later have been adapted for stepping a mast with a sail.

From the narratives of Malaspina and Suría, and from the latter's sketches (pls. 40–43), we learn that the inhabitants of Yakutat Bay in 1791 had wooden canoes of several different sizes, although these are not well described. One kind pictured has a low prow and stern. These wooden canoes were apparently well made and cared for, in contrast to the natives’ summer huts (cf. p. 143). I also gather that some were small enough to be handled by a single woman or man; others, like the two that came out to meet the Spanish ships, carried many persons. Likewise, the visitors who came to Port Mulgrave in two canoes must have been numerous enough to have impressed the Spaniards as presenting a possible threat to the local inhabitants. This also argues for the existence of large, seagoing canoes, if not at Yakutat itself, then among their neighbors. Such information, however, only confirms what we already know.

I have already quoted the brief remarks of Suría that the Yakutat canoes were of different sizes, and that the “ordinary ones are of wood shaped like a weaver's shuttle….” This expression, which is also applied to the baidarka with bifurcated prow, suggests that the Yakutat people were using the split-prow hunting canoe. However, the illustration (fig. 23) shows a little canoe with an outline similar to that seen in Lituya Bay. The long projecting stern is pierced by three holes, the somewhat shorter prow by a single hole. Conceivably this is the prototype of the hunting canoe, for the two occupants are both paddling on the same side, just as this is paddled. Unfortunately the sketch is not very clear, yet one imagines that if the prow had been be-furcated Suria would not have failed to indicate this unusual feature. This small canoe may correspond to Colnett's “half Moses,” and be simply a smaller version of the big Lituya Bay canoes.

FIGURE 24.—Boats at Nuchek, Prince William Sound, illustrating the types used by the Copper River Eyak and Yakutat. Top to bottom, White man‘s dory, three-hole Chugach baidarka, two-hole Chugach baidarka, forked-prow sea-otter hunting canoe. (After Seton-Karr, 1887, p. 185.)

FIGURE 25.—Yakutat canoe and paddles, 1788, as sketched by Captain James Colnett. (Courtesy, Public Record Office, London.)

Unfortunately Suría says nothing specific about the larger craft, nor about which canoes were painted “with various marks and masks.”

Modern Yakutat Dugouts

VILLAGE CANOES

The simplest type of dugout made at Yakutat in recent years was the “village boat” (fig. 26a). It had a rounded bottom and rounded bow and stern, both ends shaped alike and neither raised much above the level of the gunwales amidships. It was believed by my informants that this type was postcontact in origin and had been copied from the boats carried by sailing vessels. These ships were so large that they were called ‘villages’ (’an); hence the name “village” canoe (’andéyagu), or more properly ‘ship's boat.’ These canoes were used for hunting and racing.

A native made a canoe of this type in the spring of 1953. It was 14 feet 8 inches long, with a maximum beam of 24 inches, and a maximum inside depth of 10 inches. It was carved from a drift log of yellow cedar, and was all of one piece, except for three thwarts and a strip of wood, 1 by 1 inch, nailed along each gunwale. The canoe was never properly finished, since the maker had intended to steam out the sides to give a greater beam. However, his sons had played with it and cracked it. I do not know whether all canoes of this type were as small.

FIGURE 26.—Yakutat canoes, a, ‘Village canoe,’ made in 1953. b, ‘Spruce’ canoe, c, Forked-prow hunting canoe, d, Heavy prow sealing canoe, e, Haida-type “war” canoe or ‘canoe's child.’ f, Nootka canoe. All prows are to the right. (After de Laguna, 1963, p. 223.)

Although the shape may well be modern, the canoe probably represents a modification of one or another type made earlier.

COTTONWOOD CANOES

The cottonwood dugout (duq, ’cottonwood’), formerly made at Dry Bay, had perhaps much the same shape as the “village” canoe, to judge from an informant's sketch and description. “My father used to make them…. Some of them are big. Lots of people go in them. The front end is just like the back. It can go both ways. He steamed it to make it; put hot rocks in the fire and put water inside the boat. Then he put the rocks in, and then he put boards across. He push them in. Then he put bigger and bigger ones in. He steam it…. The duq was a little wider than the canoes they use here [referring the Yakutat hunting canoe with a beam of about 3 feet]—a little bit bigger. To paddle, my father kneeled sometimes, and sometimes he sat on a box [hollow log stool]. Sometimes he made a piece called yeq [shelf-like seat] to sit on way in the back. The Haines people [Chilkat Tlingit] used to use cottonwood canoes, the same kind we call duq.”

Such canoes were intended primarily for river travel. This northern river type was sketched by Drucker (1950, p. 253). The small boats were undoubtedly the “cranky little dugouts having only a few inches of freeboard” (Robson, 1910, p. 169) used by the Dry Bay people on the Alsek (p. 85) and made in the interior to descend the river, as Glave and Dalton did, (p. 90). The larger cottonwood dugouts must have been very similar to the boats with each end “like a butcher‘s tray” seen in Port Mulgrave in 1787 and 1788. Perhaps these furnished the prototype from which the small “village” canoe was developed.

TLINGIT ‘SPRUCE’ CANOE

Another rather plain type of canoe, but somewhat larger than either of these round-ended craft, was the ‘spruce’ dugout (sit) (fig. 26b). This had a prow that slanted up in a straight line from the water, as did the stern, but these were apparently not made of separate pieces of wood(?) according to one informant. Some canoes of this kind were “4 fathoms” or 24 feet long, and could carry “lots of people.” Normally, there were six paddlers, two men sitting side by side on a thwart, and each paddling on his own side. Presumably there was a steersman in the stern. Emmons describes this form as the typical canoe, used for hunting, fishing and traveling. He specifies that the bow and stern were alike in shape, both slanting up above the level of the sides, and both fitted inside with removable triangular seats. The canoe was painted black outside, sometimes with a red stripe across the bow and stern, and it might carry a mast and sail. All of my informants identified a Hoonah canoe, photographed by the Harriman expedition in Glacier Bay in 1899, as a dugout of this type. A few of the same kind were photographed that same year at the sealing camp in Disenchantment Bay (pls. 72–74).

That this type of canoe was being made at Yakutat in 1874 is indicated by the model of one acquired by W. H. Dall at Port Mulgrave, presumably on the surveying expedition of 1874 (pp. 181–182). This specimen (pl. 105) originally had four thwarts pegged in; one is now missing. It is stained black with red at the point of the bow and stern. These are indeed alike, and the contour of the gunwales which steps down rather abruptly from bow and stern to the sides resembles the contour on both the large Lituya Bay canoe and the small Yakutat canoe sketched by Suría. This outline certainly suggests extra pieces at bow and stern, and it is difficult to imagine making a large ‘spruce’ dugout without adding something to the ends or sides.

This type of canoe would appear to be the Yakutat canoe “of medium size,” described by Abercrombie (1900, p. 396), and which definitely had added “square and high stern and stem pieces. Such a canoe is valued at from $40 to $60….” These observations were made in 1884.

Schwatka (1886, New York Times, October 3, p. 2) and Albin Johnson (1924, p. 102) both mention three sizes of canoe at Yakutat; the small hunting canoe (tÀyác), the “family canoe” which I assume is the ‘spruce’ dugout, and the large Haida “war” canoe. Of the medium sized canoe, Schwatka writes:

“The next sized canoe is what may be called the common Thlinket canoe…used throughout all Southeastern Alaska. It is larger and coarser looking than the true Yakutat canoe [tÀyác], and will hold one or two more persons [i.e, 5 or 6] and their effects before being equivalently loaded. They are planned fore and aft nearly on the same lines; as is usual with most Indian canoes, the prow piece projecting probably a little the furthest. The means of locomotion with the Yakutat and Thlinket canoes is always with the common paddle or with a light sail made of white sheeting, which is used whenever they can run before the wind, for they make no headway against it.”

YAKUTAT SEA OTTER HUNTING CANOES

Two very unusual canoes were made at Yakutat. Of these, the best known was the forked-prow hunting canoe (tÀyác) (figs. 26c, 27). The name is evidently Eyak, although it does not correspond to any word recorded at Cordova, even though this type of canoe was made by the Eyak of the Copper River delta (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 45–53, 550). This canoe was sometimes called the “sea otter canoe,” even though it was used for hunting any sea mammal in open water. It had an elegantly undercut stern which looked so much like a prow that it has confused many ethnographers. The bow, on the other hand, was carved with a V-shaped notch which left a keel-like foot projecting along the waterline below the prow. All Whites and natives who were acquainted with this type of canoe have testified to its swiftness and seaworthiness. The foot or keel on the bow held the canoe steady in rough seas or swift currents, turned aside small cakes of ice, and served to moor the canoe when pushed into a soft mud bank.

These canoes were carved from a single log, usually of spruce but preferably of yellow cedar (if a suitable drift log were found). While both bow and stern were slightly raised above the gunwales they were not made of separate pieces. The ordinary canoe was said to have been usually “three fathoms” or 16 to 18 feet long, and about 3 feet wide. It was intended for two hunters, although one man alone could manage it easily, or an extra passenger could be taken. Occasionally a “four fathom” one was built in which a whole family could travel. It was light enough to be carried across the short portages between the streams and lakes east of Yakutat.

The tÀyác normally had three thwarts, two set rather close together near the bow, and a third, slightly curved, midway between the second thwart and the stern. (However, this arrangement was not seen on most models.) In addition, there were detachable shelflike seats in the angles of the bow and stern. Normally the two paddlers knelt or rather squatted on two low hollow log stools, under which they kept their hunting gear. They paddled bidarka-fashion, first both on one side for two or three strokes, then on the other. No steering paddle was used—one of our informants explained that the forked prow prevented the canoe from sheering off when it was paddled on one side.

The outlines of individual canoes are said to have varied from maker to maker, and there were also supposed to be minor differences between canoes made at Yakutat and at the Copper River delta. However, there is little difference to be seen between models collected at Yakutat in 1874 (pl. 105), in 1880 (pl. 105), 1899 (pl. 105), and 1954 (pl. 106), and those obtained from the Copper River Eyak in 1884 (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pl. 11, 8), from Cape Yakataga in 1899 (LMA 2–19117), at Sitka in 1882 (PU J–410) and in 1899 (LMA 2–10869), and at Juneau in 1950. There is no evidence that the Sitka Indians made such canoes, although they were undoubtedly familiar with them. The specimens at Princeton University that were collected in 1882 look as if they had been made by children—from Yakutat?—at the Sheldon Jackson School; and the model from Juneau (pl. 106) was made by a Yakutat man. All of these models closely resemble photographs taken by Abercrombie of Eyak canoes in 1884 (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pl. 10), a sketch made by Emmons at Yakutat about that time, and photographs and sketches made by the Harriman expedition at a Yakutat sealing camp in 1899 (fig. 27; pl. 74) (cf. Grinnell, 1901, vol. 1, pp. 60, 140, 162).

Although no canoes of this kind are still in existence, I saw one being made at Cordova in 1933 (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pl. 9, 1), and several Yakutat informants have made them. Especially speedy models were formerly built for the Fourth of July races at Yakutat (see p. 559), the secret apparently being the shape of the bottom, particularly toward the stern. In the last canoe race a tÀyác was defeated by an ’andéyagu. In earlier times when the tÀyác was used for hunting, its main virtues were that it “sneaks around—just slip by on the water—don’t make a noise,” and that it was “fast and steady.”

Small models (kuwAt) of such canoes were made for little boys in which they could learn to paddle.

Aside from Abercrombie's description of forked-prow canoes among the Eyak, the first account of these hunting canoes at Yakutat is that of Lieutenant Schwatka (New York Times, October 3, 1886, p. 2):

“Among the Yakutat Indians, numbering probably some 200 souls, there are three kinds of canoes, quite marked and distinct in size and design from each other. First in order of their size, commencing with the smallest, is the Yakutat canoe proper, holding comfortably about two persons and their usual travelling effects, and especially the usual travelling effects of a Yakutat Indian—a blanket, and a dried salmon for each day's absence. Some of them are large enough to accommodate three or four persons well, but these are rare compared with the others. They are very light and graceful and go anywhere that a spoonful of water runs, as the two occupants jump out and with one each at bow and stern they almost bodily carry it over any obstacle. They are shaped in different designs at bow and stern, and at first sight seem to be paddled backward until one gets used to seeing them, when it appears the natural method. The bow has a sort of ram projecting forward into the water, which is represented by the lower half of the letter S, the top half, above water, being, of course, the part of the bow visible. The stern of the canoe is shaped the same as the bows of other wooden canoes, which, with the bow I have described, looking like the stern of an ocean steamer, gives the singular appearance of running backward to which I have alluded. Among the Yakutat Indians this kind of canoe outnumbers all the other kinds put together two to one, and, in fact, is the only native canoe, the others being importations from neighboring or distant tribes.”

Professor Libbey purchased one of these small canoes, which was used by the expedition, but unfortunately was not brought back to Princeton. The skill of the natives in handling this and other canoes is discussed on pages 343–344.

Albin Johnson (1924, p. 102) indicates that the “two-man canoes” were only 12 to 14 feet long; and Russell (1891 b, p. 80) reports that the smallest could hardly hold one man. While recognizing the excellence of Yakutat canoes, Cantwell (1890, p. 389) erroneously illustrates an elaborately painted tÀyác as a “Yakutat war canoe.” The decorations on the side are supposed to represent an eagle, and an eagle's head is on the paddle. As far as I know, however, these canoes were only painted black outside, with a red stripe around the gunwale, and sometimes red stripes down the sides.

FIGURE 27.—“Yakutat sealing canoe,” sketched among the iceflows of Disenchantment Bay, near the sealing camp above Point Latouche, during July of 1899. (After Grinnell, 1901, vol. 1, p. 161.)

HEAVY PROW SEALING CANOES

Even more distinctive was the special sealing canoe (gudiyÉ or gudiyí), designed for hunting among the ice floes at the heads of Yakutat and Icy Bays, and apparently made nowhere else in Alaska (fig. 26d). (The name may be Eyak.) It was already obsolescent when Lieutenant Emmons visited Yakutat in 1883, for he saw only small models. Informants born within the next decade said that they had seen them in use, and drew sketches (MJ and friends). I obtained a model made in 1954 by a man born in 1906, who said that he had based it on descriptions and on recollections of a wrecked canoe he had seen as a youngster. A very reliable and much older man said he had seen one used by Yakutat Chief George who died about 1902, and approved this model. It is, in fact, quite similar to a model obtained by Dall (in 1874?) as well as two others in the National Museum, both(?) obtained by the Harriman Expedition in 1899 (pls. 106, 107).

This sealing canoe was described as a small dugout, “two or two and half fathoms” or 12 to 15 feet long, and “six spans” or 3 to 4 feet wide, and was intended for one or two hunters. The stern had the same elegant shape as that of the tÀyác, while the bow was broad, “low in front, like a spoon,” and very thick, to withstand floating ice. Projecting from it was a short round post like a bowsprit, carved in one piece with the body of the canoe, the function of which was to fend off icebergs. On the inside of the prow was carved a small shelf, not made of a separate piece as in other canoes. There were two thwarts. (It should be noted that one of the models lacks thwarts, although these and the seats are suggested by red paint [pl. 107b]. Another has lost the forward thwart, and has a lashed-in rear seat [pl. 107a]. None of those in the National Museum has the prow shelf.)

In open water the canoe was paddled stern first since the sharp end made for speed, but as soon as floating ice was reached, the canoe was turned around. It was at this point that the hunter (ya’nAsnałcÍt) became bowman (ya’AdjEnEskU). He put down his ordinary paddle, slipped from the shelf on which he had been sitting, lay down in the bottom of the canoe, and took up a little paddle, so small that he could wield it with one hand, moving it silently through the water without lifting it between strokes. Meanwhile his companion (‘A igÉ), if he had one, squatted on a stool and steered with an ordinary paddle. The hunter in the bow often rested his chin on the shelf in front so that only the upper half of his face was exposed. Sometimes a cake of ice was placed on the bow shelf, or pieces of ice were piled around the hunter to conceal him. Both men wore sealskin clothing, including caps and long “ice gloves.” Sometimes the bowman pushed floating ice away or even paddled the canoe with his mittened hands, imitating the movements of a seal until he was close enough to harpoon or club the unsuspecting quarry.

According to the tradition reported by one informant, the sealing canoe was first built only by the original inhabitants of Icy Bay, who kept their canoes hidden in “Tabooed Lake” because they did not want others to learn about them. The ancestors of the Kwacqwan, however, coming to the coast, eventually discovered the secret, although the local people fought them (pp. 97, 241). No other informant mentioned this tradition or could explain the origin of the sealing canoe.

“WAR” CANOES

The other canoes at Yakutat were usually imported from the south. The largest was the “war” canoe, used during the memory of older informants for transporting family parties, or for trading expeditions to Prince William Sound, or to southeastern Alaska and British Columbia. On long voyages it was equipped with a sail. At an earlier period it was used for war parties, hence its common designation in English. The Tlingit name, canoe's child’ or ‘baby canoe’ (yakw yAdi), puzzled informants, since this was the largest type of canoe. I did not learn the exact size, but Russell (1891 b, p. 80) describes them as “graceful boats forty or fifty feet in length and capable of carrying a ton of merchandise with a dozen or more men. They have high, over-reaching stems and sterns, which give them a picturesque, gondola-like appearance.” This description fits the sketches made by Emmons and by one of my informants, and also a model obtained at Cape Yakataga in 1899 (LMA 2–19116) which my informants identified from photographs as a “war” canoe. The prow was high and undercut, and the curved stern was also elevated; both were built up of separate pieces (fig. 26e).

These large canoes were owned only by house chiefs and were therefore sometimes designated as “tribal canoes.” They were also called ‘named canoes,’ (łI-sayi yakw), since they had individual names, as did lineage houses. Like the latter, the names often referred to sib crests. Examples of these were Seagull Canoe (ketłyAdi yakw) of the Kwacqwan, Crane Canoe (duł yakw) disputed by them and by the Tł’UknaAdi, Backwards Canoe (kutagigi yakw) which belonged to a ałyI-Kagwantan chief at Strawberry Point on Controller Bay, and Halibut Canoe (tcał yakw) of the Sitka Kagwantan. In recent times the custom of giving such names was applied to motorboats, for one owned by a Kwacqwan chief was named for Mount Saint Elias (wae-ta-cA yakw), and a Tł’UknaAdi man has named his newly acquired gas boat “Mount Fairweather,” both of these mountains being sib crests. There was disagreement as to whether “war” canoes at Yakutat were decorated; some said that they had painted designs at the bow, probably sib crests, although others claimed that this was done only in southeastern Alaska.

Such large canoes were used for races (see p. 559).

It is difficult to determine whether any “war” canoes were actually made at Yakutat, certainly the best were of red cedar and were purchased from the Haida. No red cedar grows at Yakutat, and this area is almost at the western limit for yellow cedar (p. 31). Nevertheless, it is possible that some canoes patterned after those of the Haida were made at Yakutat, perhaps of yellow cedar or spruce, to judge from Abercrombie‘s observations made in 1884 (1900, p. 396):

“Although few of their canoes are equal in size or finish to those made by their congeners of the southern archipelago, the Yukutats have some excellent craft, in whose management they are remarkably proficient. Their largest canoe will carry fifty men. Very little ornamentation is noticed on them.” These large canoes were valued at several hundred dollars, while the medium-sized ones, which I have assumed were the ‘spruce’ canoes, were worth from $40 to $60.

Albin Johnson writes of the “war” canoes as if they were made at Yakutat, even though the only red cedar available would have been drift logs. After explaining how the Yakutat Indians made canoes (pp. 36–37), he adds: “The large canoes are usually made from larger red cedars and they are big enough to carry 25 men. They travel in them for great distances along the coast” (1924, pp. 102 f.).

On the other hand, Schwatka, who had such trouble trying to get a “war” canoe for his expedition (pp. 188–189), states that there were only two or three of these craft at Yakutat in 1886, and that these had been acquired from native Sitkan traders. He writes as follows:

“The third and largest canoe is foreign to the whole Thlinket tribe, being imported from the Hydahs, or Haida Indians, living in Northwestern British Columbia, and a few of them in Southeastern Alaska. From them they take their name, the Hyda canoe, although sometimes called the Thlinket war canoe, (from their capacity to hold so many warriors on a raid against another tribe), and more often spoken of among the white men as the ‘big canoes.’ Their huge prows project far to the front and high in the air, and are ornamented in black and red paint, with many barbaric and fanciful designs that would have to be illustrated by an artist to be thoroughly understood. They will hold from 20 to 50 persons, and I understand that in rare cases they have been known to exceed the latter number in capacity by half as many more. They used to be paddled altogether except when the wind was favorable for a sail to be spread, and a goodly lot of canvas they could carry but since the advent of the white man among them with the system of rowing small boats with oars this feature of civilization has been attached to the huge Hyda canoe, or at least to many of them, and probably adding to their swiftness of propulsion, but seriously detracting from their looks and aspects as viewed in the light of primitive and savage picturesqueness.” [New York Times, Oct. 3, 1886, p. 2.]

OTHER CRAFT

The other type of imported canoe was the red cedar ‘goose canoe’ (awAq yakw) so called because the long, narrow, beaklike prow resembled the head and neck of a goose. These Nootka-type canoes were made by the “West Coast Indians” of British Columbia (fig. 26f). “The people down in Southeast of Alaska, around Washington—that's where they come from. They call them “Flatheads,” T’owyat—that's their canoe. They used to come up here, sea-otter hunters, in the schooners. I saw some of their canoes.” This remark was made with reference to a photograph of a canoe model (LMA 2–19115). Another informant (MJ), shown a photograph taken in 1899 of the sealing camp above Point Latouche, explained: “That's my aunty's camp. I recognize this canoe—West Coast Indian canoe, awAq yakw. She's the only one got that kind of canoe, bought off a West Coast Indian. It's called that name because it looks like a goose.” (Cf. pl. 74.) The informant's aunt, łangusek, her mother's older sister, was married to Ned Doknakeen (Dok-na-kene, or Daknaqin) of Drum House, an important Teqwedi man. Apparently such Nootka canoes were always something of a novelty at Yakutat.

Bark canoes (łun yakw) were known to the Yakutat people—“just for across a small little creek, I think.” Probably such canoes were made only by the interior Athabaskans. In one version of the story of Łayakw, who visited Sky Land (kiwa‘a), he made a bark canoe in order to descend a river back to earth (see p. 877). It may be significant that this land above is conceived as very much like the interior.

Rafts (ànÁ) were made in emergency for crossing streams, especially on trips which had been made on foot into the interior. Rafts and fish racks were called by the same word, since both were ‘tied together’ (cf. Boas, 1917, p. 129).

A canoe roughly finished, “made in a hurry to go someplace,” or an old cracked canoe that had been patched, was called qùÁ, implying that it was stitched with roots. Possibly this term might also be applied to a bark canoe.

CANOE APPURTENANCES

The large canoes were equipped with sails (ISA), but this was only after contact with Whites. Such sails were said to have been of mooseskin, not matting (MJ), although they were later made of canvas. The sail was square, the inner edge fastened to the mast and the outer peak held up by a diagonal boom (or sprit). Lines from the outer corners were tied to the canoe. Presumably sails could be used only when the wind was astern, since the canoes lacked keels. The sail was easily dropped by unseating the mast. Emmons (MS.) reports that the mast was stepped through holes in two cross pieces, one above the other, the foot set into a chock in the bottom. Although he saw small canoes with one sail, and large canoes with two masts and two sails in southeastern Alaska, none of my informants mentioned two sails at Yakutat.

In 1888 Topham‘s expedition sailed from Yakutat to Icy Bay, a distance of 57 miles, in 9 hours. Two large Haida canoes and a small Yakutat canoe (tÀyác) carried 24 men and 16,000 pounds of goods. Williams (1889, p. 30) writes of this trip:

“Sailing in a large canoe is a most delightful experience; the craft seems to glide over the surface of the water without cutting it; this is owing to its very light draught; its great width, on the other hand, gives it considerable stability up to a certain point. If the Indians were taught the use of the folding centre-board, they could probably make their canoes go fairly well to windward; the best they can do now is to avail themselves of a beam-wind.”

The canoe paddle was called ’Àa. They were all made with a crutch handle or grip, usually carved in one piece with the blade. The paddles for the sea-otter hunting canoe (tÀyác yukÀáyi) had the grip scooped out only on one side, while those for larger canoes (sit yukÀáyi) had a wider grip hollowed out alike on both sides. Emmons specified that the paddles used for the tÀyác should be of yellow cedar, that they were longer and had narrower and sharper blades than those for other canoes. They were usually painted black with a diagonal red stripe across the blade. Such a paddle, made of spruce, and 60 inches long, was collected by Emmons at Yakutat (pl. 105). My informants said that paddles for “war” canoes were sometimes decorated with sib crests, but possibly those for smaller craft may have had similar decorations. Thus, the model of a paddle for a tÀyác which I obtained in Juneau was decorated with a carved eye on the blade, a design also used by the Eyak (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 50). A beautiful paddle, 60 inches long, and presumably for a tÀyác, was obtained by Thomas Riggs of the U.S.-Canadian Boundary Survey when he was at Yakutat in 1903. This is incised with a wolf design on both sides (pl. 105). For “war” canoes, a large paddle, “one fathom” long, or from 5 to 6 feet long, was used for steering. The small one-hand paddle for the sealing canoe in the ice was only 18 inches long and 6 inches wide at the blade. It was called ‘tiny paddle’ (’Àxá AtU), or gudiyÉ ’Àáyi.

In the smaller canoes, especially those used for hunting in the ice or pursuing the sea otter in open water, the paddlers did not sit on thwarts, but crouched in the bottom, half-kneeling, half-sitting on wooden boxlike stools (usiyIt, ’place for the feet’) and leaned back against the thwarts (yiagawu). A woman commented that: “They can’t sit on cross piece when it's rough or when they shoot. They sit on a box. They make it like that toolbox. They got carving knives, guns, shells, and everything they used to make in there.” “If you don’t use it [the stool], it‘s rocky,” said her husband. These stools were made of half sections of log, hollowed out on the underside, and were straddled by the paddler. They were less than 12 inches high and about 24 inches long.

All or most canoes also had removable triangular shelves (yeq), set into the bow and stern, except for the sealing canoe in which, according to our informant, the bow shelf was carved from the canoe log itself and was therefore fixed. These shelves served as seat and as places under which small gear could be stowed. The “captain” who steered a large canoe sat on the rear shelf (SJ). To judge by a photograph taken by the Harriman Expedition in 1899 (pl. 72), such shelves were sometimes heart shaped, and made of two boards fastened together with a cross piece.

The stern of the canoe was called ‘on its top’ (’Akik), presumably because this is “where the captain sits.” The bow is ‘on its head’ (’AcAkA), and the prow or cut-water ‘its shin’ (‘Ai).

Bottom boards (takA a, ‘bottom-surface planks’) or branches were laid in the bottoms of the canoes. Emmons’ notes indicate that these were often split trunks, rounded on one side, which could be used as skids when the canoe was beached.

The bailer (cín) was sometimes made of a hard curved piece of hemlock, shaped “just like a big wooden spoon,” or it might be a small spruce root basket.

On swift shallow streams like the upper Situk River, paddles were discarded, and the men stood up to punt with long poles (tsÁqA) (CW). To ascend the Alsek River the canoes were often hauled up with long lines, or portaged over the worst places. The small canoes used on the streams of the Ankau lagoon system and the rivers east of Yakutat were so light that they could be carried over portages without much difficulty, or slid along over the wet mud of the tide flats.

An anchor (cIénÀ), probably only a convenient boulder fastened to a rope, was sometimes used. Usually, however, the canoe was hauled up on the shore, because the great tidal range would make it difficult to moor a canoe so that it would not pound on the shingle. Perhaps the anchor was used only when fishing.

MAKING A CANOE

When making a canoe, the size was measured in “fathoms,” (wAt, wat), that is, the distance between the fingers of a man's two outstretched arms, or about 6 feet. “Half a human,” or one yard, is the length of one outstretched arm. Another measure was the length of one outstretched arm to the bent elbow (iy) of the other. Shorter lengths were measured by spans, that is, the distance between a man's spread thumb and middle finger. It was estimated that about 6 spans would make 4 feet.

My informant who had made the ‘andéyagu (p. 335) said that a man, with steel tools, could make a small canoe in a single day, from felling the tree to the finishing touches, short of steaming the sides. This estimate is fantastically short. He also said that he planned to make another dugout, and that he could do it in 3 days, which seems more reasonable. He would do most of the shaping in the woods, and drag the half-finished hull to the beach.

The implements used to make canoes were the small planing adz and the crooked knife, the latter being especially useful for the difficult job of carving the ends. In order to gauge how thin to adze the sides of the canoe, the carpenter would drill a series of holes through the half-finished walls and drive in pegs of the proper lengths. He would then adz down the walls from the inside until he came to the ends of the pegs. Drilled holes were also made in the sides and through the ends of the thwarts for lashing these in place securely. Water was boiled in the canoe by means of hot rocks in order to soften the walls so that the sides could be spread before the thwarts were inserted. When the dugout was finished, it was rubbed inside and out with hot seal oil, applied with rags, but even this did not prevent canoes from cracking. A black color was common on the outside, made by mixing powdered charcoal with the seal oil. Eyak canoes were similarly painted black outside (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 49).

Abercrombie described the making of canoes at Yakutat in 1884 which confirms the above account:

“The felled tree, when barked and raised into convenient position has marked upon it the outlines of its intended shape. The rough work is done with the ax. After the one side has been given its proper form, at intervals of every few feet, a row of very small awl holes indicates the extent to which cutting can be carried upon the inside. This is completed with a peculiar shipping tool something like the adze, but much narrower, with a slight hollowed blade set on a short handle at an acute angle. The finishing of the outside and the gunwales is done with a short, double-edged knife curved on the flat. By the aid of hot water the canoe is then spread and the stretchers placed in position. The addition of square and high stern and stem pieces completes the work.” [1900, p, 396]. [The photograph to which he referred was not included in the publication.]

Albin Johnson wrote (1924, p. 102):

“The Yakutat Indians make very good and practical canoes. They are known all over Alaska for their elasticity and their lightness in rowing…The canoes were of three kinds: war canoes, family canoes, and two-man canoes. In Alaska large, slender trees grow: spruce, cottonwood, and cedar. Most canoes, and the smaller ones, were made of spruce. The Indians make their own tools with which to make canoes, namely an adz, a crooked knife and a regular ax. A larger spruce tree free of branches is felled, and the canoe is formed and carved out with the adz from a 12-foot or 14-foot log. When the canoe is almost finished, it must go through a steaming process in this way: The canoe is filled with water, a number of stones are heated and thrown into the water, until it boils and steams and makes the canoe soft, after which it is easily widened and shaped. It takes an Indian a month to make a smaller canoe and it will last three years if it is cared for. One can see how they cover their canoes with blankets on sunny days in order to keep them from cracking.”

SEAMANSHIP AND CARE OF CANOES

If some of the 18th-century explorers were not very much impressed with the skill or courage of the Yakutat Indians in handling their canoes, this was not the case with Schwatka, Seton-Karr, Topham, Williams, and Russell, who came to Yakutat Bay 100 years later. Perhaps the difference was in part caused by the perfection of the sea otter canoe during this intervening period, and by profits from the fur trade which had enabled the Yakutat people to purchase superior Haida craft.

For example, the U.S.S. Pinta had taken Schwatka's party to Icy Bay, but it was difficult to land because of the surf. Lieutenant Emmons succeeded in landing them with the ship's boat, but Professor Libbey's little tÀyác was left on board. This was brought ashore by “‘Bear Hunter,’ our best Yakutat, who died a few days after from poison” (Seton-Karr, 1887, p. 66.) (cf. p. 193). His handling of the canoe is described by Schwatka (1891, pp. 867–868).

“His feat of landing the little canoe through the heavy surf was the prize act of that day's performance, and was witnessed both by those on land and those on shipboard. Many of the latter were old sailors who had ‘surfed it’ on almost every coast of the world where the surf beats and breaks, and they too pronounced it the ‘slickest’ piece of nautical work a mortal could do…. Approaching the first white-cap on the breaker, he steadied his little craft carefully until what must have appeared to him to be a favorable opportunity, though it was the very reverse of the large boat's choice, for he selected the biggest breaker, and, mounting its crest as it broke into suds around him, he maintained this position by lightning-like strokes of his paddle, the great breaker throwing him as if from a catapult, and landing his canoe in the seething foam that spread up the shallow, sandy shore. Half a dozen sturdy fellows seized the craft, and actually pulled it up to the dry sand beyond, while the Indian still sat laughing in the canoe, the inside of it as dry as dust.”

When Topham and Williams landed at Icy Bay in 1888, it will be remembered that they came in two large Haida canoes and a small Yakutat tÀyác (p. 195). The surf was not very heavy. The small canoe landed first because it was easiest to handle, and its crew (number not specified) stood ready to help the larger canoes. Then one of the heavily-laden Haida canoes came in on the crest of a big wave. Then men on shore rushed into the sea to seize its bow; the men on board jumped into the water up to their waists. The canoe had to be lightened of part of its load, however, before they could run it up on the beach, high and dry. The same procedure was used for the third, and although the stores did not become wet, they were piled in confusion all over the beach (Topham, 1889 b, p. 349).

In his expedition of 1890, Russell also used what I take to have been a “war” canoe, and also hired some Indians and their canoes. “Our large canoe behaved well, although heavily loaded. Sometimes the wind was favorable, when an extemporized sail lessened the fatigue of the trip” (Russell, 1891 b, p. 85). They landed on the west shore of Disenchantment Bay, where there was a surf running, and ice. To land their freight, they unloaded this, a few pieces at a time, into the small canoes, each manned by a single Indian, before taking the big canoes ashore. “The landing was effected by the aid of Indians in small canoes, with such skill as to prove them experienced surfmen. All of our baggage was carried through the fringe of floating ice and placed above the white line of breakers without serious damage.” (Russell, 1891 a, p. 873.)

On the trip through the Ankau lagoons and Lost River which Schwatka took with the Indian “Yeet” after his return from Icy Bay, he had an opportunity to experience the skill of the Indians in handling the small canoe on streams. In coming into Russian Lake, they shot through the rapids at full speed. When going through sea grass the paddles were used as poles

“…quite often scraping the canoe's bottom on that of the shallow salt-water creek [T‘awał] and its sides on those of the projecting stones. I never knew a canoe would stand so much….” [New York Times, October 26, 1886, p. 2.]

[They came to the “stone fish dam” across the creek (cf. p. 75)], “but in a break through the dam in the centre of it was a shallow cascade pouring over, probably enough to float a soup plate comfortably, and for this we made a rush, the impetus raising the bow high in the air and carrying us beyond the centre of our craft, which slowly fell forward, and with two or three vigorous digs of the paddles and each man as he passed the dam putting out both hands on the two sides on the stone and raising the canoe we glided into the water beyond, a sort of leap frog over it, so to speak.”

Farther upstream, when they came to a small shallow area (p. 75), instead of taking out all their belongings for portage, they left everything in the canoe.

“The canoe was dragged directly up the bottom of the rill, its own bottom covering hardly more than that of the canoe. It may be said to have been taken up by a series of pulls or ‘heavings’ of the crew, two of us being on either side and at each end. No sooner did the canoe settle than it completely dammed the little stream, whose waters filled up ahead and, flowing around it, partially floated it once more, and it was then that we were able to run it forward from 5 to 10 feet before the water ran out from under it and allowed it to sink once more on the bottom of the rill. This operation repeated quite often—for the stream, though small and shallow, was very swift, and thus ran more water than one would believe—allowed us to make about 75 yards in 10 minutes, making the first, the hardest, and most interesting of the many portages made on the trip.” [Schwatka compared the performance of the small canoe to that of the light-draught Mississippi River steamers] “crossing on the dew and following street sprinklers” [ibid.].

One of my informants remembers coming from Situk River to Yakutat along the sloughs, when the falling tide made it necessary for everyone, even the small children, to get out of the canoe and scramble over the mud while the men pulled the boat along (MJ).

Russell was impressed by the care which the Indians took of their canoes. “Not only were they drawn high up on the beach, out of the reach of all possible tides, but each canoe was swathed in wet cloths, especially at the prow and stern, to prevent them from drying and cracking. The canoes, being fashioned from a single spruce log, are especially liable to split if allowed to dry thoroughly” (Russell, 1891 b, p. 85).

The care of canoes can be seen in the several pictures taken by the Harriman Expedition at the sealing camp in Disenchantment Bay in 1899. Here, canvas, blankets, or sealskins in their stretching frames are thrown over the canoes (pls. 72–74).

If the landing places in front of the villages were rocky, the boulders were rolled aside to make paths or ‘canoe roads’ (yakw deyi), up which the dugouts could be dragged. Such a landing place can still be seen at the south end of the beach at the Old Village. Because there was not sufficient shelter on this beach, as there had been at the older site on Khantaak Island opposite, large canoes when not in frequent use were hauled up on a small island in the lagoon north of the Old Village. This island was called ‘Canoe Island’ (yakw ai) or ‘that on which the canoes stay all the time.’ (yakw ’AkA yAtEnà). “After they get through traveling from here to Southeast of Alaska, they haul the big war canoe up on that. Chief George‘s boat the same thing. They used to go over there, my mother and my aunts, and pick blueberries. It was a blueberry island. We run across those big war canoes, turned upside down. They haul it over there.” “They covered them with skunk cabbage leaves, with moss on top, or chopped branch off the tree” (MJ).

PRESENT-DAY CRAFT

Instead of dugouts the Yakutat people now use ordinary skiffs with outboard motors. Some men are skilled in making the large skiffs used for lifting gill nets. These have to be rowed because the stern is equipped with a roller for hauling in the net (pl. 102). In 1949 there were a few “canoes” used on the narrow sloughs and streams. These were small, narrow, flat-bottomed boats made of planks and were paddled like canoes (fig. 28). They could carry three, or possibly four persons; William Irving, Edward Malin and I were loaned one to explore Diyaguna’Et on Lost River. With the silting up of the streams between the Ankau lagoons and Lost River, even these modern imitations of the old canoes have since been abandoned. The favorite type of craft today is, of course, a larger boat with in inboard engine, although few men can afford a gas boat with a cabin. Such motorboats are used to take parties seal hunting, to gather birds’ eggs, and to seine salmon.

FIGURE 28.—Modern Yakutat “canoe.” The boat was approximately 12–14 feet long and 3 feet wide. The bow was pointed and the stern was shaped to take a light outboard motor. It held two men paddling, and two others sat amidship. (Sketch by Edward Malin in 1949 after a photograph.)

SNOWSHOES AND SLEDS

For travel and transportation in wintertime, snowshoes and sleds were used, perhaps more by the people at Dry Bay than at Yakutat.

At Yakutat, two types of snowshoes were made: a large type with rounded, up-turned toe, which was used for hunting, and was called djádjÌ, and a smaller kind with pointed toe used in breaking trail. The native name for the latter (ałułín) is said to refer to the fact that the two sides of the frame are brought together and tied side by side at the toe to form a point, not overlapped in a curve as on the other type. The larger type of snowshoe appears in a photograph of Thunderbird House at Yakutat, taken in 1918 or 1921 (pl. 215). Both of these varieties of snowshoes were made by the interior Athabaskans. I did not learn the details of snowshoe manufacture, except that men made the frames, and that either men or women might fill in the netting. This last was regarded as a very skilled job. The holes for the reeving line did not go all the way through to the outside of the frame. This line was put in, on the toe and heel spaces, when wet and was drawn tight, so that a “hook”(?) was needed to pass the webbing around it. It tightened still further when it dried. The fine webbing was probably made of babiche, and the coarse thongs under the foot of sealskin.

At Katalla and Dry Bay, the Eyak type of snowshoe was made. This had a two-part frame, with rounded bent-up toe, pointed heel, and two cross-bars, like the ordinary djádjÌ. However, there was no webbing at all in the foreward or rear spaces, only thongs across the central part under the foot (cf. Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pl. 8, 2). At Yakutat, also, “some people who didn’t know how to put the filling in, just had the foot part filled. The filling was made of sealskins” (MJ). This primitive type was probably the original form all along the Gulf Coast of Alaska until superior Athabaskan types were introduced from the interior.

My informants had never heard of solid plank snowshoes which the Copper River Eyak used for setting snares in order to prevent leaving the hunter's scent (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 56). Such snowshoes would be useful in the spring when wet snow would clog ordinary netting.

Sleds (ÁtayIt) were hand-drawn in former days. They were made with two wooden runners and with crossbars, but were not built up, and they were different from the so-called Yukon sled. Both the Yukon and Kutchin types were described by the Copper River Eyak, although their descriptions were not clear (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 55). I learned little about the former sleds at Yakutat except that they had “poles or handles” for pulling or steering (JR). I am not, however, sure that this pole is aboriginal; it is found on modern sleds. A few built-up sleds are still used at Yakutat. These are very long and narrow, with a rope over the shoulder for pulling and a gee-pole for steering. They are used for hauling firewood to the village, for fetching sacks of coal or cans of drinking water from the cannery, and for taking bedding and provisions to and from winter camps on the rivers east of Yakutat.

In former days people used to travel with sleds between Yakutat, Situk, and Dry Bay. Thus, when a potlatch was given by the Teqwedi for Bear House (or Bear Den House) at Situk about 1905, “the Dry Bay people walk all the way from Dry Bay. They pulled sleds and walked on djádjÌ.” (MJ) “I remember just before Christmas the women all come and they pack their packs on their back in front of Aunty‘s house in the Old Village. The Dry Bay people all got snowshoes on. The women were with their babies. Some carry the babies in their arms. Of course, they got sleds and djádjÌ. I seen them tight as a kite on snowshoes—with babies, too!…The men pull the sled.” (MJ)

Sled dogs were first seen when prospectors began to come into the country about 1890, or shortly after. About “20 years ago” [sic, as of 1954] an Indian at Dry Bay acquired two sled dogs, and two other men at Yakutat each obtained one. At present only one of these men still uses a dog to pull his sled when he goes to his hunting camp on the Situk River.

One man, who had lived on Controller Bay between 1900 and 1910, described how he obtained sled dogs:

“I was the only boy there. No one to play with. I got so lonely. Some White men, prospectors, would come through from Yakataga. They had dog teams with big dogs, bigger than huskies. One of them gave me two little dogs. They were just so big that summer, and next year they were big. They were smart. I made a little sled and I trained them. I raised them in English and Eyak and Tlingit. They would go to the right or to the left when I told them. When I cut wood I would tell them to take it in the house and pile it up. They would take it in their mouths and pile it up just like a person. And I could tell them to fetch a bucket of water.

“The surveyors would come through and 1 would rent my dogs to them for $5 a day. I would tell them: ‘You’re going to work for this man, make money for me. You stay with him till he's through.’ But I didn’t get the money, my mother got it. One dog was a brown dog. I called him Sport. The other one was Spotty.

“They took my dogs to the San Francisco World's Fair, and they brought them back again. That was because they would pile wood and fetch water, I guess.”

When the youth returned to Yakutat in 1910 he left his dogs with his uncle. Two years later he was badly injured and believed dying, so his uncle shot his favorite dog, perhaps so that latter's spirit could accompany his master's soul.

Even though the Athabaskans on the Copper River and the upper Alsek used dogs to carry packs, I heard nothing at Yakutat about such employment, and dogs were never so used by the Eyak (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 57). Unfortunately, I was given no information about the type of packs that men carried at Yakutat and Dry Bay.

TRADE

Introduction

The Yakutat people have been great travelers, accustomed to long journeys by canoe or on foot for purposes of hunting and fishing, trading, visiting relatives and attending potlatches, or warring on their enemies. Most trips combined several objectives. The natives of Yakutat and Dry Bay also received visits from others and acted as middlemen in many transactions. Although not as well equipped as the Aleuts with their skin baidarkas, Yakutat natives in the 19th century were noted among the Tlingit for their fearless and expert hunting of sea otter almost out of sight of land, and they seem to have been equally skilled as hikers and hunters in the high mountains. With their large seaworthy Haida canoes they also undertook long voyages, using certain high mountains “like a compass” by which to steer.

Even though their canoes in the 18th century were probably not as excellent as those used later, we nevertheless have evidence that they could cross the Gulf of Alaska. Thus, in June 1792, Indians from Yakutat with some Eyak allies made an attack on the Chugach, in which Baranov and his party became involved (pp. 158, 163, 164). Again, in the fall of 1805, after destroying the Russian fort, “eight large war-canoes” went from Yakutat to the mouth of the Copper River, and from there a war party went on to Prince William Sound, planning the destruction of the Russian post at Nuchek, under guise of trading with the Chugach (p. 175). At some undetermined date, perhaps in the middle 18th century, Tł’uknaAdi canoes from Gue on the Akwe River went southeast across the Gulf of Alaska, and all the way up Cross Sound, Icy Strait, and Lynn Canal, joining with their Hoonah relatives in a war with the anAtedi of Chilkat (pp. 273–275), even though tradition also records how one fleet of canoes was lost in Lituya Bay.

The extent of intertribal trade in the 18th century is also attested, not so much by the presence of iron at Lituya Bay and Port Mulgrave, since iron could be and was, I believe, obtained from drift timber, but by the objects of brass and the glass beads seen by La Pérouse and Dixon (pp. 116, 125). I have already suggested the possibility that the Chugach and Yakutat natives were seeking each other's furs, via middlemen, resulting in competition between Portlock and Dixon in 1787 (p. 126). Quite explicit is the report by Ismailov and Bocharov, the next year, that the Yakutat traded with the Chugach, Eyak, and Tlingit of Sitka or Chilkat. A Koniag and a Tlingit slave boy were among the goods so procured (pp. 133, 134). From their report, also, we are given the first clear evidence about the extent of Tlingit voyages, since the Russians encountered the Chilkat anAtedi chief, Yełak, who had come by boat with 150 persons, not counting their children, all the way from Lynn Canal to Yakutat. This is a longer voyage than that presumably undertaken by the Hoonah (and Dry Bay?) natives whom LaPérouse encountered in Lituya Bay, although it would not have required as expert a knowledge of local tides.

We should also note that by 1794 the copper shield which had been given by the Russians to a Yakutat chief in 1788 had already been given to a Tlingit chief (Sitka or Chilkat), and the Chugach captives seized on the raid of 1792 had also been traded south (p. 164). This same year, Vancouver noted that the Yakutat natives had already acquired “6 excellent muskets,” which may have come to them through intertribal trade (p. 156), or perhaps direct from Yankee(?) ships, since the Indians of Lituya Bay who had plenty of guns and ammunition said that a ship called there every year to purchase their sea otter furs (p. 164).

LaPérouse had felt that Lituya Bay was a “station for trade” (p. 122), as well as a center to which natives from various regions, probably Cross Sound to Yakutat, gathered to put up fish, to trade, and to gamble. Colnett also estimated that Port Mulgrave was not a place of residence but one to which the natives came from the south and east to trade (p. 130), which is just what they did when Malaspina's ships were anchored there (pp. 146–147). Although no Europeans explored the area, Dry Bay and the Akwe River must also have been an important trade center, for the story of QakewtE deals with the opening up of this area to Tlingit traders from Hoonah country, presumably initiating trade connections with the unsophisticated natives of the entire region (pp. 81, 90–91, 270–272).

Even the first Europeans to encounter Indians on the Gulf of Alaska found them accomplished traders, skilled in the tantalizing delaying tactics designed to stimulate the greed of the Europeans and also to prolong their stay, while it gave the Indians the pleasures of visiting the strange vessels and picking up what they could. These methods of barter and bargaining have been quoted from reports of Dixon's and Malaspina's expeditions (pp. 127, 143), and we have also noted the furs or bird tails hoisted on poles in the canoe, as a sign of peace and of a desire to trade, with which the natives signalled to Colnett and to Ismailov and Bocharov. Perhaps something of the same kind is held in the hand of the “captain” in the canoe sketched in Lituya Bay (pl. 37). The ceremonious approach of the native trading and welcoming parties, led by the chief and singing songs like guests coming to a potlatch, has been described (pp. 116, 141), as well as the ceremoniously “hostile” reception of native visitors (pp. 146–147). Whereas dancing and singing preceded the more formal type of trade—perhaps that conducted between personages of equal distinction—seizure of what was desired seems to have been Tlingit custom in dealing with inferiors, especially unana. This, taken with other factors, must be considered in connection with native pilfering of European vessels (pp. 119–120).

The readiness of the Yakutat people to manufacture goods especially for trade was noted by Malaspina, who was thus able to secure an extensive ethnological collection (pp. 143–144). This same characteristic resulted in the important trade in “curios” for tourists, carried to Sitka by native entrepreneurs, 1880–1900, (pp. 183–184, 191–192), and later sold at Yakutat in the early decades of the 20th century, as soon as steamers began to call at the new dock (built 1902). As described by Ella Higginson (1906, pp. 18–19):

“After Dundas [B.C.], this is the favorite point for the purchase of Indian baskets. The instant the gang-plank is out the squaws swarm silently aboard and squat along the decks, displaying their baskets, bracelets, rings, carved horn spoons, totem-poles, inlaid lamps, moccasins and other curios.

“The baskets are cheaper and the weaving—usually the ’twined Tlingit’—far superior to those at Sitka. Two or three men accompany the women to make sure that they are not cheated (Selah!) and all offers are submitted to these lordly and lazy creatures.”

The Yakutat people themselves seem to have been equally avid to acquire foreign goods, a fact known to other tribes or a trait generally characteristic of the Northwest, for the Koniag sea otter hunters with Purtov in 1794 traded off the articles of their own manufacture which they had brought to Port Mulgrave expressly for that purpose (p. 155). We are not surprised that the Yakutat natives, like so many others, wanted steel knives and axes, or iron they could shape into adz blades and weapon points, but what they desired next, as was noted by Malaspina, were articles of European clothing (pp. 143, 144, 147). Uniforms, above all else, were prized by their chiefs, and we have seen these dignitaries at Yakutat donning naval uniforms to welcome Captain Belcher in 1837, and Captain Nichols of the U.S.S. Pinta in 1886 (see pp. 178, 190). This interest in acquiring foreign costumes seems to antedate White contact, for LaPérouse‘s artist sketched Indians at Lituya Bay who seemed to be wearing the fringed tanned skin garments of the interior (pi. 38).

It is difficult to know exactly what items were traded in aboriginal times, although I believe that the Yakutat area was always noted for its seals, sea otters, strawberries, and seaweed, and that sealskins, seal oil, dried seaweed, and cakes of dried strawberries were exported. From the interior via the Copper River, and perhaps also via the Alsek, native copper was procured, as well as tanned moose and caribou skins, furs, porcupine quillwork, and such delicacies as spruce gum and soapberries. Some of the interior products, especially copper, were traded southward, in exchange for slaves, red cedar canoes, cedar bark mats, and fine carved ceremonial paraphernalia, such as dancing headdresses decorated with flicker feathers and haliotis (abalone) shell inlays. These shells, and also dentalia, obviously came from the south. Of local manufacture, Yakutat baskets, finely woven, were evidently in demand.

Other important items of trade were songs and dances, for all were eager to learn such foreign novelties. Sometimes instead of being sold, they were ceremonial given or simply taught to one another.

Intertribal trade remained important throughout the 19th century, especially since the destruction of the Russian fort, and perhaps other incidents, gave the Yakutat people a bad reputation which discouraged traders. While a few undoubtedly did venture to Port Mulgrave, we know nothing about them and can only speculate on the frequency of these voyages before 1880 (pp. 180, 181, 187). We do know, however, that in the middle of the century, certain Tlingit from southeastern Alaska, at the invitation or with the permission of the local chiefs, did come to Lituya and Yakutat Bays to hunt sea otter, and that these afforded opportunities for trade. No doubt the Yakutat themselves also made return visits to Hoonah, Sitka and other areas where they had relatives, and where they could dispose of their furs and other goods. The extent and character of this trade has already been summarized from information published by Tikhmenev (p. 177). It was probably this fur trade which brought to Yakutat the “Flathead” slaves whom Abercrombie was told had been acquired from the Kaigani (p. 185), and whom my own informants also mentioned (p. 216).

Abercrombie also reports, as of 1884, that the Yakutat people were accustomed to make “periodical trips” to Nuchek in Prince William Sound (p. 187). Here, of course, they came in contact with their ancient enemies, the Chugach. They evidently sometimes went still farther, for one of my informants reports that while the Russians still had a post on Kodiak Island, some Yakutat men traveled there and “got along fine with the Aleuts.”

For trade and travel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, informants’ memories can supply many details. It is not always possible to assign dates to what they report, for some statements refer to conditions in late prehistoric and early historic times.

Travel and Trade With the West

From personal reminiscences and other accounts, I gather that there had always been considerable travel back and forth between Yakutat, the villages of Cape Yakataga and Kaliakh River, Controller Bay, and the Copper River delta. All of these Eyak, or formerly Eyak-speaking communities were linked through intermarriages, which meant, of course, that visitors from one would be welcomed at homes in another village, and would also be permitted to hunt, fish and gather berries, because they were related to the owners of the territories. In this fashion, as well as through trade and gift exchanges, visitors might secure varieties of furs and food not available at home.

After the Russian post at Yakutat was destroyed in 1805 and before trading schooners made regular stops at Port Mulgrave or before the first store was established in the Old Village in 1886 (after an unprofitable venture in 1884), the nearest White trading posts were at Sitka, and at Nuchek in Port Etches in Prince William Sound. Fort Constantine and Helen had been establishd at Port Etches by the Russians in 1793, and after the purchase of Alaska the store was taken over by the Alaska Commercial Company. The last inhabitant of Nuchek died in 1930 but, some time before that, Cordova on the mainland had become the principal town and trading center in the area. This White town was adjacent to an Eyak village. At one time the Alaska Commercial Company had a post at the Eyak settlement on Cape Martin, but this was already abandoned at the time of Seton-Karr‘s visit in 1886. About then, and later, there were short-lived posts or White establishments at “Kayak” on Wingham Island, at Katalla just west of Controller Bay, and at the Eyak town of Alaganik on the Copper River.

To all of these places, the people from Yakutat made regular trading trips. Here they not only visited their Eyak relatives, but met the Atna Athabaskans who came down the Copper River from Taral and Chitina to trade at Alaganik, Nuchek, and Cordova. I have already noted that these people were regarded by the Yakutat as relatives, because the ancestors of the Kwacqwan had come from Chitina. A similar relationship was felt to link the Dry Bay people with the Southern Tutchone of the upper Alsek River, although the actual connections between the two last groups were closer and more regularly renewed. Still, the attitude of the Yakutat and Dry Bay people toward the Athabaskans was (and is) in contrast to that of the southeastern Alaskan Tlingit (pp. 213–214). Direct relations with the Atna were established, or restored, when some men from Yakutat went to work in building the Copper River and Northwestern Railroad, which formerly linked Cordova, Chitina, and the Kennecott copper mines (1907–33). According to Atna informants at Chitina and Copper Center (1954, 1958, 1960), these coastal peoples were received as honored relatives from the more sophisticated outside world, since some Atna could boast Tlingit ancestry. The railroad also facilitated Atna visits to Cordova, where friendly intercourse between Atna, Eyak, and Yakutat was continued. It may be significant that in 1958, Tlingit emissaries from the ANB visited Copper Center, claiming relationship by calculating moiety or sib equivalence, and it is here that the first (?) interior branch of the ANB was established.

Yakutat trade with the Chugach and with the Atna was usually carried on through the Eyak as middlemen, and seems to have been prehistoric in origin. What was obtained from the Chugach is uncertain, for our informants speak of them only as enemies. However, we do know from the walrus ivory objects which Lieutenant Emmons and Professor Libbey secured from shamans’ grave caches at Yakutat and Dry Bay, that these items must have originated north of the Alaska Peninsula, where the walrus is found, and would therefore have passed through several hands, including those of the Koniag or Tanaina and the Chugach. Some of the ivory beads, pendants, charms, and wands were undoubtedly carved by the Tlingit from raw ivory; others are incised with typical Eskimo designs (pls. 170, 171, 172, 173, 182, and 183).

We have more information about what was obtained from the Atna.

“We meet at the mouth of the Copper River every summer,” said an informant. “We go in canoes to Alaganik, or sometimes to Eyak [not far from the modern town of Cordova]. The Chitina people didn’t own Alaganik, but they came to meet us. They bring down furs, and copper, and chewing gum—from interior spruce, I think…. They sell it to us.”

Objects made of native copper, probably obtained in this way, were found in the late prehistoric site on Knight Island in Yakutat Bay (de Laguna et. al., 1964, pp. 87–88). Other products from the Copper River country were tanned mooseskins and beaver pelts. The chewing gum, said to be pinkish or purplish in color, was sold in balls as big as a man's two fists held together.

Another informant said of these trips to meet the Atna:

“At this time of year [June] they used to go up to Copper River, then come back in August. They used to fish for ivory worms [dentalia] at Copper River. A cape decorated with these is worth five slaves.

“They get them from the Copper River. They got places where they grow, in the lakes. The Copper River people got them, trim their clothes with them…. They are different sizes, but all come matched. In 1901, no, in 1902, I see the capes, trimmed with sea otter skins.” A woman (MJ) listening to her, muttered, “Cost slaves, slaves, slaves” referring to the dentalia.

The informant is obviously mistaken as to the source of dentalia, for they are known to grow only much farther south, in salt water, where the Nootka used to fish them for export. However, it is quite possible that dentalia did reach the mouth of the Copper River, after having been traded into the interior from the south, perhaps passing along the trade routes linking the upper Taku with the Tanana and Copper Rivers. Certainly the Athabaskans of the Tanana, Yukon, and Copper Rivers had ornaments of dentalia.

The mouth of the Kaliakh River, where the ałyI-Kagwantan had their principal village, was also an early trading center. By the route from the Chitina River, over the mountains and across the icefields, and down the Duktoth River (pp. 100–101), native copper in the form of rough bars was reportedly brought to the coast. My informants believed that it was the purchasers who beat it into “coppers” (see p. 353), bracelets, rings and other ornaments, knife blades, arrowheads, and barbed points for sea-otter harpoon arrows (JR et al.).

During the 19th century, trips to the westward offered the Yakutat people opportunities to acquire beaver skins through trade or hunting. The territory of the ałyI-Kagwantan was said to have been especially rich in beaver, whereas these animals were either lacking or very rare in Kwacqwan territory around Yakutat and Icy Bays. On these trips, the Yakutat also hunter sea otter, of course, for both sea otter and beaver pelts were standard articles of trade. On voyages to the post at Nuchek, the Yakutat Indians not only bought beaver skins but Russian trade goods, part of which they sold to the Tlingit in southeastern Alaska. On their trips to the west the Yakutat people also carried trade goods obtained from the south to exchange for furs. Such trips were made every summer, and some would stay all winter with their relatives at Kaliakh River. Parties from Yakutat usually set out for these western settlements after the return of expeditions from Dry Bay to the interior, and probably carried Athabaskan articles obtained from the Dry Bay traders.

Travel and Trade With the Interior

Expeditions from Dry Bay up the Alsek River to Southern Tutchone country were made chiefly by the TłukwaAdi and their CAnkuqedi spouses. The difficulties of this trip, lining up the canoes, and portaging them to avoid the Alsek Glacier which formerly blocked the river, have already been described (pp. 85–90). This journey is said to have been made every fall. On the way up, the people would hunt and fish, hanging their fish to dry over winter. After spending the winter in the interior, they came back in the spring before the summer melt floods. The journey up the Alsek was also made in winter on foot, when the river was frozen.

The journey downstream was by canoe, and cottonwood dugouts were made or procured in the interior by those who had come on foot. We have followed the exciting descent made by Glave and Dalton in an Indian canoe in 1890 (pp. 203–204), but how much more perilous it must have been when the glacier spanned the river, and the people donned their best clothes for fear they would drown, remaining silent as they passed under the bridge of ice! Safely below, everyone sang and the ice behind them broke in response to their happiness.

From the head of navigation, trails led to Nuqwa-’ík, to Weskatahin (near Old Dalton Post), and to Klukshu, a summer fishing camp on the headwaters of the Alsek. From here, there were trails running northwest to villages on Kluane Lake and White River, and north to Fort Selkirk on the Yukon itself. Other routes led eastward to Teslin and Tagish country (see also pp. 88, 90). People from Dry Bay sometimes walked all the way to Dawson. To cross the Yukon, and presumably other large streams, rafts were used (cf. pp. 248–249).

The famous Chilkat “grease trail” led southwestward from the villages of the upper Alsek over the pass and down the Klehini and Chilkat Rivers to Klukwan and Haines on Lynn Canal. It was over this route that the first CAnkuqedi were supposed to have migrated from Chilkat country into the interior, and thence to Dry Bay (p. 224). This same route was followed by the slave sent by the Chilkat chief, Yełak, with gifts of food and tobacco to his father-in-law at Dry Bay (p. 274). The original trail from Dry Bay to the Chilkat country was said to have been pioneered by a TłukwaAdi Dry Bay man, Yełida, who went to Chilkat for a CAnkuqedi wife. This was both long and dangerous for it passed over a glacier. Later, the children of this couple found the new and better trail between the Chilkat villages and the upper Alsek. This went past uA a locality on the present Haines Cut-Off Highway. Later, the Drum House Teqwedi from southeastern Alaska are said to have come over this route (p. 226).

Before Jack Dalton and the Klondike prospectors opened this trail to White travel, it was used by the Dry Bay people. “utcda used always to go up inside and go to Chilkat. He would walk to Chilkat and paddle back to Dry Bay [via Lynn Canal, Icy Straits, etc.]. Those unana walk fast.”

There is some indication that native copper, presumably from deposits on the White River, was brought down to the coast at Dry Bay. At any event, it was sufficiently common at Nuqwa-’ík on the upper Alsek for one chief to have been reputed able to equip his house with a copper door, hence the name ‘Master of Copper’ (TInna ati) (cf. p. 89; field notes with Catharine McClellan, Klukshu, 1954).

Other interior goods brought down the Alsek River included white marble for dolls’ heads, beautifully tanned skin garments decorated with porcupine quills, groundsquirrel robes and other furs, perhaps rare feathers, and soapberries in birchbark boxes. It was these goods that made trade with the Dry Bay people so profitable for QakewtE and for the Hoonah who followed him. Athabaskan tanned skin is still valued on the coast, and our Yakutat friends were delighted to take advantage of Dr. McClellan's connections with the Southern Tutchone to exchange sealskins for tanned moose hides; the Athabaskan women were equally pleased with the trade.

These interior peoples also visited Dry Bay, and there were many intermarriages between them and the coastal people, as well as trade partnerships. One interior woman who married a Tł’uknaAdi man at Dry Bay was Dúhàn, from Nuqwa-’ík. She was evidently an aristocrat, for her name is still (1954) remembered by the Southern Tutchone at Klukshu. Another Dry Bay man obtained a wife from Whitehorse. One high-class class TłukwaAdi woman from the interior, named YAqasawuxíx, was the great-great-grandmother of the father of one of my informants from Dry Bay.

Like the Chilkat Tlingit, who also went regularly into the interior, the Dry Bay people, and especially the TłukwaAdi, were noted as hikers. “The unana taught them how to travel. They‘re great travelers. Nothing to do but walk around.” (MJ) Whereas Yakutat people usually went to Dry Bay by canoe along the inland chain of lakes, lagoons, and sloughs (cf. pp. 71–72), the Dry Bay people regularly walked to Yakutat, following along the beaches in summer, and in winter going farther inland over the frozen lakes, covering a distance of 50 miles in 2 days (MJ). Parties including women also walked to Lituya Bay, an equal distance from Dry Bay.

Jack Reed (1880–1953), born at Sitka but married to a Yakutat woman, had traveled in the interior, over the old trail from Haines to Klukshu, apparently with Chilkat trading parties, and also over the Chilcoot Pass from Skagway as a packer for White men during the Dawson Gold Rush. He told me:

“The Chilkat people get ready to trade. That's when they take pack trips—in the spring, when the snow is still high in the woods. There are lots of mountain goats in the woods. The young men go ahead on snowshoes. ‘What's that make a hole in there?’ [they wonder]. It's a stone house…. There is a big flat stone [set up on three others], just like a post, about 5 feet high. It looks as if it had been built. [It was apparently a boundary marker set up when the Russians and Canadians were negotiating over territorial rights.] The [mountain] sheep stay there in winter. The djinuwu [mountain goats] are just the same as people. If they get tired, or it rains, they sleep inside…. There are lots of goats, five or ten in there. They kill them all.”

He called this place “Stone House” or “Sheep Mountain” (or in Tlingit, etłuk or wAdAtsíkàni tatukw), and said that it was “one day's travel from Skagway.”

The prospectors who were building boats on Lake Bennett would pay $40 for the transportation of two 100-pound sacks of flour from Dyea near Skagway over the Chilcoot Pass. Most natives were strong enough to carry both sacks at one time, but my informant could not do this. Somethimes he packed a 50-pound sack to Whitehorse. I do not know whether any other men from Yakutat did such work.

Travel and Trade With the South

Aside from overland journeys to Klukwan and Haines in Chilkat country, all other trips to southeastern Alaska were made by big “war” canoes. Since it was apparently the Tlingit who initiated trade between southeastern Alaska and the Dry Bay-Yakutat Bay country, and who were carrying it on in the latter part of the 18th century—witness the Chilkat chief, Yełak, at Yakutat in 1788—it is not perhaps surprising that the TłuknaAdi of southeastern Alaskan origin were reputed to be the best seamen, addressing the breakers as their friend. “TłuknaAdi used to go way down to Vancouver and way up to ’Iq hini [Copper River]. Those people always go like that.” They were the slave traders.

The TłuknaAdi uncle and older brother of one woman used to go down to southeastern Alaska, to trade seal and sea otter skins and preserved berries for trade goods and objects of native manufacture. She spoke as if these voyages were common. Presumably at an earlier period they would have carried down native copper. “They have a westerly wind going down—got sails. Young husky men and big paddles” (MJ). As a young woman in 1900 or 1901 she went with a party to Sitka to attend a potlatch. “We travel in a big canoe. That's what we got war canoes for. They got sails and all the provisions—one sail. I see it when I was a young girl. When there is a westerly wind, they pitch up the sails and come in quick. We go up to Tłaayik, and hoist the sails, and we don’t have to paddle. The boys get so played out.” (MJ)

Yakutat was, of course, also visited by canoes from southeastern Alaska, especially those of the Tł’uknaAdi from Hoonah or Sitka. The latter used to “come up this way in a big war canoe…in summer time, in June…. Maybe they stay here for one year and then they go down again.” Sometimes they brought along members of other sibs as passengers “because their canoes are too big.” It was in this way that the Tł’UknaAdi and their relatives, the Kosedi, were said to have become established in the Dry Bay area.

The trade relationships of the 18th century were preserved a hundred years later, for an informant reported that her Teqwedi grandfather, łuso, used to trade with a anAtedi chief, Yełak, from Whale House at Klukwan. Of this same grandfather she also said: “My grandfather used to go to Southeast of Alaska by canoe—in a big canoe—to trade where the big slaves, the Tsimshian and Haida, used to come from” (MJ).

Not infrequently voyages were made to Port Simpson, Old Metlakatla and Prince Rupert on the northern coast of British Columbia. “People from Yakutat used to go in canoes to Fort Rupert to trade furs. It took 2 months for the trip. There were 10, 12 men in a canoe. They didn’t sleep for 2 days off Cape Spencer.” (JR) It will be remembered that this is the dangerous head-land at the entrance to Cross Sound, near which there are no safe landing places (cf. p. 16). Still longer canoe voyages were made to Vancouver, Victoria, or even to the United States.

I do not know exactly what was secured in the south, although “Canadian-made” articles, that is, Hudson's Bay Company goods were especially prized. These included chests, blankets, large porcelain dishes (actually washbowls) and other dishes, large pearl buttons, cloth, silk kerchiefs, and dyed chicken-feather cockades to wear on the head at dances. Glass beads, silk dresses, guns and ammunition were also mentioned.

From the Tsimshian at Metlakatla who were evidently middlemen and well as craftsmen the Yakutat people secured red face paint, (łéw) flicker feathers (kunt’awu), and dentalia (tae), as well as handsome boxes, rattles, masks, headdresses, and so on of Tsimshian manufacture, and also Haida war canoes of red cedar (MJ). On these trips, too, the Yakutat purchased slaves: “Flatheads,” Haida, Tsimshian, and southern Tlingit in origin.

“The Haidas were the ones who captured slaves. The Tlingit merely bought slaves, at least for the most part. The ones who brought the slaves up here [Yakutat] on such a long journey were the ones who made money. They bought the slaves cheap in the southernmost Tlingit area, and when they reached Yakutat sold the slaves for a high price. The ones who got slaves were the Haida and the Tsimshians…. Some of the slaves were brought from the Columbia River, were flatheads, and talked a language related to Tlingit [sic].” [Jack Ellis to Harrington.]

The Yakutat traders appear to have learned some Chinook jargon, as well as a few words of Tsimshian. Tsimshian and Haida songs were also brought back to Yakutat.

I have noted (p. 348) that southeastern Alaskan Tlingit used to come to Yakutat and Lituya Bays to hunt sea otter. A little later in the 19th century, Tsimshian Indians in their canoes came to participate in the sea otter hunts at Icy Bay and off Cape Yakataga (cf. pp. 284–286). Schooners also brought “West Coast Indians” and the “Washington Indians” known as “Flatheads” to hunt seal and sea otter. Still later, Tlingit from Juneau and Sitka were joining their Yakutat friends at the sealing camps in Disenchantment Bay (p. 68). All of these contacts offered opportunities for trade, as well as for gambling, and learning each other's songs. Some songs were purchased from the Tsimshian at this time, and the latter also bought Yakutat songs (pp. 571, 575). The Tsimshian, moreover, gave away some of their songs as a friendly gesture after the quarrel over Chief George's sea otter.

The seal hunting at Yakutat was partly a commercial enterprise, just as salmon fishing is now, for the seal oil was sold to White men, as were the skins. One woman reported: “My father and uncle and brothers used to come home with a load of seals. They lined them up on the beach. If there's small ones, I claimed it. Then they were 25 cents apiece, and 50 cents for the big ones. And half the time you don’t sell it. A big war canoe come up from Sitka to buy the sealskins.” (MJ) Or, again, “Just think, they paid only two bits [25 cents] apiece for skins at that time. The old storekeeper down in the village buy it.” (MJ)

Of course, the sea otter pelts were sold to the traders; they were far too valuable to be kept.

Of the trading parties from Sitka in the 1880's, my informant also said: “They come up here and trade for seal oil and preserved berries and sealskins, and skins of all kinds—just so they can get it from Yakutat. Just like seaweed—they got it in Southeast of Alaska, but Yakutat is best.” (MJ)

Even today, there is still quite a bit of trade and gift exchange between Yakutat and southeastern Alaska. Almost every Yakutat woman who makes moccasins for sale has bought some beaded “tops” (insteps of felt) from friends or relatives in the south. One Yakutat woman who regularly visits a relative in Juneau, not only takes plenty of native food with her, but sends half of what she preserves. This includes dried black and ribbon seaweed and dried cockles. Another Yakutat woman has a “relative” at Klukwan from whom she hopes to get dried mountain goat meat in exchange for seaweed.

Values in Exchange

Most or all aboriginal trade was carried on between relatives, or between trade partners, who, if not actually related, were considered as quasi-relatives. So many exchanges were made in the form of gifts between these persons, in which the recipient felt honorbound to “pay double price,” that information about these does not give us a true picture of less ceremonial forms of trade. Thus, we remember a war started because the Teqwedi chief, Daqusetc, failed to pay his Tł’uknaAdi father, Deudu’u, a slave in return for the dress which his father had given to the wife of Daqusetc. The Teqwedi were said to have considered this an exorbitant price (p. 262).

It seems impossible to secure any idea of the relative value of goods, for anything which my informants knew had been formerly prized was apt to be considered as “worth one slave,” or “cost one slave.” This price was suggested for a prehistoric bracelet of native copper (de Laguna et al, 1964, fig. 19, a, b, d), a piece of copper big enough for a sea-otter arrowhead, a piece of iron from drift wood, or a necklace of glass and brass beads (MJ and six others). More specific was the statement that when Chief Yaodaqet cut a piece of copper, 2 by inches, from the handle of his Russian copper kettle, he sold it for two silver fox furs. This piece was just big enough for the seaotter harpoon arrowhead. The only equivalence that seems to emerge from all the various statements is that a big sea otter skin was at one time worth one slave.

Another definite statement about an exchange was to the effect that a TłukwaAdi woman of Dry Bay obtained a hair ornament from a rich girl who lived at Lituya Bay. The hair ornament was made of beads and dentalia, lined with Canadian cloth, and was said to have been made by “Flatheads and Tsimshians.” For it she gave cross fox and marten skins.

We also know that at one time the value of guns was very high. “Lots of places for one rifle you have to pile up these skins, one, or one and a half, or sometimes twice the length of the rifle.” “There used to be lots of [muskrats] around here, but when they started to trade, they trade for rifle. They pile them [the skins] up even with the rifle.” This was the price exacted by the Chilkat traders from the Southern Tutchone, according to informants at Klukshu. I do not know whether the Yakutat man is repeating tales of such trade, or whether Tlingit middlemen once exacted the same price from natives at Dry Bay and Yakutat.

It was not until about 1885 that the natives at Yakutat became generally acquainted with money. This was in silver and gold, not paper, the smallest coins being usually a quarter or a dime. Hardy Trefzger (1963, pp. 23–24), who came to Yakutat in 1911, said that when he helped Beasley in the latter‘s store, the natives would have to buy each item separately, buying and receiving change for it before making the next purchase. This was because, Beasley said, their arithmetical calculations were limited to what they could count on their fingers. (See, however, more sophisticated counting devices and calculations, p. 801). Their regular purchases consisted of small amounts at a time of rice, baking powder, sugar, tea, and kero-sine, 50-pound sacks of flour, and shot, powder, and caps for their guns. Their clothes were made chiefly of outing flannel and calico. Money was earned by selling hair seal skins to Beasley for 50 cents each; the women worked in the cannery and sold baskets, beadwork, and moccasins to passengers on the steamers; the men fished for the cannery, trapped and sold furs, and in winter also cut ties for the railroad and firewood for the cannery (ibid. p. 84).

Yet in 1919 old Sitka Ned and his wife were so wealthy that they were delighted to secure from Trefzger a small fireproof safe in which they could keep their money (over $5000 in gold and silver coin, and a few bills), and the many rings and bracelets they were holding as collateral on loans made to other natives (ibid., p. 85).

Coppers

In southeastern Alaska and British Columbia the most important items of aboriginal trade and ceremonial exchange were plates of copper (tÍnna). Yet Yakutat informants did not mention these as having been used at local potlatches. “Coppers” were said to have been shaped from lumps of native copper obtained from the Atna. None of my informants had seen any (except possibly in a museum), although they could sketch and describe the traditional sizes and shapes. One man said that he had been shown a wooden model of a “copper,” made by a man who had been born in 1860.

At Yakutat, I was told that “coppers” were apparently not made in the shape of a shield, the traditional form farther south, but were shaped “like bow ties.” That is, the plate was narrowed in the middle, the two sides flared out, and the ends, of equal or almost equal width, were bluntly pointed (fig. 29). There was a line across the narrow middle, and sometimes a longitudinal line at right angles to this that ran down the center of the “copper” from end to end. The plate was ornamented with painted designs, presumbly crest figures. This outline is now used as a pattern for beadwork on moccasins (MJ). The actual shape of the coppers, however, seems to have been traditional to judge from amulets made like miniature coppers (pls. 136, 178).

Coppers were made in more or less standard sizes. Although each of three informants mentioned that there were only three sizes, four separate terms were given. The smallest was called a ‘baby copper’ (tínna yAti), although the informant did not know its size. It was, I believe, the same as that called ‘human hand break’ (qa djI ł’i), and which might be assumed to be the length of a man's hand from fingertips to wrist. However, the informant translated the native term as “right-here-the-break” and said that the copper reached from the fingertips to the inside bend of the elbow. Again, this size should have been that called ‘man's elbow,’ (qa Íy), yet I was told that this reached to the armpit. The largest copper of all, ‘one's face it-pushes-away,’ (qa yA kUnAłItAq), reached from the fingertips of the outstretched arm to the averted chin. This size was worth 8 or 10 slaves (JR et al.).

FIGURE 29.—Traditional shape of the copper at Yakutat, from sketches by John Ellis, Sampson Harry, and Minnie Johnson.

Rights to the Humpback Salmon Stream were purchased by the ancestors of the Kwacqwan with sea otter furs and coppers or with a large canoe hung with seven coppers on each side, each copper worth 10 slaves. Swanton's informant had them buy the land with only one copper, worth 10 slaves (p. 241). The Drum House Teqwedi bought their lands at Ahrnklin River with one copper, as long as from the finger tips to the chin, worth 10 slaves (p. 252).

One informant told how a Hoonah woman had offered a copper belonging to her son hoping not to be taken as a slave by a southern raiding party. She also said that a father might give coppers to those who tattooed his child, thereby ennobling the latter, or might lay out coppers for this daughter to walk on at her marriage, which were then given to the groom‘s people. She was clearly thinking of Tsimshian or southern Tlingit customs, for these practices were not mentioned by other Yakutat informants.

Harrington was told by Jack Ellis something about the trade in copper and the value of the pieces:

“The southern Indians did not have copper. Copper was just like gold to them. When they came to the Cordova region they bought it, they did not dig it out. Just a little flat piece of copper 6 inches long and wide was worth a slave. Some seven such pieces (JE makes a gesture as if these 7 pieces were laid out on top of his arm from his hand to his shoulder) was worth seven slaves.”

[Davidson writes in the Alaska Coast Pilot of 1869 (p. 36):] “…the principal source [of pure copper] is on the Atna or Copper River, about twenty-five or thirty miles above its mouth, where discovery and research are retarded on account of the reported hostility of the natives. [The Russian consul in San Francisco had a specimen of copper from this source, and nuggets a cubic foot in size were reported.] All the peculiarly-figured copper plates of the natives, twenty-six by fifteen inches, and so much prized as heirlooms by the Indians as far south as Vancouver Island, are hammered out of pure copper obtained from this river.”

It is obvious, however, that only very small coppers could have been made from the native metal; the large coppers described by my informants, like those seen in museums, are all of commercial sheet copper. Keithahn (1964) has presented evidence to show that these plates were never made of native copper and that they appeared on the Northwest Coast only after explorers and traders had introduced commercial copper plate. I have also suggested that they may have been inspired by the medals and plates given by the Russians to favored chiefs or buried in establishing territorial claims (pp. 135–137).

Trade Etiquette

Parties who came to visit or trade were always received in ceremonious fashion, although I do not know what the procedures were for persons journeying on foot. When arriving by canoe, the party seems always to have included a chief or some man of rank who would expect to be received and entertained by someone of equal consequence.

“The Yakutat people stop the big war canoe from coming in until the people say ‘Welcome.’ They ask them [the visitors] who they going to come to. They ask: ’’AdaAnde yakw SAWE?—Who you come to?’ The visitors then mention the person's name they’re going to come to. So the person would welcome them to his house and take care of them. They wouldn’t come to my house if I’m poor. They would show off to each other, how well off they are. They mention the chief man. So, if they are coming to Kwacqwan they mention Yaodaqet, and on Teqwedi's side they mention Kadaétł [Chief Minaman]….” When asked who would be the TłUknaAdi hosts, the answer was: “Ckman, of course, and AnAne, his brother, [Abraham].” (MJ)

The hospitality of the leading chief and wealthy house owner was also extended to visiting White men, as Schwatka and Topham reported (pp. 191, 194).

I was told of no trading which was not ceremonially conducted, as if it were an exchange of gifts. In fact, in southeastern Alaska, at any rate, White traders in the early days sometimes found it to their advantage to imitate some of the Tlingit formalities. These could evidently be manipulated by the Tlingit themselves for purposes of economic profit when dealing with unsophisticated Athabaskans. Almost every early explorer to the Tlingit has reported how the natives would come out in canoes under the leadership of a chief to welcome his ship with songs, speeches and other ceremonial attentions. Some of the petty thievery by the natives may have been prompted by the failure of the Whites to offer reciprocal attentions, especially when it would appear that the native chief was under the impression that he had established a trade partnership with the ship's captain. The lack of proper behavior on the part of the ignorant Whites may have branded them as boors, true Unana, and therefore fair game for cheating or theft. In fact, when detected, the natives often acted as if it were a joke. Malaspina and his men were, I think, more successful in their dealings with the Indians of Port Mulgrave, for, despite some incidents which could have ended in tragedy, the Spaniards not only acted with firmness in the face of danger, but attempted to reciprocate the peacemaking ceremonialism of the natives, ceremonialism essential to establishing or restoring good relations between the hosts and those who come to trade, to attend a potlatch, or to settle differences (cf. p. 622 for further relevant quotations from Malaspina).

The Yakutat people regularly conducted their trading in the form of gift exchanges between trade partners (yAqawu). This term was translated by one informant as “matched together,” or as “intimate friends—my own class, you know” (MJ). The same term is used for the yellow cedar and alderwood parts of the halibut hook which are similarly “matched together.” Of two trade partners one would say, “They‘re wuc-yAqawu because they got agreement towards one another” (MJ).

This seems to be an arrangement between persons in different sibs of the same moiety. Thus two women, one Tł’UknaAdi, the other Kwacqwan, were cited as wuc-yAqawu, ‘mutual trade partners.’ “They yAqawu each other. When they get money or something they give it to each other. Just like they’re sisters. If they got blanket or something they give it to each other. Men do it to each other, too.” Again, referring to these women, Elizabeth and Annie: as “yAqawu to each other. They give good things to each other. Elizabeth gives Annie big things, high-priced things. Then Annie gives something back. That's the way they treat each other…. Give each other money, blankets. You know olden time, there's no such thing as money. Blankets is just like money.”

She went on to explain that the sons of these women are “cousins,” because they are descended from people who are yAqawu to each other, but there was no indication that the sons would necessarily continue the gift exchanges.

Other informants denied that the relationship was between specific individuals. Thus, a Tł’UknaAdi woman said: “Kwacqwan is my yAqawu…. No special Kwacqwan. We call them all our yAqawu, even the man and the woman.”

Moreover, the yAqawu of the CAnkuqedi are the Unana. “They trade together, give each other presents.” This was corroborated by a CAnkuqedi woman from Dry Bay, who remarked of the “good” Athabaskans: “TłUkcu [Klukshu], CAnkuqedi, yaqauwAn [’friends’?]. Just like good friend, best friend—like girl friend and boy friend…. You give me high-priced things and I give you back high-priced things—the same. That's yAqawu. I’m not going to forget it, and you’re not going to forget it. Tł’Ukcu give furs.” She mentioned also that her father (AkA’ayi sib) and her first husband (Tł’UknaAdi), both Ravens, used to go regularly to Klukshu at the headwaters of the Alsek River. Perhaps trading or gift exchanges with the Southern Tutchone were also arranged on a intramoiety basis, since these Athabaskans have Raven and Wolf moieties.

Apparently Kagwantan and Teqwedi were wucyAqawu. “They like one another. Just intimate friends—that's all that means.” (MJ) I was unable to secure more information about the relationship, although I feel fairly certain that while any members of the paired sibs were potential wuc-yAqawu, particular alliances were formed between individuals.

The relationship apparently implied help, favors, and perhaps even asylum to the visiting partner. Thus in the story of CAkA HIt (Canoe Prow House), when Raven wanted to borrow the devilfish cane, he addressed the owner as “my intimate friend—’a yAqawu.” The narrator suggested that the owner must have been anAtedi because he was so selfish! (MJ) The same informant employed the term “intimate friend” in describing the relationship between Wuwac, the sister of the Kwacqwan chief on Knight Island, and Da-tłen, the Tł’UknaAdi man who helped her to escape when his people took her prisoner to Dry Bay (pp. 246,866). It is highly unlikely that he was her lover, since both belonged to the same moiety. If the relationship were that of wuc-yAqawu, it would indicate that it was one primarily affecting two individuals. (Cf. Olson, 1936, p. 212.)

At an early period, neither the Dry Bay Athabaskans nor the Eyak-speakers of Yakutat were accustomed to these Tlingit methods of trading and of gift exchange. Perhaps of them it could be said, as they later said of others: “The people to the westward stay by themselves so much, they are just low class.” Beresford in 1788 noted a difference in manners between the people of Port Mulgrave and those of Sitka, the latter seeming to be “far more lively and alert” which he explained as due in part to “their enlarged society, and their constant intercourse with each other” (quoted p. 127). The ceremonious trading methods which LaPérouse encountered in Lituya Bay and Dixon in Sitkan waters, were not noted for Port Mulgrave before Malaspina's visit of 1791. However this does not mean that they were not employed between natives. Thus, the picture which Ismailov and Bocharov (pp. 134–136) give of the Chilkat anAtedi chief, Yełak, coming to Yakutat with his Teqwedi sons, Neut and En, on a regular spring trip to collect tribute, needs reinterpretation. This was obviously a trading expedition, on which the prominent Chilkat chief was being received with the extreme deference which reflected the sense of social inferiority of the unsophisticated people of Yakutat in entertaining this aristocratic visitor from the cultured south. Details of the story of QakewtE, who came as a teacher to Dry Bay, married a local wife, and thereby established trade connections, may be interpreted in the same light (pp. 270–272). It was probably the Tlingit from southeastern Alaska, anAtedi, Tł’UknaAdi, Teqwedi, and Sitka Kagwantan, who introduced the “high class” fashions of trade partnership and ceremonious dealings, as they moved northward during the 18th century.

Traditions at Yakutat about the introduction of Tlingit trading customs, mentioned largely by persons proud of their southeastern Alaskan connections, ascribe these to the famous atgawet (pp. 242–247). It will be remembered that he was a Teqwedi man of Tongas extraction, born at Akwe of a Tł’UknaAdi father, and that he traveled all over, making economically profitable marriages, and naming the relatives of his wives after the Tlingit sibs of southeastern Alaska. When I attempted to secure further information about his economic activities, I was told: “[The Tł’UknaAdi, i.e., his father's people] used to trade to Victoria and even to the States. They brought up lots of things to trade. But the local natives, StaAdi, were scared and hid in the woods. So a great man organized them in order to trade.” These StaAdi seem to have been an autochthenous group, probably Eyak or Athabaskan, on the eastern side of Yakutat Bay, assimilated by the Kwacqwan (cf. p. 221).

Just what was involved in “organizing” these and the other tribes along the Gulf Coast of Alaska is not clear. But this probably involved working out a system of equating the local sibs with Tlingit ones, thereby facilitating the establishment of trade partnerships, and of teaching the people proper intersib and inter-moiety ceremonial behavior. Most of our informants stressed the wealth he obtained from his many marriages, since each brother-in-law gave him sea otter furs. Perhaps he was supposed to have introduced the custom of exacting handsome presents from his wife's brothers, for this was a procedure profitably employed by Chilkat traders in dealing with the Southern Tutchone (Olson, 1936, p. 214).

Motives for Travel and Trade

It should not be assumed that the motives for trade were purely economic, that is, the desire to obtain needed goods for as little return as possible. The items exchanged were luxury foods and luxury goods, until the changed economic and cultural conditions of modern times transformed many of these into virtual necessities. But even as late as 1880, the Yakutat people were really not dependent upon trade with other Indians or with the Whites. At that time, for example, their poor guns could not have been as efficient for hunting as their own spears, harpoons, and bows and arrows. Guns and ammunition, cloth, Hudson's Bay blankets and dishes, metal pots, Tsimshian wood carving, Haida canoes, and Salish slaves were not essential to living. They were imported luxuries, the possession of which marked the wealthy. At that time perhaps only steel adzes and knives were considered absolute necessities.

Sib territories, the sources of subsistence, were in actuality open to all, since every man and woman in the community could claim some relationship to the owners. The most valuable material goods were sib or lineage heirlooms, rarely alienated. It was not the accumulation of wealth in the form of luxury goods that brought prestige, but the ability to distribute it lavishly, to feast one's relatives and guests with exotic foods, to make handsome presents of imported objects to affinal kinsmen, and to pay lavishly at potlatches for ceremonial services. It was this manipulation of wealth that marked the aristocrat. Wealth given honored one's dead and provided for their comfort in the afterlife, since they received the spiritual counterpart of the material objects. It was given in the name of the living to ennoble them. And the receipt of countergifts was public acknowledgement of one's own social standing. Wealth was exchanged essentially between peers, not only on the grand occasions of potlatching, but at visits between affinal relatives and trade partners. In dealing with one's equals, one did not seek economic profit. Rather, one desired to prove one's worth by giving lavishly, in the hope that it would be recognized by an equivalent lavishness in return.

However, when dealing with low-class natives who could not be considered peers, it was possible to have strictly business dealings (from our point of view)—to drive a shrewd bargain or exact an exorbitant profit—for these were not persons worth impressing with generosity because they could in no way contribute to one's prestige. Relationships with Whites varied between hard bargaining, sharp dealings, and pilfering on the one hand, to the courteous generosity due a friendly trade partner.

Much of the motive for native trade must have come from the sheer pleasure in handling wealth. This also explains part of the enjoyment of gambling. To increase one's “capital” or to win was desirable because then one had more with which to purchase the intangible but more highly valued prerogatives and honors. But the ability to lose might also serve as a sign of social standing, provided always that one did not overdo.[73] At Yakutat, lavish gifts were rarely used to humiliate a rival.

These same attitudes are exhibited today toward money. The Tlingit are well aware of the monetary values of things and remember exactly how many dollars and cents have been spent or given or loaned. Many persons have small businesses or delight in playing bingo for small stakes (see pp. 557–558). But there is very little realistic sense from our point of view of profit and loss or of thrift. The pleasure of running a little store is largely in handling sums of money, in watching dimes and quarters and silver dollars come in, and in gossiping with friends, whether or not they are customers. I believe that it is almost impossible to run such an enterprise for profit; the claims of relatives and friends for credit cannot be denied without creating hard feelings, and there need be only a few unlucky or unscrupulous debtors to deplete the assets. Bad debts accumulated on the books are not taken, as we would take them, as signs of poor business sense, but rather as evidence of the creditor's superiority and of the debtor's inferiority. On the other hand, between most people there is a scrupulous attention to payment for goods and services. It also seems strange to our eyes to see the carefully calculated cash payments made by a woman to her brother for fish he has caught or for other items, in contrast to the lavish gifts made by the same woman on other occasions, often to nonrelatives.

One motive for trading expeditions was to visit strange lands, to see one's distant relatives, and to exchange news. I suspect that many trips were made primarily for these reasons, and that trade was a relatively secondary consideration. Certainly the return home of travelers was a time for gossiping, recounting of adventures, and storytelling. When guests came to visit there was feasting, singing, dancing, and the excitement of gambling. Some of the stories told by returned travelers were evidently funny (to judge by the samples recorded), their humor depending upon the peculiarity of foreign customs or dialects, to which the Yakutat people are sensitive (pp. 552, 897).

Traveling into distant lands where one had few relatives was hard for women, and those who married men in foreign villages where there was no lineage house of their own sib are reported to have felt like lonely strangers. Sometimes young men, also, avoided marriages which would have meant settling far from home. However, for the youth, traveling to strange places and meeting strange peoples was not only an exciting adventure, but was considered a valuable part of his education, especially if he were the nephew of a sib chief and might later act as interpreter or advisor to his uncle when foreign guests came to visit (p. 465). The value of such education is illustrated by the incident in which the knowledge of a single Tsimshian word was credited with preventing bloodshed between the visiting Tsimshian sea otter hunters and the Kwacqwan followers of Chief George (pp. 284–286).

MAKING A LIVING

HUNTING AND FISHING

The Annual Cycle

In former times, the animals, birds and fish furnished the bulk of what people ate, the clothing they wore, and the materials for their tools, weapons, and other manufactures. Today, seal hunting and salmon fishing provide almost the only sources of cash income for the people of Yakutat. The habits of these creatures, as they respond to the varying seasons, set a pattern for the lives of the people. The times when the different types of game were pursued dictated the places of residence (in the winter village or in hunting and fishing camps), and this affected the subsidiary occupations of men and women. The original annual cycle has, of course, been modified by the imposition of Federal (and now State) laws governing hunting and commercial fishing, but much of the old pattern of life still persists. Furthermore, even in the old days, there was also regulation of hunting by the sib chief who controlled the territory.

No single informant gave complete information about the annual cycle—thus, the following summary is based on scattered observations made by several persons.

“In winter, when there‘s snow,” said one woman referring to the 1880's and 1890's, “they just stay home, make basket, sew moccasins and sealskin boots. Old people sit around the fire, tell stories. They take sweatbath and talk it over. The young men go hunting.” (MJ) “In winter they hunted seal and mountain goat” (MJ). Sometimes hibernating bear were killed in their dens.

“In spring they go to Icy Bay for sea otter and mountain goat. The women stay home and dig roots. Some men stay home and take the women to sealing camp in June.” (MJ)

Other late winter or early spring activities of February and March, were fishing for oelachon at Dry Bay and the Situk River, fishing for halibut in Yakutat Bay, hunting for seals along the ocean beach, gathering clams and cockles, and scraping off the inner bark of spruce trees.

In April and May, some men went to Icy Bay to hunt sea otters, others fished for oelachon on the second run. But many families moved up Yakutat Bay to the spring camps near Knight Island and Eleanor Cove where they fished for halibut and hunted bears as the latter emerged from their dens. Women gathered hemlock bark, the roots of the Kamchatka lily, seaweed, sea urchins, and the fresh wild celery stalks. Herring spawn was also obtained in May. Salmon began to run, the king or spring salmon running in April and May. In early May, seals were catching fish in the surf off Ocean Point, on their way to the breeding grounds.

In June, most families went still farther up Yakutat Bay to the sealing camps, and probably remained there until the end of July. During this time, birds’ eggs, the last of the seaweed, “wild rhubarb,” and the first berries were gathered. (In the old days, seal hunting would start at the end of June, when the last pups had been born on the ice.)

In August came the second sea otter hunt, and the women picked strawberries and other berries, and again began to gather clams. Many families were already back at the salmon streams, busy putting up fish for the winter, and picking berries. These occupations continued into October when the last fish (cohocs) were dried, the last roots dug, and the men left for mountain goat hunting in the mountains.

In the coldest winter months, December, January, and the first of February, most families were in their winter homes, although some men might hunt seals on the beaches at the mouths of the rivers. Harrington noted that some cohoes might get frozen at their spawning grounds, so that they could sometimes be chopped out of the ice in upper “Opal Creek” (Orphir Creek) in January or February.

A man summarized the modern annual cycle:

“Snow comes about November. We go trapping for mink and otter. The coyotes have scared the foxes away, so we don’t get them. We also trap weasels and wolves, and shoot bears. This goes on until December.

“In December, we come to town and stay. We hunt seals around the islands.

“Spring comes. We used to work on the railroad track, shoveling snow. [This is to clear the drifts which are apt to remain in the forest until mid-June, since it is necessary to run the train from Yakutat to Johnson Slough, 9 miles away, in order to ready the skiffs which are kept there for fishing.]

“On May 18 fishing starts in Dry Bay. From June 18 to September 30 we fish in Situk River. [These were the dates for commercial fishing in 1949. Later the season was shortened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because of depletion of the salmon.]

“Afterwards we make smoked fish for a week at Ankau, maybe for two weeks. By October 5, we are smoking fish.

“October 20, we may move to camp for trapping. The season opens in November.

“In the month of December, it‘s snow. The wind is strong, and we freeze, so we come back here again.”

We should also note the fact that some families may stay at trapping cabins over the winter, while others may visit their camps during the winter and early spring with sled and snowshoes. On these trips, they catch fur-bearing animals and shoot seals at the mouths of the rivers. However, most families remain in town all winter, since the children must attend school. There is also the halibut fishing in late winter and early spring, hunting of seals and bears, and collecting herring spawn in April and May. Actually there is a good deal of coming and going during the spring months, especially by couples who have no children, and by parties of men. Many people have more or less permanent spring camps at Eleanor Cove up Yakutat Bay.

Control of Territories

All hunting grounds were owned by sibs, or by subsibs (local branches of sibs, or major lineages), and the chief of the ranking house of the group “took care of the land.” He would allot hunting grounds within his territory to his sons, brothers-in-law, and grandsons; that is, to men of other sibs who had homes in the area. They could keep anything they caught and were not obliged to give him a share. My informant and others, however, stressed how much was actually shared in the old days, and there is evidence that the chief did obtain part of the catch made by his own sib-mates, not so much because it was his legal right, but because it was the moral obligation of his clansmen to give to him as though he were their uncle (p. 480).

An informant explained the control exercised by the chief of the ałyI-Kagwantan over their hunting territory with respect to a Teqwedi visitor from Yakutat. This man asked the chief: “ ‘Can we hunt your ground?’ ‘Oh yes,’ the Kagwantan man [i.e., chief] say, and they tell how many animals the visitor can get. But one Kagwantan is the leader and he shoots first. Then he lets the others shoot. They go to big Cape Saint Elias and get the most beautiful fox. And he [the Kagwantan chief] always be around and watch if they get too many. And then [if someone does], he just have to give it back to the chief. The extra fox skin that is returned goes to the poor people. The chief doesn’t keep it for himself. The same way with mountain goat, black bear and brown bear. The chief names how many each family is going to get. That's the way it is.” The specific control exercised over seal hunting, sea otter hunting, and fishing is described on pages 374–375, 379–380, 384.

Another informant, in explaining the care of hunting grounds, cited one of the smaller groups at Yakutat as an example.

“They don’t build any fire in their trapping territory no matter how cold and wet they are—not unless they absolutely must. Then they might build just a little one, way down on the beach, right near the water. When they were through cooking, they would wash it away. If anyone comes on their land or disturbs their animals that are breeding, they shoot. They don’t ask questions or give warning or give a second chance. They just kill the man…. [The owners] won’t let others hunt on their land because they have such a very small bit of it.” [The implied use was trapping.]

At least in recent years at Dry Bay, each man had his own special places for setting traps and snares. A woman from Dry Bay said, “My husband have one place. Now my son got it.” The husband was the son of the TłUknaAdi Dry Bay Chief George, and the grandson belongs to the chief's sib. I did not discover whether there were individual claims to trap lines in other areas, and how these might be allotted or inherited. There are probably such claims, for certain families have cabins on some of the rivers east of Yakutat where the men trap every fall. Invidual rights, however, seem to be subordinated to sib territorial claims, or the men who trap here are sons or sons-in-law of men who belonged to the owning sib. The shift from matrilineal to patrilineal inheritance has, however, complicated the situation. In any case, land animal furs were never very important economically to the Yakutat people, so there was probably less importance put on ownership of traplines than in the Dry Bay area.

Religious Aspects

Hunting and fishing were the major occupations of men; absorbing, exciting, and often dangerous. Supernatural dangers were involved also, for the hunter or fisherman was taking a life very much akin to his own. He had not only to possess the skills, endurance and equipment necessary to secure his prey, but he also had to be spiritually prepared and, after the kill, had to observe the proper rituals, for killing was an act of religious significance. His wife, indeed all the women of his household, were also bound by supernatural regulations. Failure to follow the prescribed procedures or lack of respect for the slain animal could not only bring bad luck or disaster in this life, but punishment in the next, and death to the guilty person and his sib-mates. Although it was never very clearly stated, success in the hunt seems often to have been felt as due to the goodwill of the animals, even though the hunter might coerce or bend that will through magic, just as he might the will of a human being; at other times, the hunter felt that he was battling an enemy to whom he owed the same respect as to a brave opponent.

The conceptualization of the world of animals and of the roles played by particular species is left to a later chapter. It is sufficient to indicate here that no matter what animal a hunter had killed, he had to pray to it and to the Spirit Above justifying his act and asking for forgiveness. The dead animal was addressed in a song appropriate to its species, but all the animals of its kind heard and understood. The heads of land animals were left in the hunting grounds, covered up and facing the mountain, i.e., inland; those of sea mammals were returned to the sea. Because the treatment which the body received affected the dead animal's soul, it was of the utmost importance that the proper rules be followed. For example, it was necessary to burn the bones of salmon in order that they might be reincarnated, and the runs continue.

The proper rules to be followed in hunting each type of animal are described in the appropriate sections. These observances were apparently ones which the animals themselves taught men, as we learn from myths (see “The Story of Kat who Married a Bear,” “The Woman who Married a Bear,” and “Salmon Boy,” pp. 880, 881, 890).

Waste of the dead animal's body and wanton killing, especially of little birds or creatures that had no economic value, could not be justified and so were taboo.

My informants spoke of their ancestors who “took care” of the hunting territories as if this involved conservation of the game. It is doubtful, however, whether conservation was formerly conceived in a realistic fashion, since dead animals were thought to become reincarnated in new bodies. Rather, this care must have been directed primarily to avoid “angering” the animals or frightening them away from the hunting grounds.

Animals apparently know whether or not taboos have been violated. They also hear and understand what people say. Thus, “If you talk about going hunting just for a day, you will have no luck. But if you say it's for a long time, they‘ll give up hope and just have to come to you.” When going after bears, for example, the hunter does not mention his specific intentions, but may simply inform his wife the night before that he is going out with the dogs, just to “look around.” It should be noted, however, that there is no evidence that the Yakutat Tlingit employed special circumlocutions when referring to game animals, like the “trapping names” used by their Athabaskan neighbors. There is also no evidence of a special bear cult.

HUNTING MAGIC

The training and preparation of boys for their lives as hunters began at birth by the performance of certain magical exercises (hewa) in their behalf. As they grew older, they themselves trained and kept in good physical condition by bathing in cold water, running, fasting, etc. (see pp. 516–517). These acts, and others of a more obviously magical nature, also served to prepare them spiritually for hunting, since physical and religious conditioning were not clearly differentiated.

“They used to be very careful in my grandfather's time…. They don’t want to do anything that would make them weak. For one thing, when walking, they can’t drink too much water. My uncle said, ’Don’t eat too much or you’ll get WUSA—get all in.’ [[74]]…I can remember my grandfather says whatever they do, if they do it before breakfast, they have better luck…. They always do things before yeł (Raven) gets up.” His grandfather was Ned Daknaqin of Drum House.

The rule is that anything dangerous, uncertain, or pertaining to the supernatural should be done or at least begun before the raven calls at dawn and before one has eaten. It is at this hour that the young man trains and that the hunting party sets out. If possible, the enterprise should be finished before food is tasted.

“When they go out bear hunting they don’t eat anything when they’re out…. They don’t eat out there in the woods…. They just put some dried fish in their belt in case they get stuck. They call this dried fish “tired-on medicine” (sAkA nagu),” i.e., medicine for fatigue.[74] When the tired hunters return, they do not eat at once, but just drink a little broth.

The ability to go without food or water for a considerable period is not only of practical value to the hunter who must often travel far from home, but it is felt that frugality is a moral virtue, and that abstinence has a religious or magical significance. They are therefore enjoined at all crises. So, too, bathing in icy water in the early dawn is not only hardening to the body, insuring strength and health, but is spiritually purifying. The hunter, moreover, must also abstain from sexual intercourse and from any contact, direct or indirect, with a menstruating woman.

“It‘s like the rule in the Bible. We used to live like God created us…Hunters stay away from their wives four months before hunting. They [the animals] know if you cheat. Some boys stays eight, nine months. Then a certain month they come together. From December the hunters are apart—just the hunters, because they supply the whole family.”

The informant was thinking, I believe, of the strict rules pertaining to the dangerous sea otter hunts (see pp. 378–379). I also understood her to say that people formerly had mating seasons like the animals, although I was unable to discover in what month the hunters returned to their wives. Others said that hunters kept away from their wives for several months, or reported that some men refrained from intercourse for a whole year after marriage in order to have good luck in hunting.

A variety of amulets (WUE or danakw), including special scratching stones, might be used by the hunter. He usually carried with him a magical substance or “dope” (kaani, literally ‘green leaves,’ but more usually roots). These brought him luck in general or in specific situations. “Dope,” for example, acted upon the will of animals. “Animals—they claim the power of kaani draws them in their way.” The use of such magic was surounded by regulations involving fasting, continence, bathing, gathering the magical root or handling the amulet only before dawn, etc. Each variety of kaani had its own rules. Our informant believed that there were kinds used for arrows, and also for traps and snares, but did not know what these were. “Different families has different kinds.”

From the many references to kaani, I suspect that every hunter in the old days had at least one kind. It is perhaps impossible to separate the procedures necessary for handling hunting kaani from those necessary in the preparation for the hunt. Among the most common varieties of kaani were those that would destroy the anger of a dangerous animal, that would make a man shoot accurately, that would secure an animal that had escaped, and that would bring failure to a rival hunter. These and other varieties of magical plants and amulets are discussed in greater detail in a later chapter (pp. 659–667).

There was no suggestion, however, that poison (for example, aconite) was ever smeared on weapon points to make them more deadly. Rather, the magical plant was carried or used by the hunter himself, and was effective in supernatural ways upon his quarry. There was also a tradition about lucky arrows (see the story about “Daodzu and the Arrow,” p. 712–713).

Shamans were sometimes called upon to assist people when the hunting or fishing failed or when bad weather prevented the men from going out.

MAGIC FOR HUNTING DOGS

Just as the boy or youth is prepared by magical exercises, so there is also hewa for the dogs that are used for hunting bears and mountain goats.

“My grandfather [Daknaqin] put slime from a bear's mouth over [a] human being, so he would be brave when he's a man. So they do it to dogs, too, I guess.” “People train dogs to hunt bears. Wherever the bear has been chewing [on a tree], they rub it on the dog's face. Then they will never let the bear go. I don’t know how they do it for mountain goats.”

The usual procedure for making a good bear dog was to “cut him on the nose,” (‘AkAłu a Acw [xackw]—‘I am cutting him on the nose’). This was to “get him in good condition, to make him a good hunting dog.” Another informant explained how his father had done this to his dogs:

“My old man had two or three dogs for bear hunting. They used to know how to hunt bear and how to protect the old man from bears. They used to do things to dogs to make them good hunters. They cut the nose inside the nostril. They know how to cut the nose so the dog smells better. Always we young boys never believe it. The old man used to tell us to do it. ’If you want good hunting dogs, cut the nose!’

“You cut it in a straight line. You have to stay on one side of the line down the middle. If you cross that line, it's no good—for good! You just cut it on one side. The young dog, you cut it on a different side from an old dog.

“When you cut it, then you take the hair of a black bear and wipe his nose with it. And after you wipe his nose with it, they twist the hair and they put it on a bluejay, around his neck. And you put a little stick across to open his mouth [jay's bill]. Then you put the jay way inside the mountain [in a cave? or among the mountains?]. If that bluejay is alive, if it flies away with that—then you lost the dog, my old man used to tell me.”

This misfortune happened to a spaniel that the informant's father had so treated. The bluejay flew away with the bloody bear's hair around its neck. A year later the dog was killed bear hunting.

“They always say if the bluejay goes away, then the dog won’t last. I don’t know whether the bear killed the dog or whether he got shot with the bear.”

A variant of this method was used on another spaniel belonging to the informant's father. “My grandpa, my mother's father, takes that one and cut him on the nose. And he catch the blowflies that time and put them in a can, so the blood can drip on them. After that dog's blood drip, he wipe his nose inside with the hair that's right in the fingers of the black bear, the hair between the bear's fingers. After that, he mix the blood with that split fish (kadułxi). And he mix it up and give it to the bluejays. And they eat it up.” In this way the dog was made very good at tracking bears and in driving them to where his master could spear them.

I did not learn what was done to condition a dog to hunt mountain goats.

A good hunting dog was prized. “His dog and the hunter—it's just like they talk to one another. The dog hunts and he starts to bark, and the owner would know just what animal it's got, and what way it's going. If he stays still, the dog knows [and barks accordingly], and the hunter goes there…. It's just like they talk to one another. If the owner loses the game, the dog would be just mad and would be growling around.”

LaPérouse wrote about the native dogs seen in Lituya Bay in 1786:

“Dogs are the only animals with which they have formed any alliance. Of these each hut has commonly three or four. They are small; resemble the shepherd's dog of Buffon; scarcely ever bark, but make a whistling noise much like the jackal of the Carnatic; and are so savage, that they seem to be to other dogs what their masters are to civilized people.” (LaPérouse, 1799, vol. I, p. 401.)

My own informants described the native dog (ketł) as “like a husky.” The common type of White man's dog at Yakutat seems to have been a water spaniel (sAwák), “When the natives see a little dog, and his chest is kind of round and he has long ears, they call him sAwák.”

Land Mammals

BEARS

Hunting bears, especially the huge brown bears or grizzlies (xuts), is the adventure par excellence, and more was told about the habits of bears and the methods of killing them than about any other animal. “That's his only good time, I think, that man over there,” said a woman referring to old Frank Italio, dozing in a corner, “—go out in the woods with the dogs, and kill the bear.” Today, many men go regularly on bear hunts in the spring when the animals emerge from their dens, even though bear meat and bearhides are no longer of any significant value. Among the pleasures of a spring camping trip to Eleanor Cove is watching the bears moving about on the snowy mountainside and the cubs playing.

Bears are now hunted with rifles. Their tracks may be followed on foot, they may be shot from a boat if within range, or they may be hunted in their winter dens. A woman said that her husband would enter the den with a candle. The bear blows it out; then he goes in with another candle and shoots.

While bear hunters, of course, were supposed to be continent, “they believe that when a woman shoots bears, the bears can’t do no harm. If a woman cleans your gun, then the bear knows and he just drops…It's just like they [the women] make a wish, I think. One shot and they [the bears] drop. When it comes like that, the bear just got no power.”

In former times bears were killed with spears or bows and arrows. They were also taken with traps and snares. These weapons and devices are described below (pp. 367–373).

If a man found a den that a bear had prepared but not yet occupied, he was supposed to speak to the nearby bushes, saying “Don’t tell on me! (Łił at kinigíq),” and pay the bushes with a bit from his clothing. If he neglected to do this, the bushes, or rather their souls (qwani), would warn the bear, and when the hunter returned to kill the animal he would find the den empty. “That one, I proved it. That's the funniest thing I ever seen. They went up to this bear den, and there was nothing in there. They didn’t do what they were supposed to do, and there never was a bear. All those hunters, that's what they have to do—have to pay those bushes. You stick anything [on them], just the lint off your clothes…. Next time, there's always a bear there.”

The bear was usually attacked as he emerged from the den. A party of men would wait on the slope above the den for the bear to come out. They were armed with bows and arrows, but the bravest used spears. The butt end of the spear was braced against the ground, and when the bear charged, the man would jump quickly aside, letting the bear impale himself on the spear. Dogs were taken on such hunts, and sometimes it was their barking that roused the bear.

After the bears had emerged from hibernation—in 1954 this was early in April—parties of men, seldom one man alone, tracked bears with dogs. The latter were supposed to chase the animal toward the hunters. A bear is said to run down the mountain, never up, when it sees a man. The hunters may attempt to cross the slope to intercept it, but a man cannot run as fast as a bear, and dogs are needed to drive it or to hold it at bay. The hunters might carry bows and arrows, but again, the spear was preferred by the brave man. A typical bear hunt was described by the man whose father had the spaniel with the cut nose (p. 363):

A party of men had gone bear hunting in the mountains with this dog. “The dog was following the tracks back and he just disappeared. They walk all day, and they walk, trying to find him. He just seem to get excited, that dog. Pretty soon they see the bear way up on the mountain. They watch and they see a little dot just behind. The dog is catching up on the bear way up on top of the mountain. The bear start to run right down the mountain, and the dog try to catch him.

“When he see those tracks, those old tracks, the bear disappeared. Here that sAwak [spaniel] make noise, and he follow the old tracks. His eyes is closed. He don’t even see my father who is standing just beside those tracks. He goes by like a bullet. Afterwards they see him catch the bear up, way out on the mountain.

“When he chase the bear down, then they don’t see it for a while. After a while they hear it come closer. They hear it come closer all the time.

“He's got that spear-knife. The bear comes right closer all the time. He's got snowshoos on, and he wait for the bear to come…. When the bear comes close, he puts the butt of the spear in the ground…. He jump out of the way, and the spear goes in the bear so that all of the wood [shaft] goes into it.”

The informant went on to explain that if a man were running with a spear, he would carry it low and parallel to the ground, grasping it near the knifelike blade and using an underhand thrust or throw. “If the dog chases the bear up the tree, it is hard to spear the bear then. When you throw the spear up, it drops down” presumably deflected by branches. “My old man used to kill lots of bears.”

Another told how his father and two older brothers were attacked by five big brown bears. The youngest stripped naked “so he could fight, and went after the bears.” One bear ran against his braced spear and stabbed itself in the neck; the man speared another under its foreleg. Sometimes when the hunter tries to withdraw the spear, the handle pulls loose, leaving the blade in the animal. (CW) The sister of this informant said: “My father was good at killing bears. They say he had some kind of dope, he killed bears so easy. And of course, he belonged to the Bear Tribe [Teqwedi sib that claims the Bear as a totem], and he would talk to the bears. Even when he was on crutches, he killed them. My mother used to help him.” (MJ) The man was adane Johnstone (1843–88).

When shooting with an arrow or gun, “you always go for the heart side, between the ribs.” When teaching his son how to kill bears, adane said: “When you get close to a bear, don’t get excited. Just watch your chance. When he turn around, watch the left side, under the big paw. If you shoot him there, he won’t come back. That‘s where the heart is.” (MJ)

Bear hunters, of course, prepared themselves by bathing, fasting, and continence. “They stay away from everything. They keep clean. It's like the Christian life. They stay away from their wives, and so on…. The bear can’t do anything if a good man comes. Like if you are a good Christian, any sin [evil] can’t hurt you.” The hunters rose before the raven called, and started out before dawn. If they had any amulets for good luck they would have wished on these, and they probably carried the roots of ‘no-strength medicine’ (see p. 660) to chew on so the bear would not wish to harm them. They were not supposed to eat or drink or build a fire while they were out.

“And the people in the house is sleeping. They don’t want anybody to move in that house,” explained the widow of a hunter. “Because, suppose if your husband out hunting, you’re not going to eat, you’re not going to touch anything, you’re not going to get mad at anybody in the house, or your kids. If you get mad, the bear's going to get mad at your husband, beat him.”

While the hunters were out, the women at home were supposed to be quiet. In the old days, the wives would sit on the floor, their blankets weighted with stones at the corners. If necessary, they could get up and eat something, but were supposed to be as still as possible (MJ). The woman quoted above insisted that the wives could neither eat nor work on baskets while their husbands were away. “She just sit quiet in the house.” It was also said that those at home dared not scratch themselves (with their fingers?), lest the bear scratch the hunters. Perhaps the difference in strictness of the taboos observed by women reflects the greater conservatism at Dry Bay as opposed to Yakutat; the daughter (MJ) of the famous Yakutat bear hunter, adane, made it clear that her mother used to weave baskets while her husband and son were out hunting.

All informants agreed, however, that the women at home must not get angry at anyone. The wife was especially prohibited from punishing her children if they were naughty. In telling about some mischief she had perpetrated as a little girl, one woman explained: “My mama dare not spank me because my father was out hunting bear. She just have to sit quiet. You must not get angry or get after your kids. She was going to grab my face, but she remembered, or she would have burned by face against the fire.” (MJ)

A much younger woman told how once she had played hide and seek with her little boys, “chasing my boys and fighting with them.” Meanwhile, the bear that her husband was following, circled around as she and the children were doing, so that her husband had difficulty overtaking it.

Even the play of children by themselves could affect the bears. Thus, when one of my informants was a child she was playing tag with some other children. When the men came home they asked what the children had been doing, for they had seen several brown bears (cubs?), chasing each other, running around, and fighting in play. “But the bears don’t see us; just the same they do that.”

After the bear was killed, the hunter would pray to it for forgivenness, explaining why he needed to kill it. The head world be cut off and buried, facing the mountains. Sometimes it was covered with boughs, or it might be put in a mountain stream, or buried under a waterfall, so no birds could get at it. One informant said that the head was turned to face the sun when buried; perhaps she meant toward the east where the sun rises, which would be toward the mountains. “If they don‘t do that, the other bears would notice and get angry and get after the hunter” (MJ).

The hunter also sang to the dead bear. The song for brown grizzlies (xuts) and for black bears (ik) was the same. “The bears told them to do that. That's why they don’t eat bears’ heads. But this time [now], most of the real good hunters still do that—cut the head off—but they don’t sing that song.”

It seems to have been customary at Yakutat to bring the dead bear's head home or back to camp, where it was warmed by the fire, before it was buried. The hide was hung up indoors and addressed as if it were the bear. At Dry Bay, however, the head was not brought back.

One informant said he had once seen a man slash across the eyes of the dead bear, so it could not see who had killed it, but this man no longer does this. The same informant believed that some time after the head had been buried, when the skull was clean, the hunter used to return to secure the teeth. These could have served as pendants or amulets, as material from which beads were cut, and as tools for smoothing baskets.

Very few bear bones, and only those of the black bear, were found at the late prehistoric site on Knight Island (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 78). Presumably these came from animals that had been killed close by, for whole joints weighted down with bones would have been heavy to carry. We were told that the bear‘s hide was cut down the belly and down the legs, and was ritually shaken three times before it was removed. Usually the flesh was stripped from the bones, but the intestines were saved; these and the meat were packed home in the hide. Sometimes, if four or five men went hunting, they might bring the whole body home. The hard bone of the bear was, however, used for some manufactures. The hunter used to carry a heavy bone awl, suspended by a cord around his neck, or over one shoulder and under the other arm. With this he could sew the bearhide to make a bag in which to carry home the meat and fat.

MOUNTAIN GOATS

Mountain goats (djInuwu) were also hunted in the mountains, usually in the fall or early winter when the animals were fat. Dogs used to chase and corner the animals until the hunters came. Bows and arrows were used in the old days. We have no information about spears; perhaps the hunters could seldom climb close enough to use them. No traps or corrals were employed, and it was said to be impossible to drive goats over a cliff.

“Goats won’t fall. It's funny. They [the old people] believe you get stuck, instead of them [the goats]. People just stay there on the mountain [unable to climb up or down]. If they get away, it's up to the goats. It leans against the mountain. They claim their [the goats’] grandparents are living in there, or else it's the whole mountain [is the goats’ grandparents]. The goat leans on the mountain and listens to it. If the mountain tells the goat to let the man go, then after the goat lets him go, the man walks just like right on the road,” and gets down easily.

The mountainside where one hunts goats is called ‘place where one chases things’ (‘a’At dAketł eye). Such places are across Nunatak Fjord from Shagg Cliff, Mud Bay by Hidden Glacier in Russell Fiord, Flat Mountain (ŁAut) at the head of the Ahrnklin, Icy Bay, and “way behind the mountains” behind Icy Bay.

“Dry Bay, ’Antłen, Situk, and here [Yakutat]—each got their own territory [for hunting mountain goats]. When they meet they try to beat one another.” This may happen when two parties each start the same goat and their dogs are chasing it. “They know how their own dogs bark. Then both sides start running.” Such encounters might lead to trouble.

The same informant explained that “if you shoot a mountain goat, and it's falling, you are supposed to caw (kAdUa) like a crow. You are supposed to crow when it or a bear is falling, so it don’t get black meat with clotted blood. You also crow when you club halibut…. It doesn‘t matter for seals.”

The same rules for praying to the dead animal and burying the head facing the mountain applied to the goat, but we were unable to learn whether the hunters’ wives at home had to be quiet. Presumably this would have been the case, since their husbands might encounter a bear when they were out hunting, or too much movement by those at home might make the goats too active.

Although the head was cut off, the goat‘s horns were often saved for spoons, powder measures or other objects. The intestines were removed to lighten the carcass, which usually required two or three men to carry it. The fat in the body cavity and around the kidneys was always saved, for this was a great delicacy. Judging by the archeological evidence, the body of the goat was flenzed in the village or camp (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 78).

OTHER LAND MAMMALS

Other land animals formerly hunted at Yakutat, Dry Bay, and at other areas along the Alaska Gulf Coast were the wolf, wolverine, fox, mink, weasel, muskrat, marten, lynx, and beaver. They were more regularly taken with traps and snares, than with bow and arrow (pp. 370–372). A number of these species are now extinct in their former ranges (pp. 36–40).

“Groundhogs” (hoary marmot) were occasionally taken on the coast, but in the interior up the Alsek River, people snared groundsquirrels and “groundhogs” or “gophers” (Marmota monax ochracea). Since these animals never appear on the coast, informants knew little about the rituals for taking them. One Yakutat woman remembered that groundhog hunters had to be “clean,” and that there was a song to the dead groundhog. This was supposed to have been composed by a groundhog that had hurt its leg, and was learned by a passing hunter. However, this woman (MJ) had never heard of setting up sticks carved in human form to lure the animal into the trap, as was done by the Interior Tlingit and by the Southern Tutchone of the upper Alsek.

One man knew the first line of the groundhog song, only because it appears in one of the funny stories about a mythical transvestite (pp. 895–897). “Wake up that young man! The thing he killed is lying away from its head.” (ciyísAnÚ’ wUdIhwa! dudjAqedi cayidÁ cAnAstÉtc—’waken that-young-man! the-thing-he-killed its-head-away is-lying’). A groundhog song with a similar beginning was recorded by Swanton from the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska (1909, Song 11, p. 392). He reports that the singer holds up the groundhog skin in front of him with both hands, and imitates the animal‘s cry. The words of the song are: “Wake up that young man and let us go up on the cliff. You always sleep before you hunt. That is why you never kill anything.”

There were formerly beavers at Dry Bay, but they have all been trapped out. Beavers were more recently hunted in the Controller Bay area, but we do not know how they were taken before the introduction of steel traps.

Animals of recent introduction in the Yakutat area are deer (imported by the United States Government from southeastern Alaska), moose, coyotes, and rabbits. The last three apparently moved down the Alsek River from the interior. Old Jack Reed believed that they had been frightened out of their former home by the building of the Alcan Highway, but a younger woman (Mrs. JG) who accompanies her husband on hunting trips said that the moose and coyote had appeared about 1925. Harrington was told that moose had first been seen in 1935 near the railroad bridge across the Situk River. Most of the women are more afraid of moose than of the brown grizzly—perhaps rightly so, or perhaps because the former is a large unfamiliar animal. They are also apt to confuse the word for moose (tsIsw; Harrington, tzísw) with that for owl (Boas, 1917, p. 126; tsusu; Harrington, tshÍsw), usually pronouncing them both as tIsw.

There are no porcupines in the Dry Bay-Yakutat area, and there have never been any caribou here, according to the natives.

Although there are plenty of land otter in the region, we were told that they were not purposely hunted in former times because of their supernatural character (see pp. 744–755), although they were sometimes taken in snares and traps. Nevertheless, two land otter bones were found in the upper levels of a midden at the site on Knight Island, dating from late prehistoric or protohistoric times (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 83, Table 2).

Weapons

The weapons used for hunting land animals were, with a few exceptions, the same as those used in war. Thus, the hunter was armed with a dagger, spear, bow and arrow, and possibly a pick. At a later period he would probably have carried a musket, with powder, shot, caps, and wadding (pl. 116), or a shotgun, or a rifle.

Unfortunately, the early explorers told us relatively little about the weapons which they must have seen in the hands of the Indians, although perhaps this is in itself a testimonial to the usually amicable relations between the Whites and the Indians. For example, LaPérouse (1799, vol. 1, p. 407) says only:

“Their weapons are the poignard I have already described [p. 116], a lance of wood hardened by the fire, or pointed with iron, according to the wealth of the owner; and a bow and arrows. The arrows are commonly headed with copper; but the bow has nothing particular, and is much weaker than those of many other nations.”

We are given no information as to what game was being hunted with these weapons, and can only assume that the lance and the bow and arrow were of unspecialized types, used alike for hunting land animals and for warfare.

SPEAR

The spear (tsàAł’ or tsàÁł; Boas, 1917, p. 126) was described as having a double-edge blade (like that of a dagger) about 14 inches long, set into a handle that was about 6 or 7 feet long. This weapon was used for hunting bears, and was usually retained in the hand, not thrown. A shorter spear, about 4 or 5 feet long, that is, from the fingers of one outstretched arm to the elbow of the other, was also mentioned. Our informants applied the same word to spears of both lengths, but the shorter variety may have been the kind called wusánì (Boas, 1917, p. 124 wusánÌ) by the more southern Tlingit. My informants had heard this word, although they were not sure what kind of spear it designated. Archeological evidence would indicate that spearheads were originally of bone or slate, later of iron (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 124–127).

Emmons obtained two iron spearheads at Yakutat, both of which were said to have been used for bear hunting, but also received contradictory information about the length of the shaft. The spearhead that had belonged to Yakutat Chief George Yaodaqet, “George, the principal chief of the tribe,” was said to have been set into a shaft 4 feet long (AMNH E/2258, taken back by Emmons in 1915). The other blade would have been seized to a wooden shaft 8 to 10 feet long, and used for war and for bears (AMNH E/2609).

BOW AND ARROWS

The bow (sAqs; Boas, 1917, p. 125, sÁqs, ’bow and arrow’) was used for land animals, birds, sea otters, and for war. Presumably the same implement would be employed for these varied purposes, but of this I cannot be sure. The bow was described by informants as made of hard, springy, young, hemlock wood, taken from the toughest part of the limb (akw or Aqw). It was not steamed to shape. The bow had a diameter of about 3 or 4 inches, and was about 4 to 4 feet long. Harrington was told that the bow was of a red cedar limb, which was the hardest or best wood, and that it was from 4 to 5 feet long. The type is illustrated by a number of bows collected at Yakutat (Niblack, 1890, pl. XXVI, 110; pls. 108, 109 herein; AMNH 19/797, 1086, 1170, 1171). The bow had neither sinew backing like that of the Eskimo nor the wooden projection to catch the released bowstring which is characteristic of Athabaskan bows. The bow is narrowed from each edge at the middle to make a shallow notch on each edge, serving as a grip and also as a rest for the arrow. Sometimes the bow is said to have been decorated (with paint? with scorch marks?) The bowstring (sAqs kAdzàs) was of square braided sennit of porpoise sinew; one collected by Emmons (AMNH 19/1086) had a bowstring of whale sinew.

When shooting, the bow was held horizontally in the left hand, with the thumb, third and fourth fingers on the near side, the first and second fingers on the side away from the user (fig. 30). These two fingers steadied the arrow in the notch on the bow and were held up to make a V-shaped sight. Harrington also recorded that the natives always sighted with the eye when shooting. The notched butt of the arrow on the bowstring was gripped between the ball of the right thumb and the knuckle of the right forefinger (JR, CW and MJ).

The arrow (tcunÉt; Boas, 1917, p. 126, tcùnét) was of local spruce or of yellow cedar obtained at Icy Bay or, less often, of red cedar imported from Prince Rupert. It had a notched expanded butt and was usually feathered with three split feathers from an eagle's tail. Arrowheads (tłàk or tcunÉt et; Boas, 1917, p. 130, Laq’) for land animals or large birds were described as made of bone, copper, or stone, with a tang for insertion into the wooden shaft. Those of bone were said to have had one or two pairs of symmetrically placed barbs, evidently like those of the Eyak (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, fig. 13 and pl. 13, 8). This type is also represented by specimens from Yakutat in the Fred Harvey collection (pl. 108). One informant sketched a leaf-shaped, tanged arrowhead of stone or bone, and specified that it had small teeth along the edges, “just like a file, just like porcupine quills” (fig. 31). Actually, the archeological specimens found in the Yakutat area consisted of unbarbed triangular or leaf-shaped blades of slate or bone, usually with a tang (de Laguna et al., 1964, fig. 14, a, d, e, g). Somewhat the same shape, but with a narrow tang like a pin, was made first in native copper (ibid., pl. 14, a–e) and later in iron. There were also splinters of bone, identified as arrowheads (ibid., pl. 15, u, v, w). We found no bone heads with barbs on both edges, but there were many long slender heads of bone or antler with three to five barbs on the same edge and a flattened bladelike tip (ibid., pl. 15, a–e; fig. 17).

FIGURE 30.—Bow and arrow. From left to right, Sketch of bow by Minnie Johnson; sketch of arrow release as demonstrated by Minnie Johnson; sketch of left hand holding bow as demonstrated by Minnie Johnson.

FIGURE 31.—Arrowheads. a, Arrowhead of bone, copper, etc. (dénà [sic]) for large game; after a sketch by Minnie Johnson. b, Arrowhead of wood, used for birds; after a sketch by Harry K. Bremner. c, Bone, stone, copper, or iron arrowhead used for land animals and large birds; after a sketch by Minnie Johnson. d, Arrowhead of stone or bone used for land animals; after a sketch by Harry K. Bremner.

Emmons collected at Dry Bay an iron arrowhead, “used against small animals as marten, marmot, etc.” (AMNH E/623), and a copper arrowhead, for “land animals only” (AMNH E/2494). Similar copper heads for land animals came from Yakutat (AMNH E/1288, 1290).

Informants said that arrowheads were detachable. When the animal was shot, the head stuck in the flesh, working in because of the barbs, but the shaft fell off. The hunter would retrieve this and fit it with a new head from a supply which he carried in a skin bag (tcugweł or tcunEt gweł) worn under his left arm. This bag was called by the same name as the skin quiver, and may indeed have been the same bag or possibly a pocket in it. When not in use the bow and arrows were carried in the skin quiver which hung on the back from the left shoulder. Harrington recorded the same word (tchuukkweeł, i.e. tcugweł) as a skin quiver, but his informant identified it as belonging to a “Stick Indian,” or Athabaskan.

Children used arrows with expanded blunt ends to shoot seagulls and other birds (fig. 31b). Such blunt arrows (qácÀł), I was told, never had bone heads. Emmons, however, obtained one of copper at Yakutat, said to have been used to stun mink and small birds (AMNH E/2495). The famous lucky arrow of Chief Yaodaqet was said to have been such a blunt-headed arrow (see p. 712).

WHIP SLING AND DART

Although the Angoon Tlingit used a kind of dart or arrow for land animals that was thrown with a whip sling (djuwa), and the Eyak had a toy of the same kind (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 238), I could elicit only a very confused and uncertain statement from Yakutat informants that they knew this device (CW and MJ). Most persons applied the word to the ordinary sling used to throw stones, but I did not learn whether the latter was ever used for serious hunting or for war. The Tlingit whip sling was used primarily for hunting deer, which may be why the device was not remembered, since this animal is not native to Yakutat.

Fortunately Harrington received information at Yakutat about the whip sling.

“TjIxwaa—atlatl, spear-thrower. This is the name of the stick that stays in one hand with attached string. The spear they call tjIxwaa tchuuneet. Informant used to make spear-throwers and to practice with them. The arrow or spear is 1 or 2 feet long and is balanced. The cord [on the whip sling handle] is now string, but used to be a leather thong, has a round knot in the end…. [The informant failed to explain clearly that the knot of the cord fits into a notch in the middle of the dart, from which it slips easily when the dart is thrown with the sling handle.] They used to kill deers on the beach. Lots of snow on [the] beach [one time, and] a boy, atlatled [his] arrows, and all were lost in the snow without killing one deer. He had not practiced. It [the dart] has a wooden point only, and sometimes they feathered the butt, sometimes did not. If you put feathers on, it whistles as it goes thru the air. If no feathers, it just sounds α. Goes 200 yards.

“When [we were] kids, they would not let us use the atlatl around the place for they were afraid it might kill somebody.”

This information was obtained from informants who has been born and spent their youth in Controller Bay, so it may refer primarily to that area and not to Yakutat. It is safe to assume, however, that at some time the people of Yakutat did have the whip sling. Perhaps some of the barbed wooden points from the site on Knight Island were parts of the arrowlike darts for such a weapon (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 146).

There is no indication that the Indians of this region ever made serious use of the throwing board or spear thrower for the harpoon.

Traps and Snares

Before modern steel traps were introduced, the Yakutat and Dry Bay people used deadfalls (ye, or sín ’hidden’) and snares (dáÀ) of various types. To make these effective, the hunter would address them in the same fashion as the fisherman spoke to his halibut hook (see p. 390), but I did not learn what was said or what may have been the magical rituals connected with their use. It was suggested by one informant that magical plants (kaani) may have been employed.

DEADFALLS

The deadfall for weasels and other small animals was a “Figure Four” trap, consisting of a fall log that was propped up at one end by two small pieces of wood, the lower of which fitted into a notch in the side of the upper (fig. 32). These two pieces were held in place together because they fitted into a wide notch or hook near the end of the trigger stick, to the other end of which the bait was fastened. When the animal reached under the fall log to take the bait, he dislodged the trigger which permitted the two parts of the prop to fly apart and dropped the fall log across his back or neck.

FIGURE 32.—Figure Four trap for weasels, sketched by John Ellis, a, Notched prop. b, Trigger. c, Lower part of prop.

The deadfall for larger animals, fox, lynx, wolverine, or even bears, was of heavier construction (fig. 33). Near a tree with a horizontal branch, two pairs of upright posts were set up, between which the fall log was to move. A horizontal pole was fastened to the tops of the two posts nearest the tree, making a gate through which the animal was to pass in order to reach the bait. One end of the fall log rested on the ground; the other was held suspended by a rope that was tied to one end of a pole. The latter was balanced across the top of the gate, with its farther end resting on or lightly fastened to(?) the horizontal limb of the tree. To this end of the pole was attached a rope or stick with the bait. This trigger stick is called tánA, like the hook for catching squid, or qatagAni. The upper end of the fall log was weighted with one or more heavy logs leaned up against it, and the whole trap was surrounded by brush so that the animal was forced to reach through the gate under the fall log in order to get at the bait. When he tried to take it, his tug dislodged the pole to which it was fastened, and this permitted the weighted log to fall and crush him. Below the fall log there was usually another log on the ground, so that the animal was caught between the two, and even if still alive, was unable to dig itself out. Neither of these logs was spiked.

One informant said she had seen a deadfall for bears at Katalla, built “like a log house,” presumably referring to the row of timbers weighting down the fall log like a roof. She had carried the fish used to bait it, but was unable to describe the mechanism except to say that “when he steps on that small stick, that big stick falls on him—kill him.” There was apparently a log on the ground and the bear was crushed between this and the weighted log above. The mechanism may have been that of the “Sampson Post” trap, in which the fall log is held up by a small prop that is balanced insecurely on top of the horizontal projecting trigger stick, which in turn rests on the ground log.

Deadfalls were made without any iron, even when it was available, because animals were believed to avoid the smell. For the same reason, the Indians were careful not to leave any iron or tin cans on the hunting ground. “If you make a trap, you can’t expect to catch anything for a few days, until your smell goes away. Windy or rainy weather is good; then it's all clean.”

Informants denied any knowledge of anything like a box trap, pitfall, or tower trap for taking animals alive. Their absence is corroborated by a pitiful story recorded by Harrington in 1939–40 about a man who attempted to recapture a pet cat, but did not know how to do it except with a steel trap.

An elderly man (JR from Sitka) said that a Japanese boy had given him a “hunting paper with all the animals on it and all the traps.” He had apparently taught the Indian to make wooden traps of Japanese type, but I was unable to learn what these were or whether they had been copied by anyone else.

FIGURE 33.—Deadfall for fox, lynx, and wolverine, sketched by John Ellis.

SNARES

Snares were made for foxes, wolves and, at Dry Bay or up the Alsek River, for ptarmigan, “groundhogs” and groundsquirrels. Larger snares were made for bears.

The type of snare for foxes (perhaps once used for other animals of that size) was set in the animal‘s trail, and brush was arranged in two converging lines on each side so that the animal could not easily avoid the snare (figs. 34, 37). The snare itself was a noose with a slip knot, now made of size 40 Italian twine. It was set in a gate made of two uprights and a cross bar on top. The open noose was tied to the sides and top of the gate with grass or something that would break easily; the bottom of the noose was about 4 inches from the ground. The line from the snare ran to the smaller end of a 15-foot pole which was balanced across the top of an upright post, 4 feet high, the upper end of which was notched or forked. The larger, heavier end of this swing pole was away from the snare. The pole was held in balance because a small stick, about 1 inch long and inch in diameter, was fastened to the snare line just above the noose and was used as a hook to catch a loop of the line around the crossbar of the gate. When the animal tried to force its way through the gate, it would break the grass strings holding open the noose, and these movements would dislodge the little trigger stick or hook. This permitted the heavy butt end of the pole to swing down, while the animal was hoisted by the neck until its hind legs just cleared the ground. The line from the noose was threaded through a piece of wood, now a cork net float, which slid down on the animal so that it could not bite through the line.

FIGURE 34.—Snare for foxes, sketched by John Ellis.

The larger snare for bears could be made in two ways. This was also set up in a gate across the animal's trail, but a large standing tree was more common than the swing pole. According to one method, the end of the line to the noose was tied around the tree just above the branch (fig. 36). This line was threaded through a transverse (sic, probably longitudinal, see below) hole in the middle of a log, about 3 feet long and 3 or 4 inches in diameter. This log was balanced on the horizontal limb of the tree. When the bear attempted to push through the noose in the gate, the log would be dislodged and slide down the line onto his neck. The bear “fights the wood,” but cannot chew through the line because the log is in the way. The noose was not made with a slip knot; it was the log itself that would tighten the noose and so strangle the bear. This type of noose is called ‘tied-up thing’ (yAniduu; cf. Boas, 1917, p. 135, yÀ-dúu, ’to tie a knot’).

FIGURE 35.—Snare for foxes, sketched from descriptions by Sheldon James, Sr., and William Thomas.

The informant said that the line was made of cotton line, the same kind used for “hanging nets,” that is, as the edge of the seine to which weights or floats are attached. Although this is a very strong cord, it is hard to believe that it could hold a bear.

FIGURE 36.—Snare for bear as described by William Thomas.

The second method for rigging the bear snare was to run the line from the noose to a hole bored through a tree (fig. 38). (Perhaps in the old days it was passed over a branch.) The end was secured to a heavy timber that was propped up against the tree with a stick. When the bear put his head in the noose, his movements would dislodge the prop, the heavy log fell and he was hoisted off the ground. An older informant, in describing this snare (xuts yAyi dáÀ, ’bear [?] snare’), said that the noose and line were formerly of sea lion hide and that the noose was made with a slip knot. The line above the noose was passed lengthwise through a short log. This slid down onto the bear's neck and prevented him from chewing through the line. The hole in the tree was just high enough so that the bear‘s hind legs dangled clear of the ground.

FIGURE 37.—Snare for brown bear, as sketched by Sheldon James, Sr.

FIGURE 38.—Snare for bear as described by Olaf Abraham.

The Dry Bay people were acquainted with methods of snaring ptarmigan, said to be the same as those of the Southern Tutchone on the upper Alsek. Since ptarmigan are found all along the coastal plain, although more common in the interior, it is probable that the Yakutat Indians also snared them. I was not told whether other birds were caught in snares. The ptarmigan snare was not described in detail, but one gathers that it was a noose set in a gate or hole in a fence made of upright brush. The ptarmigan were described as “running away,” which suggests that they may have been driven into a series of such snares. The informant explained with gestures how the bird would be strangled in the noose. (FD)

GORGE

While large birds, such as swans, geese, and eagles, were shot with the same kind of arrow as that used for land animals, ducks and seagulls were also taken with gorges (nutA; cf. Boas, 1917, p. 142, yA-nu, ‘to swallow,’ sI-nu, ’to catch fish with bait’). These gorges were slivers of bone, pointed at both ends, and attached at the middle to a line (de Laguna et al., 1964, fig. 18, b, c).

“They still use things like that now if they get out of gun shot [have no more ammunition]. You tie a string to it about four feet long, and then put a small fish, a a herring, or a oelachon, or a smelt…. You put a line across the river and use several strings with gorges hanging from it. Put it in a shallow place where the water runs so the fish [bait] look like they’re swimming…. The sawbill [duck] swallows the fish and gets that stick stuckin its throat…. You can catch seagulls this way, too.”

The informant‘s aunt once caught 18 sawbills in this fashion. She hid behing a log on the bank above the line of gorges. In one version of the myth about Salmon Boy, he is described as “fishing for seagulls” with a gorge baited with salmon eggs.

It was denied that the natives ever caught birds in nets (éwù; Boas, 1917, p. 128, ew), although a cove near Yakutat is said to be a place where the Russians used to net black ducks, and is so named (p. 64).

Sea Mammals

Sea mammals formerly hunted at Yakutat included the sea lion, harbor seal, fur seal, porpoise, and sea otter. Killerwhales and large whales were not hunted, but the flesh and fat of stranded whales were eaten. Of these animals, the fur seal and sea otter are now protected by law, and there is no longer any use for the porpoise and sea lion, although the latter may sometimes be shot to protect the seals. The harbor or hair seal is still ardently pursued for the commercial value of the skins as well as for the bounty on the nose. At the end of the last century the skins and oils had a commercial value, and Albin Johnson (1924, p. 99) estimated that the seal then furnished the major source of income to the natives. One informant, who had been married to a Dry Bay man, denied that sea lions were hunted. While this may be true for the Dry Bay people, who were noted as hunters of land animals but seem not to have been skilled as hunters of sea mammals, this statement does not apply to their neighbors at Yakutat.

No magical rules or religious observances specifically applicable to seals, sea lions, or porpoises were mentioned by informants, except that a woman is not allowed to punish her children while her husband is out hunting seals (MJ). Seton-Karr noted the use of a scratching stone, employed by men for 3 days before they went out hunting (1887, p. 60), and Professor Libbey collected some specimens (see p. 666). Presumably these same scratchers would have been used by hunters in pursuit of any game and were not limited to sealers. Informants denied that a drink of fresh water was ever given to dead sea mammals, although this was known to be an Eskimo custom. Seals and other sea mammals were, and are, usually flensed on the shore and, since this is where garbage is usually thrown, the heads would inevitably be returned to the water. It is interesting that in the middens on Knight Island, where seal bones were plentiful, many auditory bullae were found but there were few skull fragments. The bullae had probably been knocked out to extract the brains, and the rest of the skull thrown onto the beach or into the water (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 78 f.). Magical rules for hunting the sea otter are described below (pp. 378–379); perhaps at one time they applied to the hunting of all sea mammals.

MODERN SEAL HUNTS

The harbor or hair seal is hunted in Disenchantment and Icy Bays where these animals breed. Organized parties as well as small groups or single hunters kill seals in April and May, before the commercial fishing season starts, and also after it ends. Seals may be shot whenever they are encountered. Seals are valued for the $3 bounty paid for each nose (by the Federal Government in 1954), and also for the skins which are made up into moccasins or other articles for sale. Although seal meat and seal oil are relished, at least by the older people, most of the meat is wasted on the large hunts, and even the skins were not saved on all the hunts. For example, in August 1952, on one trip, organized by a native with a small motor boat, about 100 seals were shot, the seagulls stole some of the noses, and the party threw away most of the meat and skins because they could take less than 12 carcasses in their boat. Another man with a large motor boat killed 300 seals in Icy Bay in 1953, but attempted to save all the skins which were to be sent away to be commercially tanned. On a later trip the same year, he returned with 100 carcasses which it took 5 women 3 days to skin. Most of the meat and blubber was wasted. The following spring, he organized a similar hunt to Icy Bay, on which over 400 seals were brought to Yakutat. Some of the whole animals, minus the noses which the hunter always keeps, were sold for $2 apiece (the baby seals for $1). Many of the animals could not be flensed, and about 100 were washed away by the tide. At that time the raw skins were worth about $2 each, and a dressed skin about $10 or more.

A White resident of Yakutat who spends the summers hunting seals in Icy Bay wrote me that in 1964, “Seal skins are very high now. I bought and shipped 3,300. My profit made me a good season.”

Since the baby seals are not born until the middle and latter part of May, these early seal hunts kill a great many females with unborn young. The wooly white fur of these babies is used for trimming moccasins. There seems to be no thought, however, that the seals might ever be exterminated.

On these hunts, most seals are shot with rifles from boats, and the floating carcass is retrieved with an ordinary boathook. Until recently, a harpoon without a float was used for this purpose, the hunter simply retaining in his hand the line attached to the butt end of the shaft. This device is described below (pp. 376–377).

SEAL MIGRATIONS: HUNTING IN WINTER

The migrations of seals dictate where and how they are hunted. In winter, if people are short of food or are out trapping on the rivers east of Yakutat, they go down to the ocean beach at the mouths of the frozen streams. Here they imitate the movements and the call of the seal until they are able to get close enough to shoot them with a rifle. In former days they were either harpooned or clubbed. The Yakutat hunter wears gray clothing, in the old days of sealskin, but no other disguise was mentioned. However, at Dry Bay, where the seals come ashore (in winter?), the hunters would wear a white sheet over their heads and hide their guns under it, and “the seals would come up to them” (MJ). No special sealing scratcher was used like that of the Eskimo to imitate the sound of the seals’ claws on the ice. Seals were most readily obtained at the mouth of Dangerous River.

In March, the seals move north along the shore in groups of 2 to 15, and are shot from the beach at Ocean Cape. Harrington reported that they were still eating fish in the surf here in early May (1940). However, their movements seem to depend upon the food available, for seals may appear in Yakutat Bay as early as February depending upon the presence of fish. Thus, in February 1954, there were some fur seals in Monti Bay, reportedly sleeping under the cannery dock, because there was a run of small smeltlike fish. By late May, according to Harrington, all the seals have gone to the head of the bay near the glaciers.

The hair seals give birth to their young on the ice floes in Disenchantment and Icy Bays, where the bears cannot reach them. They remain here during the early part of summer, when they can be seen in large numbers basking on the floating ice (July 26, 1952). “How is it the hair seals make the ice gather together and block Disenchantment Bay when they are having their young?” MH asked Harrington, apparently thinking this was due to some kind of “medicine” on the part of the seals. It is, of course, just at this season of spring melting that the glaciers discharge a great deal of ice.

In August, the seals move out into the open water again, and in the fall enter the salmon streams along the coast for fish. They leave the rivers again as the latter began to freeze up.

ABORIGINAL CONTROL OF SEAL HUNTING

While seals were undoubtedly hunted in winter in ancient days, the Kwacqwan chief who controlled the summer hunting grounds in Yakutat and Icy Bays would not permit hunting at the breeding places until after the young were born, that is, not until the end of May.

“If there are young seals, then the mothers will stay with them, and there is not as much chance of scaring the whole herd away…. The chief would also say that the men had to get seals with spears. He didn’t want people to shoot [with guns] because they would scare the seals. If anybody went sealing before the seals had pups, they would scare the whole herd away.”

At a still earlier period, “They were very strict with the land. In those days they couldn’t buy food from the store, and they didn’t have guns. Now anybody can shoot a seal, but when they hunted with spears it was different.

“Yaodaqet [the Kwacqwan chief at the time of the Russians] used to give the word when the people could go to sealing camp. They didn’t hunt seals until they could see the baby seals on the ice. He would send his nephews up to look, and when they reported that there were young seals, he would send up five or six canoes to hunt seals. He would feast his people, and send word to Situk, Italio (and Akwe?) Rivers that the season was open and they could come to hunt. [That is, the Bear House Teqwedi of Situk, the Drum House Teqwedi of Italio, and possibly the Tł’uknaAdi of Akwe River would be invited.] Some of the people might be waiting at New Chicago [Eleanor Cove] to move to sealing camp. They would be catching halibut. The ice would be floating down to New Chicago and gradually would move north. But till they could hunt above Egg [Haenke] Island, he would not allow anyone to build a fire on Egg Island. The north wind would blow the smoke down and frighten away the seals.

“Once he gave the order that no one was to make a fire on Egg Island, and that they were to report to him if there was any violation. Then somebody came and told him that someone had made a fire on Egg Island. They said that ’AndAłstin had built a fire. [Was this name Yándułín, a Kwacqwan name?]

“So Yaodaqet called ’AndAłtsin and asked him if he had broken the law. ’AndAłtsin said Yes, he had made a small fire down by the edge of the water to cook seagull eggs.

” ’Because you have broken my law, you are going to be anchored at the bottom of the bay with a big stone tied around your neck. And your partner, too. But because you told the truth, you are excused. Don’t do it again!’

“Yaodaqet never made a mistake. He was always right. It wasn’t for himself, but for all his people, everybody, that he made that law.”

SEAL HUNTING IN 1886 AND 1899

When the New-York Times expedition arrived in Port Mulgrave in mid-July, 1886, they found the native village

as silent and deserted as a midnight graveyard…. The Indians, we soon learned, were at the head of the bay hunting seals for their winter supply of oil and skins. In these waters seals abound, and the Yakutats catch them by shrouding the bows of their craft with white cloth so as to resemble ice. In this way they are able to approach close enough to the seals to harpoon them.” [Schwatka, 1891, p. 867.]

I was told that men in a canoe could get close to a seal by imitating its cry.

“Over fifteen hundred hair-seals are said to have been killed in three days, by a party in Yakutat Bay, with clubs, and considering the large numbers we have seen [at Icy Bay], and the ease with which the Indians seem to go out and club them, it is not difficult to believe it.

“The Indians hunt the seals systemmatically in Yakutat Bay, where they are consequently very shy. We saw large numbers in the sea on our return [from Icy Bay to Yakutat], but besides being contrary to the laws of the United States, it would be useless for any party of white men to hope to kill more than one or two.” [Seton-Karr, 1887, p. 71.]

The sealing camps in Yakutat Bay were on the east side, the oldest just south of Point Latouche, and the more recent ones on the beaches north of the point (pp. 67–68). It was here that the Harriman Expedition in June 1899 encountered three to four hundred people, some reportedly from Juneau and Sitka, as well as from Yakutat, camped in canvas tents and bark shelters (p. 314). By this period, the old sealing canoe for hunting in the ice (gudiyÉ) (p. 339–340) was already obsolete, and the forked prow canoe was used instead. The hunters were armed with guns.

“The Indians kill the seals not for the flesh, although this is eaten, nor for the hides, though these are used, but for the oil, which is a necessity to them. They drink it, preserve berries in it, and use it for cooking, so that it really forms a considerable and important part of their food. The month of June, therefore, is usually spent in Yakutat Bay, on what is perhaps the greatest hair sealing ground on the coast. When the Harriman expedition reached that point there were between three and four hundred people gathered there to secure the annual supply of oil.

“The seals are hunted in small canoes, usually occupied by two persons. They are light, and until one has become accustomed to them, seem cranky and likely to tip over. The shape of the cutwater is peculiar, for under the prow the wood is cut away backward, and beneath this again projects forward just above the water's level, with the result that this projecting point of wood first strikes and pushes away the ice cakes which so thickly float upon the water's surface, and prevents them from battering and chafing the bows of the canoes.

“The two seal hunters in the canoe may be two men, or a man and his wife, or a man and boy. The hunter sits in the bow and his companion in the stern, while amidships are placed three or four large stones for ballast, weighing in the aggregate 150 or 200 pounds. Each occupant sits or kneels on a little platform fitted into bow and stern, or perhaps on a pile of branches covered by a blanket, a coat, or a skin, so as to keep him above the water, of which there is always more or less in the canoe. To the right of the bowman, and so of course immediately under his hand, are his arms, usually a Winchester rifle, or double-barrel shot gun, and a seal spear ten or twelve feet in length. Sometimes the hunters wear white shirts and hats, made of flour sacks, and sometimes white cloth is hung over the gunwales of the boat, so as to make it seem like a piece of floating ice. This precaution is less commonly employed where ice is abundant, as in Yakutat Bay, than in places where there is less ice. Many of the bergs here are covered with dirt, and are of all shades from white to black. Much of the surface of the upper end of Yakutat Bay is covered with floating ice which is continually falling from the fronts of the glaciers which pour into it, and it is among this floating ice that the sealing is done. The hunters paddle along slowly, keeping a sharp lookout for the seals. When one is observed they sit still, but as soon as it dives they paddle as swiftly as possible toward the spot, continuing their efforts until it is almost time for the seal to reappear. They are so familiar with the habits of the animal that they can gauge the time very closely.

“When the seal is about due at the surface the paddlers stop and look for him, the hunter holding his gun in readiness to shoot. If the seal appears within range the shot is fired, and if the animal is wounded both men paddle to him as fast as possible, and the hunter tries to spear him, either by throwing or thrusting with the spear. A long, light line is attached to the shaft of the spear near its head, and the end of the line is retained in the boat. The spear point, being barbed on one side, seldom or never pulls out, and the seal is dragged to the side of the canoe, struck on the head with a club, and taken on board. If the first shot should have merely wounded the seal, and it is impossible to spear him, he is pursued and shot again whenever he comes to the surface. Few seals are lost unless they can get among the thick ice where the canoe moves with difficulty, and the floating blocks interrupt the view. When a seal is taken into the boat an equivalent weight of stones is thrown overboard to lighten the canoe. Often before noon the canoe has all the seals that it can carry, and returns to the camp.

“When the village is reached women help unload the canoe and carry the seals up the beach, while the men take the boat up above high-water mark.

“It would be difficult to form a close estimate as to the number of seals killed by these Indians, but more than 500 skins were counted in the camp where we spent most of our time, and it would seem that a thousand seals would not be too large a number to be credited to the three camps that were located near the head of the bay.” [Grinnell, 1901, vol. 1, pp. 161–165.]

In this account, Grinnell does not mention the small stools in the canoes which my informants described. On the other hand none of my informants spoke about women going hunting with the men, or the use of ballast in the canoe, and some denied the use of white cloth as a disguise, although a block of ice was formerly put in the gudiyÉ to screen the hunter.

An informant was shown a photograph taken by the Harriman Expedition of some seal hunters in a canoe (cf. Grinnell, 1901, vol. 1, fig. on p. 141). He recognized it at once as foreign, and when told that the scene was Glacier Bay, near Hoonah, he commented as follows:

“They got that white sheet on the boat. They usually put sealskin around here [the bow and partway aft along the sides]. They don’t make noise when they going in the ice. They use this sheet over them. That's the way they hunt, Hoonah people. White sheet [on the boat], and white dress [referring to the white jackets and white caps], and sealskin around the bow.”

When asked if this was ever done at Yakutat, he said:

“The Hoonah people do that. Yakutat—they never speak about using white sheet. Just go up to them [seals], spear as much as they want, and take off again. But later on they start getting scarce. They always say those Hoonah people use those white sheets and put sealskin on the canoes.”

HARPOONS

The harpoon (’ádà or ’ádÀ) used for seal, porpoise, seal lion, and sometimes for sea otter, had a tanged, detachable barbed head (kAt) (pl. 117). The harpoon line was attached to a hole in the tang of the head. We were told that it was made of twisted spruce root (‘a adi), but those collected by Emmons had lines of twisted sinew or hide. The line was hitched around the fore end of the shaft, ran back, and was fastened again at the butt (fig. 39). It was so attached that after the animal was harpooned, the line would come loose from the shaft. The latter floated free and was picked up by the hunter. The shaft was described as about 2 fathoms or 12 feet long, but they seem to have ranged from about 10 to 14 feet. It was preferably made of red cedar because that floats well. It had a groove across the slightly expanded and flattened butt to furnish a grip for the forefinger of the right hand (fig. 40). It was thrown with the left hand near the middle of the shaft and the right hand on the butt. None of my informants had heard of a throwing board.

At the end of the harpoon line was a float (kAtsis). One informant said it was made of the whole skin of a baby seal (tsa-yAdi kAtsis), but specimens collected at Yakutat seem to be made also of the bladder of a seal or a bear (TBM/WSM 1507/26–28; AMNH 19/1166). When the animal was harpooned, this was thrown out of the canoe, and the wounded animal was soon tired from attempting to escape with the drag of the buoy. It was then dispatched with a club (pl. 110). Sometimes these clubs were decorated, and seem to have been very similar to those of the Chugach (Birket-Smith, 1953, fig. 16, b).

FIGURE 39.—Harpoon (’ada) for seals, sea otter, and fish, a, Sketched by Minnie Johnson on July 22, 1952. b, Sketched by Olaf Abraham on June 14, 1954. The barbed head (kAt) is attached to a line of spruce roots (‘as ati). The line is then fastened to the forward end of the spear, run back along the shaft, and fastened again at the butt. Olaf made a halfhitch at each place in demonstrating, but was not certain if that was the correct knot to use. The attachment is such that, after the animal is harpooned, the line detaches from the shaft which floats away and is then picked up by the hunter. At the end of the line is a float made of a whole sealskin (kAtsis) and shaped like a seal. When the sea lion is harpooned, the buoy is thrown out of the canoe and the animal becomes exhausted quickly.

Somewhat different arrangements of the float were described. One man said that the float was made of the skin of a young seal, taken off whole, “like a box and blown up like a balloon,” and that this was attached directly to the shaft of the harpoon, not to the line. Another man indicated that two lines were attached to the shaft; one ran from the barbed head to the fore end (kAt kEt); the other (xuktł) was attached to the butt of the shaft. The end of the latter was either retained by the hunter, or was attached to the float. I believe that the float was omitted when the harpoon was simply used to retrieve a seal that had been shot, whereas the float was described by older informants as fastened to the end of the harpoon line.

The barbed head might have three or four barbs (án) (see fig. 39). If it has three it is called ‘three-head-barbs’ (nAK-CA-án); if four, ‘four-head-barbs’ (daun-cA-án). The formost barb was called gaán; the lowest one “next to the fat” (tayi tudE ukawuxà, possibly ’the-fat into the-one-that-bites‘). People used to say, in fun, that the rear barb would call to the foremost one, “Hold it! (gaán gułcát).” The foremost one would reply, “You are next to the fat.” The first phrase is commonly used by a man who is urging his partner to work harder, while the latter will answer as above, meaning that the other has the easy job.

Archeological harpoon heads were of bone, with two or originally three barbs, and were about 5 inches long (11 to 16 cm.). Modern heads are made of iron, and may have from 2 to 4 barbs measuring from 4 to 10 inches in length. Emmons collected a number of barbed heads at Yakutat, as well as complete spears. The heads were of iron, bone, or copper, and were used for seal, sea otter, or salmon (AMNH E/160, 473, 859, 1577, 2121, 2601; pl. 112).

FIGURE 40.—Flattened butt of a seal harpoon shaft, with finger grip, as sketched in Bear Paw House in 1949. The butt, shown natural size, was part of a shaft 12′6″.

A rather obscure observation in the report of Shelikhov, based upon what Ismailov and Bocharov had learned at Port Mulgrave in 1788, suggests that the “iron images of crows,” which the Russians assumed were amulets, actually functioned as detachable barbed harpoon heads:

“With the beaks which they use for ornament, they harpoon sea-otters and seal, as they lie sleeping on the ice. They catch fish, also, sometimes with these instruments, sometimes by means of dams, and sometimes in small nets.” [Coxe, 1803, pp. 326–327.]

Harpoons used for fish are discussed on pages 384–386.

SEA LION AND PORPOISE

Sea lion and porpoise were hunted with the same harpoon as that used for seal, and a float was always attached to the line. It was also used for fur seal. The latter are said to have been caught sometimes with a single unbaited halibut hook, but the method was not described and the informant may have referred only to a lucky accident. Fur seal were sometimes shot with the same harpoon arrow as that used for sea otter, and porpoise were also shot with bow and arrow. Whereas sea otter were hunted primarily with the harpoon arrow, the barbed harpoon with float was used for those animals that escaped the encircling canoes (see below). The same wooden club that was used to dispatch seal and sea otter could also be used for porpoise, but I do not know how wounded sea lions were killed.

SEA OTTER

Ever since the late 18th century, beyond which we could hardly expect native traditions to extend except in unusual cases, sea otter hunting has been the foremost maritime pursuit at Yakutat, as exciting as bear hunting and far more lucrative. According to all commentators, the Yakutat people excelled other Tlingit in this activity, being the only Indians except the Eyak to use the harpoon arrow, having better hunting canoes, and venturing far out into the open sea. The sea otter is now protected by law, and the last major hunts were held late in the last century, when nowelderly informants were young. (Harrington was told that the last open season on sea otter was in 1909; by then they must have become very scarce.) In the final decades of the 19th century, Icy Bay and Controller Bay and the open ocean between were the great sea otter hunting grounds. Fleets of canoes would go there from Yakutat, manned not only by local natives but by Tlingit from southeastern Alaska and even Tsimshian and other Indians from British Columbia. These foreigners used guns, but the Yakutat people still preferred the traditional bow and arrow. These expeditions were dangerous and the quarry valuable, so it is not surprising that magical rules as well as the techniques of sea otter hunting should have been more stressed by informants than those which applied to the hunting of other sea mammals. At one time sea otter were numerous in Yakutat Bay, for Deep Bay on Khantaak Island is known in Tlingit as ‘Sea Otter Bay,’ because the animals used to shelter here during winter storms. The sea otter is not completely extinct in the area—one was seen near Yakutat in February 1954.

MAGICAL RULES

In addition to the usual purification and abstinance, the sea otter hunter fasted for two days before setting out. Probably he manipulated his amulets, and bathed. He might carry an amulet (danakw) in the canoe. Furthermore, the men in the party did not eat all day when they were out on the water.

Charley White described his first sea otter hunt, taken with his uncle when he was a small boy:

“No eat on canoe. Just come ashore to eat. All day long [without food]. That time no eat, make luck. He eat—no luck. He see, yuxt-qwani [sea otter souls] see it—no luck! łigas! [taboo].”

The sea otter hunter would rise in the dark, make a fire and eat before the raven called. A part of what he ate was put into the fire, while he wished for luck, saying “At a tłAétł,” freely translated as “Come to me, luck!”

A woman told me: “In sea otter hunting, they used dope of some kind. The men keep away from their wives for several months. The women are quiet when the men are out after sea otter.” Another woman said that the wives “have to sleep all the way through.” When asked if they could eat or get up at all, she explained, “You get up to eat, and go to bed again,” but admitted that she knew little about the rules because sea otter were no longer hunted. Almost certainly the taboo against becoming angry and punishing children would have applied to sea otter hunting, perhaps even more strictly than to sealing (see p. 373).

Because the men had to travel and hunt on the open sea, forecasting the weather was very important, and those who could do so were highly respected. Chief Yaodaqet, who controlled these hunts (see below), was noted as a weather prophet. There were also a number of charms or rites to control the weather (see pp. 805–807).

Tikhmenev (1863, vol. 2, pp. 347–349, Petroff's translation) has described sea otter hunting as practiced in the first half of the 19th century. While it was the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska who used guns (not the Yakutat natives), the magico-religious practices and the activities of the shaman which are described are stated to be especially characteristic of the Indians of Lituya and Yakutat Bays.

“Of the various Kolosh tribes only the natives of Yakoutat and Ltua Bay employ themselves at the present day in hunting sea-otter, i.e. a locality abounding in these animals, compared to other points on the coast of Northwestern America. The height of the season for this pursuit falls in the Spring, before the fish begin to run. About this time the Kolosh assemble from the various villages on a locality previously determined upon, and in parties of sometimes over a hundred canoes they go in pursuit of their game. Only the prominent chiefs and their relations among the Kolosh living in the villages on Vancouver Sounds where sea-otters are scarce, are allowed by the Yakoutat and Ltua people to participate in the hunt. Like the Aleut the Kolosh surround a flock of sea-otters—but not with spears, but guns. The Sitka Kolosh kill a small number of sea-otters annually in the neighborhood of the Sulphur Springs and around Mount Edgecumbe.

“While fitting out for hunting sea-otter, the Kolosh, especially those living at Yakoutat and Ltua observe certain customs, upon the strict observance of which depends, in their opinion, their success in hunting.

[Author's Note: The customs observed by the Kolosh in time of war and when preparing for a sea-otter hunt have been described by the present Secretary of the Governor of the Colony, N. M. Koshkin.]

“For two months before the departure of the party, i.e., in the month of March, at the time of full moon the hunters make offerings to the Shaman (sorcerer) and ask him to tell whether they will kill many or few sea-otters and if they shall return home in safety. The Sorcerer who has been consulted general[ly] observes a strict fast of eight days, taking food only once in every 24 hours, having drunk for some time before nothing but sea-water, so that his present food cannot mingle with any taken before. Fresh sea-cabbage, mussels and other shellfood are entirely banished from his table, but even the hunters must not eat them during that time, since that might cause misfortune, as they believe, or even danger of life in pursuit of the animal. During the fasting neither Sorcerer nor hunter must live with their wives or have intercourse with them.

“At the close of this observance they have taken upon themselves, i.e. on the 8th day, the hunters assemble in one barabor, in the middle of which a fire is burning. Soon after the Sorcerer appears also and in measured steps walks around the fire, when each of those present must strike him with his open hand and then he begins his deviltry and prophesy.

“The Sorcerer nearly always escapes the danger of being deprived of his remuneration, and if his words do not come entirely true, he is generally left in possession of his gifts or at least half of it, since ill success in hunting or any other disaster happening to the party is always ascribed by the Shaman to a failure on the part of the hunters to live up strictly to their observances. And even half of the reward is only returned if it happens that a party returns from an unsuccessful hunt in less than 20 days; a longer absence makes it impossible, according to custom, to recover anything and places the prophet in full possession of every thing he may have received. Sometimes these misfortunes are ascribed to incontinence on the part of a hunter's wife, etc. If a man is wounded while hunting sea-otter an investigation is made to discover the cause of it among his wives or their relatives.

“Before the departure of the party the hunters and their wives clothe themselves in clean white, use the skins of animals only for blankets and cloaks, and do not change them until their return. The washing of the white clothes is strictly forbidden, as well as of anything else, and a breach of this observance is considered a very bad omen.”

THE SEA OTTER HUNT

The surround method was used in hunting sea otter. Five, ten, fifteen, or even “sometimes a hundred boats would go out, two men in each canoe. Sometimes they would go so far out to sea that they could just see the tip of the mountain.” The canoe used was the splitprow dugout (tÀyác), although one informant said that the sealing canoe (gudiyÉ) was also good for hunting sea otter. The two men in the canoe were close relatives in the same sib, sometimes brothers; the older man in the stern watched and the bowman kept his bow and arrows ready to shoot. When a sea otter was sighted, a paddle was raised as a signal, the fleet surrounded it, and all the bowmen shot at once. The first man to hit the otter so that the barbed head of the arrow held fast would call out that he had done so. He claimed the pelt, but would offer something, customarily a blanket, to the one who finally killed the animal. Sometimes the second man to shoot the sea otter also received a blanket; perhaps all whose arrows hit received something. The group would continue to shoot until the animal could no longer dive because of all the arrows in it. Then it was clubbed or killed with a “spear.” My informants were uncertain whether this was a lance or a harpoon, for one described it as “a sword or something long,” but called it by the word for harpoon (’ádà), and others were equally vague. It was almost certainly the harpoon with float already described, for one informant (MJ) said that the sea otter was sometimes taken with an ordinary sealing harpoon. Hunters could recognize their own arrows because each man marked his shafts in a special way, the feathers might have distinctive colors or be cut in an individual style, or the sinew line might be different.

“They used to go out twice a year for sea otters: in egging time [May or early June], and in the middle of summer, when strawberries are ripe [late July and early August].” They might also be hunted in winter, if they were found sheltering inside the bay.

The sea otter hunt was strictly controlled by the Kwacqwan chief, since his sib owned the waters where the animals were encountered.

“Yaodaqet restricted all the land from Yakutat to Icy Bay. No one may hunt sea otter unless he knows it…. Those chiefs [the first Yaodaqet and his successors] would say when it was all right for the people to start hunting sea otter. They watched how many each man got. If one man had four and the others had only two or three, they would tell the man with the most to stop hunting. The chiefs saw to it that each family got the same number of skins.

“The otter was hunted with bow and arrows. The people had plenty of guns then [presumably referring to the time of Chief George Yaodaqet who died about 1902], but the shooting would scare away the otter. If there was an unlucky man who got only one otter, or maybe none at all, the chief then gave an order that all of the hunters except that one man had to use the sticks of their arrows. Only that one man could use a regular arrowhead. Then they let him shoot and shoot until he killed an otter.

“The chiefs restricted all the land, but it was for everybody‘s good.

“Yaodaqet lived at Nesudat [an early historic village on Lost River]. He would send his people out for otter. He would say how many canoes were to go out—’Four canoes going out!’ or ‘Five canoes!’ He‘d tell them how many sea otters to get—no more, no less…. The men could keep the skins they got, but his nephews would have to give skins to him. They could ask for valuables in return.

[When the chief discovered or was notified of the presence of a sea otter herd, he would send word to all the villages to come and hunt.] “The chief used to say how many each man could kill—maybe four, no more—so everybody would have a chance. Or he might say to the hunters, ‘You’re not going to use the point on your arrow, just use the end [socket piece],’ and then mention some man and tell him he could use the point. When he got a sea otter, then he would name the next man.”

From the stories told by other informants, it was obvious that these measures did not equalize the fortunes of the different hunters. Some men were notably successful, and their luck and wealth sometimes aroused such envy among their less fortunate kinsmen that the latter might attempt to injure them through witchcraft (see pp. 739, 741).

The noted sea otter hunter, adane Johnstone kept all the right humeri of all the sea otters he had killed, “just for the fun of it.” These filled a big wooden box, about 2 feet square and 2 feet high, “Everyone came to admire them.” They were kept as heirlooms after his death. (MJ) It is doubtful that the bones were saved merely as trophies, since the right humerus of the sea otter, like that of the seal, was the “fortune-telling bone,” often employed by the hunter to divine his luck, or even carried in the canoe as a charm.

After the hunt, the head of the dead sea otter was probably returned to the salt water with a song and prayer, although informants gave no specific information on this point.

SEA OTTER HUNTING IN THE LATE 19TH CENTURY

The story of “An Averted War with the Tsimshian” (pp. 284–286) deals with an episode that occurred on a sea otter hunt near Icy Bay, about 1890, and thus gives some insight into the commercial hunts of that period.

Seton-Karr, in 1886, when going from Yakutat to Controller Bay, passed “a point on the coast where a party of Indians which had been fitted out by the traders with boats and guns had been landed to hunt sea-otters” (1887, p. 136). This place was at the western edge of the glacier on the west side of Icy Bay protected by a low sandy point, and known as the “Icy Bay landing,” although it was some 20 miles west of the bay. Unfortunately, we are not told what Indians were hunting here. Other parties, we know, hunted off Cape Yakataga for White traders.

Seton-Karr (1887, p. 153) also learned something about sea otter hunting in Controller Bay,

“The Indians [according to Nils Anderson, the trader] usually only hunt land fur in winter, not sea-otters, for the sea is too rough for canoes. They always use bows and arrows for sea-otters, and will only use a gun when they are close and cannot miss. They have an idea that guns frighten away the otters; or perhaps loading takes too much time, for they use muzzle-loaders. In winter the otters are driven by the gales to take refuge near shore, in lee of the islands; but in summer they can only be found out at sea.

“We pay from forty to sixty dollars each for the skins to the Indians. They are used for trimming, and would be too expensive to make whole coats of. They practically last for ever.” [Ibid., p. 154.]

At that time, the Whites in Controller Bay were catching sea otters in nets (ibid., p. 152), but this practice does not seem to have been tried by the Indians.

Russell also has a little to say about sea otter hunting at Yakutat in 1890:

“During the summer of our visit [1890], about thirty sea-otter were taken. They are usually shot in the primitive manner with copper-pointed arrows, although repeating rifles of the most improved patterns are owned by the natives, in spite of the existing laws against selling breech-loading arms to Indians. The fur of the sea-otter is acknowledged to be the most beautiful, and is the most highly prized of all pelts. Those taken at Yakutat during our visit were sold at an average price of about seventy-five dollars.” [Russell, 1891 b, p. 80.]

SEA OTTER BOW AND ARROW

The bow used in hunting sea otters was the same as that employed for land animals (p. 368).

The harpoon arrow (pls. 109, 112) had a shaft about 3 feet long, preferably of red cedar because this is said to float best. This wood had to be imported from southeastern Alaska or even from Prince Rupert, we were told, but sometimes yellow cedar from Icy Bay or local spruce was used. The shaft (tcunEt) had three split and trimmed eagle tail feathers at the notched and expanded butt, and resembled an ordinary arrow except for the socket piece (tcunEt us aq, ’arrow foot bone’) at the fore end, into which the tang of the barbed head was set. Informants described the socket piece as “like the top of a fountain pen,” or as “like a little bone ring, split in two,” and about as long as the thumb, with a hole at one end to receive the shaft and another at the other end to seat the barbed head. Sketches made by informants showed that the diameter of the socket piece was greater than that of the arrow shaft, but the lengths they indicated were very different, and perhaps several styles were once used. However, the sea otter arrows collected by Colonel Ball in 1880, by Professor Libbey in 1886, and by Lieutenant Emmons at about that same time all seem to have foreshafts about 8 to 8 inches long, made in one piece of heavy bone (sometimes of ivory, AMNH 19/798, E/1087), with bifurcated tang into which the wedge-shaped end of the shaft is fitted and secured with a seizing of sinew. The shaft swells a few inches below the foreshaft. Some shafts seem to have painted marks around them; some foreshafts have a simple design: (pl. 112; four specimens collected by Emmons).

“The reason you use the bone in front is so you can shoot it straight. If you don’t weight it, it would just be going any old way.” The weight of the socket-piece also made the arrow float vertically in the water when the sea otter was struck and the shaft was detached from the head.

The detachable barbed head (tcunEt kAt) was similar to that used for the harpoon, except that it was from 1to 2 inches long. Archeological examples (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 135–137), identified by our informants, were all of bone. We were told that they were also made of copper, but never of iron. Barbed heads collected at Yakutat in the 1880's are of bone or copper, and sometimes of walrus ivory (AMNH 19/798, quiver with 4 arrows).

The harpoon line (tcunEt kEt) of braided porpoise sinew was attached to a hole in the tang of the barbed head, although a number of archeological specimens lacked a hole or any obvious place for attachment. This line divided some distance from the head, to form two lines, the ends of which were attached to the shaft near each end, forming a martingale rig. This meant that the shaft would drag crosswise in the water when the wounded animal tried to escape. A few informants, however, described only a single line, tied to the middle of the shaft, but their accounts may have been misinterpreted (CW, MJ, et al.). The line was wound tightly around the shaft when the arrow was shot.

Curiously enough, none of the informants mentioned the special wooden quiver in which these arrows were kept. It was carried in the bow of the canoe, close to the hunter's hand, the arrows put in point first. Specimens collected at Yakutat (pls. 108, 109; AMNH 19/798, 1172, E/1087, 1901, 2280) are identical in style to those of the Chugach (Birket-Smith, 1953, fig. 13). The quiver was made of red cedar, partially hollowed out, split in two, finished, and bound together again with sinew or spruce roots. It flared at the mouth to accommodate the feathered butts and also to facilitate extraction of the arrows. The quiver was about 36 inches long.

Fishing

Salmon are the most important type of fish caught on the Gulf of Alaska. They furnished, and still furnish for some Indian families, the staple supplies for the winter; commercial salmon fishing has been the main source of livelihood since early in the present century. Fishing is pursued with an enthusiasm almost equal to that of hunting. It usually lacks the dangerous excitement of hunting, but the uncertainty of the catch and the large sums that can be made from lucky hauls provide a gambler's thrill. Women formerly worked in the cannery, but since this has ceased to operate, many go fishing with the men. The catch is sold to companies that process it elsewhere.

The salmon runs occur in the following sequence, but with considerable overlapping: king, sockeye, humpback, and coho. There are few dog salmon in the Yakutat area (Harrington was told that a man might catch only half a dozen in a season), but they may be caught east of Dry Bay (FD). Harrington in 1939–40 recorded slightly different dates for the runs than the information which I was able to compile (pp. 50–51), perhaps because my informants seemed to be particularly interested in the very first fish of a species to appear as well as in the very last stragglers of a run that might be caught. To summarize, however, we can be safe in reporting that the king or spring salmon run in April and May, with the first individual occasionally appearing in Yakutat Bay in February or March. Since the Indians did not try to catch them by trolling in a boriginal times, as they do now, king salmon were not important to them until they reached the streams. Harrington reports that there are no true runs of king salmon in the Gulf of Alaska in the fall, as there is farther south, although one may see them jumping in the ocean and in the bays in October. I understood, however, that spawning might continue all through the summer, and that the Indians tried to catch them in the fall. The sockeye appear in late May, with the run lasting through June and into July, sometimes into the beginning of August, when the last few fish are very red-skinned. What few dog salmon run in Yakutat waters come with the sockeye. The first humpback salmon appear at the end of June; Harrington reports, with the last straggling sockeye. The major part of the run is in the latter part of July and early August, petering out in the latter part of the month. The coho, the favorite fish for drying at Yakutat, may first appear in August (or even July), but the major part of the run is in September and October, when the weather is cold. Harrington reports that the last coho salmon sometimes are frozen in the ice in shallow streams.

Although halibut are now commercially taken on the banks far out beyond the mouth of Yakutat Bay, this industry has never been one in which the Yakutat natives participated, perhaps because the large seagoing halibut boats represented too great a financial outlay. However, they catch halibut for their own use just inside the mouth of the bay, or in Monti Bay, generally in the late winter and spring, February to May. Halibut fishing was one of the occupations traditionally pursued before moving to the sealing camps in June. In May, the herring (yaw) spawn in Yakutat Bay. Dry Bay lacks herring, but the oelachon (sak) run there in February, and also in the Situk River in March when the ice begins to break up. Candlefish (cat) run later in the spring. A small smeltlike fish that appeared during the winters of 1953 and 1954 at Yakutat is a newcomer to the region. Steelhead trout (’acÁt) may be taken in the salmon streams in May and later in the summer. There are other varieties of trout (pp. 51–52), but none of these has been important as a source of food. Other fish caught in salt water are the “cod” (a) or lingcod, the “black cod” or sablefish (’Ícqìn), and the “black sea bass” (łItistukw), although my identification of these species is not always certain (p. 53).

COMMERCIAL FISHING

Commercial fishing has been the main industry at Yakutat since the first salmon cannery was built on Monti Bay. This was originally a saltery (1902), converted into a cannery in 1905. I do not know when it ceased operation. It was not running in 1949 at the time of my first visit, and in 1952 was opened only in the spring to put up a few cases of king salmon from Dry Bay. Most of the fish caught in Yakutat and Situk waters are shipped to Hoonah for canning; others are bought by fish buyers who come to the mouth of the Situk River. Herring were once commercially important at Yakutat; for a time there was a saltery at the mouth of the Ankau (1900–05?), but the large herring runs were destroyed.

All commercial fishing is regulated by Federal law, implemented by regulations made each year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (This statement and the account that follows refer to 1954, before Alaska became a State.) These rules are enforced by a local Fish Commissioner and his assistants who are stationed during the season at each of the main fishing areas. The rules specify the dates for opening and closing the fishing season for each area and hence for each species, the localities where fishing is permitted, the types of gear allowed, and the number of salmon that must be permitted to spawn. One Fish Commissioner is regularly stationed on the Situk River, where a count is made of all the salmon ascending the stream through an opening in the Government weir. The Commissioner may prohibit fishing if the count is too low. No fishing is allowed on Saturday and Sunday to permit regular escapement of salmon each week.

There is naturally considerable resentment at these regulations on the part of both native and White fishermen. Thus, the decrease in the numbers of salmon caught, actually due to overfishing, is blamed by some Indians on the weir at Situk. The appearance of sock-eyes in Lost River, Arhnklin, and Italio Rivers, which are said to have been formerly coho streams, is supposedly due to this weir which has frightened the sockeye away from the Situk.

“The White men say that we are killing the river because we fish so much, but the old man and my uncle used to take care of the river…. My old man tell [the Fish Commissioner], ’You put the weir 2 miles up, otherwise you’re going to kill that river!’…If the tide catches up to the weir, all the fish will go to other streams. We can’t talk to the fish what we are trying to do. All the animals—that things in the air, they know what we do; but the fish, we can’t talk to them.”

In recent years, trolling for king salmon could legally begin about the middle of May, while net fishing for sockeye might open the middle of June or even later in Yakutat waters. The dates for Dry Bay and for the Situk-Arhnklin Inlet were different. Net fishing closed September 30, although trolling was permitted later. These rules apply only to fish that are to be sold for canning. Thus it is before and after the commercial fishing season (and sometimes on weekends when commercial fishing is prohibited) that the natives catch salmon for their own use. They may also retain some of those caught at other times.

Salmon are caught with set gill nets and with beach seines. Harrington reports that the gill nets are made with mesh in three sizes: for king or spring salmon with 8-inch mesh; for coho with 6-inch mesh; and for sockeye, humpback, and dog salmon with 5-inch mesh. Sockeye salmon are caught in gill nets near the mouths of the rivers east of Yakutat. Those which we saw near Lost River were anchored beyond the surf, at right angles to the shore (pl. 102). Not only does the law determine the length of the net and size of the mesh, but the distance from the mouth of the stream and the space between the nets. The actual order in which the nets are set is, however, controlled by the “beach boss,” who appears to be the successor to the sib chief who formerly determined the position of fishtraps in the river. The set nets are visited in a large skiff. The men do this when the nets are anchored in dangerous waters, but many women tend their own nets in more sheltered inlets. Women may work in pairs, or a woman and boy may fish together. The main fish camps are now at Dry Bay (principally for king salmon), and at the mouths of the Situk and Lost Rivers. When the season opened at Dry Bay in May 1954, most of the men went there without their wives, but the other two camps are easily reached from Yakutat by automobile (Lost River), or by train and skiff (Situk), and so almost the entire population moves to these camps when fishing begins there in June or July. Many families have summer shacks or houses, or else live in tents, usually returning to Yakutat for the weekend. They may also have smokehouses at these camps or, occasionally, near their homes in town.

The fish camps at Lost and Situk Rivers are on territory claimed by the Bear House branch of the Teqwedi sib. Rights to the Lost River area are said to have been willed by the last local chief to his daughters, for his grandchildren. The husband of one of these daughters, who belongs to the same lineage as the deceased chief, “takes care of the land” at present, and serves as “beach boss,” although he does not claim the position of chief nor the right to exclude anyone from fishing in the area. However, the people who regularly fish here constitute a family group, structured much as it might have been in former days. In addition to the son-in-law of the deceased chief and his wife, the group includes another daughter of the former chief and her White husband, the children of these two women, the son-in-law of one of them, and another man of the Bear House lineage. From time to time, others not related in any way to this group, such as an unattached White man, may choose to fish here. Most of the Yakutat people, however, go to the camp at the mouth of the Situk River, but I do not know how that camp is organized.

Later in the season, when humpback and coho salmon have come to Yakutat Bay, those who have gas boats will catch them with beach seines. These are long nets that are carried in the gas boat and are towed around a school of fish by means of a skiff. The ends of the net are brought together to entrap the fish, and the net is hauled up on the edge of the beach where the catch is removed (pl. 103). This operation requires a group of men, and the members are selected by the owner of the boat largely on a family basis. Thus, his brothers, sons, sons-in-law, or sons of his sib “brothers” and “sisters” are apt to be asked.

Nets used for both types of fishing may be purchased on credit from the cannery, and gill nets may be made by the natives from commercial twine. With the introduction of superior nylon nets, no one now tries to make them. However, the purchased nets still need to have floats and weights attached to the upper and lower edges, and nets are dyed a dark green, said to prevent rotting. Skiffs are usually rented from the cannery, which also gives credit for gasoline, food, and other equipment. The cost of the outfit for sockeye fishing (gill net, skiff, and so on) is considerable, amounting in 1952 to $500. A diligent and lucky fisherman may, however, make $1,000 in a few weeks, but a careless or unlucky man may lose his net and skiff and end the season in debt.

Partners in gill netting share expenses and returns, but for beach seining from a motor boat each member of the crew gets one share, while the owner receives two extra shares, “one for the boat, and one for the net,” which is the usual practice among White fishermen.

It is generally at the end of the commercial season, in early October when the coho are running, that the people catch and smoke what fish they still need for the winter. The Ankau lagoon system was formerly reserved by law for this purpose, and many famlies had cabins and smokehouses along the shores of the lagoons and lakes in this area. Some families once lived here during the summer and maintained vegetable gardens, but these camps are now virtually abandoned.

ABORIGINAL SALMON FISHING

Salmon fishing in aboriginal times was carried on in rivers or lakes by means of spears and traps. These fishing grounds, like all hunting territory, were owned by sibs, or by major lineages. I gather that no claims were enforced with regard to salt water fishing, but that salmon streams were jealously guarded. The traditional history makes clear that the original owners of the Humpback Salmon Stream (Kwac) broke the spears of the young men who were fishing there without permission (p. 233).

Probably the chief of the sib or lineage that owned the stream determined where the weirs and traps were to be placed, and who might spear or gaff salmon. In any case, trap sites were not privately owned. Later, when commercial fishing began, but before the Federal Government made and enforced regulations designed to ensure a sufficient escapement of salmon to the spawning grounds, it is said that the local chief “would watch the salmon runs, and if there were too few fish going up, he would order the nets taken up for a day or two. There were lots of fish in those days.”

In the old days, when salmon began to run, the women were not allowed to come close to the water. They had to stay back in the house where they belonged. This was to show respect for the fish. But now, women even help to catch them, one man commented.

When salmon were cut for smoking, they were placed on the cutting board with the head upstream, and were hung in the smokehouse in the same position. The Indians were careful not to waste any part of the fish. They tried to dry everything but the fins and entrails. When the flesh was eaten, the bones were burned. If this was not done, the fish would suffer and there would be no more runs.

Menstruating women, of course, could have nothing to do with fresh salmon. As recently as 1934, fishermen objected when a woman was going to have a baby in a house near the bank of the Situk River, saying “It‘s against the Indian law.”

When salmon are running and one is seen to jump, people should call out “Again! (tu),” and it will jump again. They also call “Come [jump] again! (su tan). Your river runs in grass (’ihini xał’ nAsIde).” This is because, if the fish do not come, the stream becomes choked with grass, which the fish do not like. The first salmon is sent by the Salmon Chief to clear out the grass, so that the run will come to a clean river.

Informants denied that there was any special ceremony or ritual performed for the first salmon caught.

The proper behavior toward salmon was learned by the boy who insulted the fish and was taken by them (p. 889). He returned as a fish, was caught by his own father, and eventually regained his own form and became a great shaman. Then he told his people how salmon should be treated. In one version of this story, the big traps in the river appear like forts to the fish, who try to break them down, just as a war party might. It should be noted that the Eyak word for “fort” and for “fish trap” is the same (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 545).

I did not learn anything about magical procedures for herring, oelachon, or other small fish that come in runs to spawn, except that all fish should be treated with respect.

HARPOONS FOR SALMON

I have already quoted the statement from Shelikhov that the Yakutat natives in 1788 caught fish with harpoons (p. 377). The fish were undoubtedly salmon.

The salmon spear or harpoon (’ádà) was the same as that for seals and other sea mammals, except that it lacked a float. It was used either from a canoe or from the bank of a stream. It was usually thrust at the fish but if thrown, the fisherman held the harpoon line in his hand. Such a harpoon could be used only in clear water. Harrington reports that king salmon were taken with the harpoon from a canoe in dead low water at the mouths of rivers, where the salmon were perhaps only 3 feet below the surface. In distinguishing between three types of weir, he reports that the stream might be completely blocked by a fence of vertically placed poles which prevented the fish from ascending and that they were harpooned below this. Such weirs were known by the Russian name, zapor, according to Moser, whose party found a number of such barricades on T’awał Creek in 1901 (p. 75).

Salmon harpoons, like those collected by Emmons at Yakutat in the 1880's (AMNH E/1890, 19/1165), were seen in deserted fish camps at Lost River Landing, on Russian Lake in the Ankau lagoons, and in Yakutat (fig. 41; pl. 117). The barbed heads are made from iron files instead of bone; the line is of fishing twine. These have until recently been used by men for catching fish for domestic consumption, either because they prefered the old-fashioned method, or because they could not afford a commercial net.

Some form of socketed or toggling harpoon head was evidently once used for salmon. The type of harpoon head described by Malaspina was evidently such a toggle head with socket:

“Their most common food is the salmon which they take with a small harpoon-like barb made of bone, which in the part opposed to the point has a conical cavity, into which fits the end of a shaft of wood; at the neck of this harpoon is fastened firmly the end of a cord made of marine plants [probably kelp], and which on the other end is attached to a bladder. When they see the fish coming, the harpoon is thrown: if this wounds the animal, the shaft remains floating which is attached to the line, and the fish cannot go to the bottom nor conceal its whereabouts, because this is indicated by the bladder.” [Malaspina, 1848, p. 287.]

Apparently the harpoon line was tied around a constriction of the head, not passed through a line hole.

When asked about the type of weapon called dénà, some informants applied the name to a large arrowhead for big game, sketched with one or three pairs of barbs. A woman, however, at first applied the term to a picture of a Chugach socketed toggle harpoon head (Birket-Smith, 1953, fig. 8), but added that the kind used at Yakutat had barbs. I interpret this to mean that the usual form was barbed and tanged (kAt). On another occasion she mentioned the use of the dénà for fish. “I never see it, though. My husband used to tell me. They use it just like kAt, but it goes way in the stomach, they says.” It was my impression that she was attempting to describe a toggle head.

FIGURE 41.—Iron harpoon heads seen in William Milton's cabin, at reported site of the Russian Fort, Ankau Lagoon. Left, attached to a shaft 126 inches long. Right, attached to a shaft 114 inches long. Both are shown actual size. (Sketch by Edward Malin in 1949.)

Her son who admitted that he had never seen a dénà, nevertheless attempted to describe and sketch one (fig. 42). It was made of two pieces of bone, evidently tied or riveted together. It was sharp at the butt to fit into the spear shaft, and had a line tied to it. “When it goes in [the fish], it's straight, then it turns across [toggles].” His sketch indicates an implement like a double-pointed blade or spike, hinged in the middle to a slotted handle. The sharp butt suggests that of the tanged and barbed head (kAt), although my informant denied that it was the same; the slotted handle suggests the harpoon head made in two parts lashed together, although the informant rejected this explanation. Probably, he was referring in some way to the gaff hook of the southern Tlingit which had a detachable hook. However, in his version of the Story of Łayaw, it seemed clear that the dénà was a detachable harpoon head used by the Brown Bear Spirits to spear salmon. A shaman concealed himself in a fish or fishskin and managed to cut their dénà from the harpoon line, and that was how men learned about it (p. 878).

FIGURE 42.—Fish spearing device, drawn by John Ellis to illustrate the story of ł’qayakw.

Another man, when identifying a bone pin with pointed ends as a gorge, at first suggested that it might have been intended for a dénà. “You hit a fish with it and it turns around inside a fish.” After explaining how the gorge turned crosswise in the duck's throat, he added, “That dénà is almost the same.”

It should be noted that while no archeological examples of socketed harpoon heads made in two parts were found in the Yakutat area, they were found at early historic sites near Angoon, where these dénà were identified by the Angoon Tlingit as particularly good for seals because they could not easily be torn out (de Laguna, 1960, pp. 111, 112, pl. 8, b, c).

GAFF HOOKS

In addition to the harpoon, some kind of gaff hook (Éà) was also used for salmon. While not described by my informants, it would appear to be of the same kind as that used by the Tlingit in southeastern Alaska, to judge from Harrington‘s information:

“Especially cohoes are to be obtained in riled water such as comes from glaciers. The Indians row up a muddy river and as they float down hook cohoes from the muddy water at various places. The cohoes are swimming up and the gaffers are drifting down. The gaffhook [iaa] consists of a pole made from a small young spruce tree with a steel hook at the tip end of it, which hook is said to have been anciently made of bone. Getting hold of iron from wrecked ships, driftwood and the like, the natives substituted it for bone. A spear cannot be used in clouded water, for one cannot see the fish.”

This type of gaff hook is illustrated by Krause (1956, pl. II, 2, 3). The gaff hook with the detachable hook, made by the southern Tlingit, was perhaps what one of our informants confused with the harpoon (dénà).

The modern gaff hook, used to pitch fish from skiff to motor boat or from the hold of the latter to the cannery dock, has a much shorter handle, 18 inches instead of 18 feet. One of these with a killerwhale carved on the fore end, painted in black, white and light blue-green, was made in 1954 by a man who said he had copied it from a “Washington Indian” (pl. 111). According to Harrington, the modern gaff hook developed from the club (u) used to dispatch seal, sea otter, king salmon, and halibut. In 1939, the Indians were using a baseball bat to which they often attached a -inch iron gaff hook.

The old type of gaff hook was also used to catch oelachon during the winter. Normally these fish would be caught in a cylindrical trap (see below), but if the ice in the river were too thick for the trap to be set, “the men make a hole in the ice, and the women folks catch them with hooks.” MJ indicated that these gaffs sometimes had two hooks. She had caught fish herself in this way when she was a child at Situk. This “stick with two hooks” may have been like one type of Eyak fish spear (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 115).

Bone specimens which may have been barbs for gaff hooks were found at the site on Knight Island (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 151–153, fig. 18, a, f, g). They are unlikely to have been barbs for the side prongs of fish spears, like those used by the Chilkat, and interior Athabaskans, for informants denied that such fish spears were ever used at Yakutat.

SALMON TRAPS

Salmon were trapped in some streams, and these probably supplied the bulk of the fish formerly taken by the natives. Apparently two kinds of traps were made, both used with weirs.

Several informants mentioned the enormous traps (cał) that were formerly used in Lost River. These traps were given individual names referring to the sib totem, such as “Brown Bear Trap,” or “Raven Trap.” They were described as box-like affairs, about 25 feet wide and almost three times as long(?), with a catwalk on top. The trap was made of red cedar (more often perhaps of local wood) which the men procured, while the women gathered the spruce roots with which the men lashed the pieces together (MJ). The trap was set in a fence or weir (Ata Édi, or eta édi) that was built across the river and was attached to stakes (weł) driven into the bottom. There was an inner portion of the trap, described simply as “a long thing,” from which the fish could not escape. Salmon were permitted to ascend the stream above the trap, when the river was closed with the weir. A large party went upstream above the fish to drive them down into the trap. Some people were in canoes (the ‘spruce’ canoe was mentioned), others stripped almost naked and walked down the bed of the stream, carrying sections of fence. When the fish entered the trap it was closed. One or more little trees had been thrust through the top of the trap; the chief in his canoe watched these, for their shaking indicated when the trap was filling. When the tree shook hard and finally stopped moving, the trap was full. The inner part of the trap was hoisted out with spruce root ropes and the fish taken into canoes. One trapful was said to have been enough to supply all the people of Diyaguna’Et on Lost River for the winter. When the chief, the owner of the trap, had taken enough for his household, he let the others have the rest. These traps were used especially for cohos, and also for sockeye salmon.

It would seem that if the trap were as large as 25 feet in width, it would have been impossible to hoist out the heart. Either this measurement applies to the trap plus the attached wings, or else only the cover of the trap was removed. Possibly a large trap had several inner compartments.

One informant believed that each family or household on Lost River had its own trap (qukw, ’box’). Several of these were set in the openings of the fence across the river, and would presumably have been much smaller than the large boxlike traps described

above. No living person has seen these traps on Lost River; they were last used about 1870 or perhaps even earlier, when the parents or grandparents of my older informants were children.

The second type of weir distinguished by Harrington was described as an open-tip V-shaped weir, made of vertical pole fencing, rarely of stone. The fish swam into the converging arms of the V, where they were trapped when a gate was closed. The enormous fishtrap out in the ocean in which the salmon are supposed to have been imprisoned until released by Raven was a “vertical pole corral” of this type. Perhaps Harrington‘s informants were describing a large boxlike fish trap similar to those used on Lost River.

CYLINDRICAL TRAPS FOR SALMON AND OELACHON

Cylindrical traps (ítx), with an inverted funnelshaped entrance (itx-yIk yAdi, ‘child inside the trap’) were probably the most common type of fishtrap (fig. 43). These were made like baskets of split sticks of red cedar lashed to hoops by means of spruce roots. The opening was just big enough to permit the entrance of the fish, salmon or oełachon, depending on the type for which the trap was intended, but the fish was unable to find its way out. The trap was set with the opening downstream. Traps of this kind might be used in a small stream without leads, or with a weir of rocks, or with leads of fencing, depending upon the location. The leads or ‘wings’ (’akitc) were normally fences of hemlock sticks. Such traps were used for salmon in the Dry Bay area until early in the present century, and at Dry Bay, Situk, and the Ankau area near Yakutat were also used for oelachon at the same period. A large trap was said to yield almost two canoe loads of oelachon.

Harrington described this type of trap as

an “open-tip funnel trap, a sort of slatted basket of slender poles sometimes 10 feet long with a funnel of poles at one end, through the open tip of which fish find their way into the trap, few finding their way out through the tiny opening to which there is no convergent guiding from the inside. A door at one side of the trap enables removal of the catch.”

Emmons collected a cylindrical trap for oelachon at Yakutat (AMNH E/533). He reports that it was weighted down with stones, set with the open end upstream to catch the fish that went in and out with the tide.

A trap, presumably of the same type, was used for herring.

LaPérouse's men had the opportunity of observing natives catching salmon in such traps in the Huagin River, near Lituya Bay.

Walking westward from Lituya Bay,

“…they discovered an Indian village on the banks of a small river, which was staked quite across for the salmon fishery. We had long suspected that this fish came from that part of the coast, but we were not certain of it, till this adventure satisfied our curiosity. Mr Duché de Vancy made a drawing, which will explain the particulars of this fishery. [Footnote: “This drawing is not come to hand. (French Editor.)”] In this it will be seen, that the salmon, coming up the river, are stopped by the stakes: unable to leap over them, they turn back towards the sea; in the angles of the dike are placed very narrow wicker baskets, closed at one end, into which they enter, and being unable to turn in them, they are thus caught. This fishery is so abundant, that the crews of both vessels had plenty of salmon during our stay, and each ship salted two casks.” [LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, p. 389.]

FIGURE 43.—Oelachon trap drawn by William Thomas, July 4 1952. a, Trap with leads or “wings” and funnel entrance b, Fence for lead.

TIDAL WEIRS

Although my informants did not mention tidal weirs, these were recorded by Harrington. After describing the fence (zapor) that completely blocked the river so that the salmon that were caught below it could be speared, and the open-tip V-shaped weir like an enormous trap, Harrington described a stone weir. This would be built across a stream or slough in such a way that the high tides would bring in “certain fish,” which would be caught behind the stone wall when the tide ebbed. Probably the stone fish dam on T’awał Creek, which the Indians told Schwatka had been built by the “Aleuts” long ago (pp. 75, 344), was a tidal dam of this kind.

Neither my informants nor Harrington‘s mentioned rows of pointed stakes set across the mouths of streams on which salmon impaled themselves when trying to jump. These, like the stone tidal dams were, however, made by the Tlingit (de Laguna, 1960, p. 116).

DIP NET

Two of my informants gave the name Akwtc or gAqtc for fishtrap, though Boas gives this as the word for oelachon net (1917, p. 128, oqtc). Angoon Tlingit also used this word to designate the funnel-shaped fishtrap, which they said was used only by the Chilkat (de Laguna, 1960, p. 11).

Dip nets were, however, made at Yakutat and Dry Bay, and it was probably oelachon that were being caught in the “small nets” reported by Shelikhov (see p. 377).

According to the story of QakewtE, this man from Hoonah found the Athabaskans trying to “snare” oelachon, and catching only one at a time (p. 271). He taught them to build a fence or weir, and a dip net (dígà) of spruce roots to scoop up the fish. He also taught them to put the fish into a hole in the sand, so that they could render the oil. At that time, the cylindrical basket trap (itx) was not used for oelachon (p. 272).

Emmons secured a dipnet for oelachon at Yakutat (AMNH E/1116). It was made of whale sinew, stretched on a circular frame with a long handle. Such a net was made with the help of a horn gauge (E/1356, 1357) to regulate the size of the mesh.

HERRING RAKE

While herring were sometimes caught in traps set in streams, they were more often taken in open water by means of a rake (xítłÀ). Some men still make fish rakes to catch herring for bait when trolling for king salmon. Occasionally a dip net is used for this purpose, but is said not to be as satisfactory because herring move so fast that they are hard to catch with a net.

The herring rake was a slender pole, about 15 feet long or more, shaped like an oar, and armed along one edge for about one third of its length with a row of teeth. These were formerly spikes of bone, about 2 to 2 inches long. Now they may be sharpened nails, although heavy copper wire cut into short pieces is preferred because this does not rust. Some of the bone points found at the site on Knight Island may have been teeth for fishrakes (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 148).

One man was making a rake out of an old oar, which he was afraid might be too short.

Fish rakes were not used at Dry Bay, because, it was said, there were no herring there. At Yakutat they were used for herring, oelachon, and smelt. Candlefish (cat) were also caught, but I did not learn whether a rake or a trap was commonly used.

The rake is used in a canoe, one man paddling to the school of little fish, while the other in the bow sweeps the rake down through the water and up into the air again with a swift motion, dumping the fish into the canoe. “They use it like they paddle a canoe” (MJ).

HALIBUT FISHING

Halibut (tcatł or tcał, or nał, ‘riches’) are caught with hook and line in deep water (’it), sometimes referred to as ‘halibut country’ (nał ’ani). They are taken with a large V-shaped hook (nAxw; Boas, 1917, p. 127, nÁu), made of two pieces of wood lashed together with spruce root, a bone spike set as a barb into one arm of the V. The other arm, which is pierced for attachment of the line, is carved to represent a man, a spirit, an animal, or a bird.

The hook should be made of yellow cedar and alderwood, the first being used for the upper arm with the barb, because of its buoyancy, while the heavier alderwood is used for the arm to which the line is fastened. The hook “is made together with yellow cedar and alderwood—otherwise it wouldn’t be no yAqawu—’matched together’” (MJ). This is the same term that is used to designate a trade partner (p. 355).

“Olden times when Old Raven, you know, when he fish, hooking for a halibut—when he went to halibut spirit, halibut liked the smell of yellow cedar. So alder-wood and yellow cedar—du yAqawu [’his trade partner’]. That's what that means. They have to keep them together. That's what they call ‘intimate friends,’ isn’t it? They tie [them] together and they hook lots of halibut like that.” (MJ)

The line (ti) of spruce root rope or of kelp rope (tł’eani) is weighted with a heavy stone and the hook is so attached that it floats some 12 to 24 inches above the bottom. The upper end of the line is buoyed with the inflated stomach of a large seal, or with a float of red cedar, carved to represent a loon or other aquatic bird. One informant specified that only one hook was used on the line, and told how a man with a single native hook caught more than another using 30 commercial hooks. Perhaps this was the kind of rig observed by LaPérouse in Lituya Bay (see below). Most informants, however, specified that halibut hooks always came in pairs (CW et al.). Each would be fastened by its own 12-inch leader to a line about 3 feet long which was anchored at each end with a stone. One man said that there might be up to three pairs of hooks on one rig.

The bait used for the wooden halibut hook was a piece of “devilfish” (i.e., squid, naqw or ’bait’), or sometimes a skunk cabbage leaf. The squid was caught with a variety of gaff hook (tanA).

Emmons collected two complete halibut rigs at Yakutat in the 1880's (AMNH 19/1135;pl. 113). One consisted of two and the other of four hooks, together with seal bladder float, and line of twisted two-strand spruce root, 20–30 fathoms long. The bait would have been squid, herring, or shellfish, lashed on with spruce root just below the barb. Any rough stone might serve as a sinker. A man might set out two lines, each with one or two hooks, with a buoy of wood or a bladder float.

Halibut hooks collected at Yakutat before 1900 are carved to represent: a human figure with curious headdress (PU 5191); a shaman with a crown on his head, singing (pl. 114); a man's head and a crow (AMNH 19/1143); an eagle on a man's head (pl. 115); a spirit that lives under water (pl. 114); an animal's head (pl. 114); an animal‘s head and a bird (PU 5191); a crow (pl. 115); a loon (AMNH 19/1144); a devilfish and a duck (AMNH 19/1146); a devilfish (AMNH 19/1142); and a creature, half-halibut and half-land otter (AMNH 19/1158).

Each halibut hook was given an individual name, appropriate to the carving on its shank. Thus, one of a pair carved early in World War II, is shaped like a paddle with “Hitler's face” on it (fig. 45), and was called in Tlingit ‘land otter's paddle’ (kucda ayi). “It always catches big halibut.” The other of the pair (fig. 44b) was called ‘Raven's backbone.’ Another pair (fig. 44a, c) made by the same man were called ‘Cormorant-?-flying,’ and ‘Land Otter People’ (kucdaqwani). The last had a small face in a fork. Note that when the hook is sunk, the carving faces downward so that it will be visible to the halibut on the bottom.

Another man made a halibut hook in 1954 according to the old pattern and wanted to get just one halibut with it. It was carved to represent a man wearing a big hat, holding a knife in front of his body, and standing on an animal's head. “That's his spirit.” This carving represents the ‘master of the hat’ (axw ati), and is copied after the original halibut hook given by the land otters to a Kagwantan shaman from Grouse Fort (see the story of the first halibut hook, p. 897). The same man had a larger, older hook carved to represent Raven.

When the fisherman in his canoe had paddled out to where he was going to fish, he would warm his hands in the sun and put them on his rig. He would address the buoy, the line, and especially the hooks. To the latter he says: “Go down to halibut land and fight! (nał ’ani ’AkáyA djAqídAgÚ).” He also incites the hook to go for the halibut's wife, so that the halibut will become angry and attack the hook. These words are supposed to be magically effective.

FIGURE 44.—Halibut hooks made by Sampson Harry. a, “Land Otter People.” b, “Raven's Backbone.” c, “Cormorant (?) Flying.” (Schumacher, after Malin, 1949.)

FIGURE 45.—Halibut hook made by Sampson Harry with “Hitler's face” on it and named “Land Otter's Paddle.” (Sketch by William Irving, Yakutat, 1949.)

The fisherman may set out more than one rig, but watches the buoys. When the float or floats bob, the fisherman hauls up the line and, if he has caught a halibut, caws like a raven, to prevent the fish from becoming clotted with blood, and kills it with a club. Sometimes a large halibut is able to escape with the whole rig.

The people have a saying that when the fisherman paddles to the buoy, the latter will tell him: “He (the fish) has almost killed me, O Fisherman (de At wUduwAdjAq, cÀni he).” And when he pulls on the line, the fisherman will say: “If it's just a nibble, everyone in [halibut] land is mocking (‘unqwa tut kaka-AłI-’ui ’an ’aya).” However, this last dialog is not considered to be a magical formula (hewa).

LaPérouse observed halibut fishing in Lituya Bay:

“They fish, as we do, by staking rivers across [i.e., for salmon], or with the hook and line. Their mode of angling is very ingenious. Each line is fastened to a large seal's bladder, and set adrift. One canoe has twelve or fifteen of them. When a fish is caught, he drags along the bladder, and the canoe rows after it. Thus a couple of men can attend twelve or fifteen lines, without the trouble of holding them in the hand.” [LaPérouse, 1799, vol. I, p. 406.]

This description suggests a rig somewhat different from that used in modern times, since one would gather that only one hook was attached to a floating(?) line, not several to one set line.

Beresford has given us a more complete description of the rig used to catch halibut. He was evidently impressed by it because seven seamen were beaten at halibut fishing by only two Indians (see p. 126).

“Their hook is a large simple piece of wood, the shank at least half an inch in diameter; that part which turns up, and which forms an acute angle, is considerably smaller, and brought gradually to a point: a flat piece of wood, about six inches long, and near two inches wide, is neatly lashed to the shank, on the back of which is rudely carved the representation of an human face.

“I cannot think that this was altogether designed as an ornament to their hooks, but that it has some religious allusion, and possibly is intended as a kind of Deity, to insure their success in fishing, which is conducted in a singular manner. They bait their hook with a kind of fish, called by the sailors squids, and having sunk it to the bottom, they fix a bladder to the end of the line as a buoy, and should that not watch sufficiently, they add another. Their lines are very strong, being made of sinews or intestines of animals.

“One man is sufficient to look after five or six of these buoys; when he perceives a fish bite, he is in no great hurry to haul up his line, but gives him time to be well hooked; and when he has hauled the fish up to the surface of the water, he knocks him on the head with a short club, provided for that purpose, and afterwards stows his prize away at his leisure: this is done to prevent the halibut (which sometimes are very large) from damaging, or perhaps upsetting his canoe in their dying struggles.” [Beresford, 1789, p. 174.]

FISHHOOKS FOR OTHER FISH

Cod (a) and “black cod” (’ícqìn) were also caught with hook and line. One informant thought they were taken with the same rig as the halibut, but was not sure. Probably the hook was a V-shaped wooden hook with bone barb, but must have been much smaller than the halibut hook.

Emmons obtained in Yakutat a small wooden piece to fit over the gunwale of the canoe to prevent chafing when the fishing line was hauled up. It was used when fishing for cod at depths of 8 to 20 fathoms (AMNH E/1962).

When shown a picture of a Chugach rig for cod (Birket-Smith, 1953, fig. 21 a), an informant said that it was formerly used for halibut hooks. According to his statement, two hooks were attached to the outer prongs of a three-branched stick, the stone weight dangling from the central prong, and the line tied to the butt end of the branch. This rig was called qic. The informant may have been mistaken as to the type of fish taken with this arrangement.

Trout are caught from the bridge over Lost River near the airfield with ordinary commerical fishhooks (exA) and bait. Salmon were never caught with hooks in the old days, although now king salmon are caught by trolling with a spoon, that is, an unbaited hook with a shiny lure that resembles a small fish.

In February, 1954, many people were snagging small fish like smelt from the cannery dock, using small unbaited commercial hooks.

Sometimes a mud shark (tu) would be caught on a halibut hook. It was believed that it could not be killed with a club, but would die at once if the fisherman threw snot (catItc) from his nose on its face, “That's the Raven's trick” (MJ).

FOOD AND ITS PREPARATION

Introduction

FOOD GETTING AND PROCESSING

Hunting and fishing are traditionally the tasks of men, even though women now participate in these to a much greater extent than they did formerly, when they probably caught only the smaller animals and fish. However, when the carcass of the animal or bird has been brought to the village, the seal or fish landed on the beach or on the riverbank, then the processing of these becomes almost exclusively the task of women. It is they who cut up and prepare the flesh of these creatures for food, and their skins for clothing or other articles. Many foods are not eaten fresh, but may be subjected to long and complex treatments involving cutting, pulverizing, drying, smoking, or fermentation. In addition, much of what is procured has to be preserved for later consumption. While the men work on bone, horn, tooth, claw, or feather, the women prepare the sinew, intestines, and skins; the latter dehaired, or with fur or soft feathers attached. Women, of course, still do the cooking and working on skins, but there is much less preservation of native foods than in former days before there were stores (with canned goods) and public relief.

The women not only prepare and cook the food which the men have brought, but also contribute to the family larder. It is they who dig roots, gather berries, and collect the seaweeds and marine invertebrates called “beach food.” These activities are still pursued, and are mentioned here in connection with vegetable food and “beach food” recipies.

The division which I have made in “Hunting and Fishing,” “Food and its Preparation,” and “Native Manufactures,” while logical from our point of view, is rather arbitrary from that of the native. He sees the preparation for the hunt, the kill, the flenzing, the cooking or preparation of the flesh for consumption, the processing of hide or bones, and the ultimate disposal of the unused portions, as integral parts of one single process, involving the respectful handling of animal, bird, or fish, pleasing to the spirit of the latter if fitting and economical use has been made of its body. While there seems to be little or no religious feeling connected with gathering berries or shellfish, even for these there is also the thought that a single long process is involved. Berrybaskets are made, parties of women go out to pick, and the spoils are often elaborately prepared so that guests may be feasted. The unitary nature of these economic activities can be the more easily conceptualized by the natives because they are carried out primarily by the team of husband and wife, even if at some stages other members of the family may be involved.

YAKUTAT FOODS

The people of Yakutat enjoyed a rich and varied diet in the old days. A number of native foods and dishes are still prepared, chiefly by the older women. Those who do so are proud of their skill and industry, and those who remember the foods of long ago recall them with nostalgia. There seems to be a general feeling that the wild foods of the Yakutat area are better than those of southeastern Alaska, and it has been claimed that it was the abundance of food resources that attracted settlement in the area.

The main staples were meat and fish, richly supplemented by eggs, plants, berries and the “beach food” of low tide. There was also great seasonal variety produced by the flow of sap in the spring, the awakening of hibernating animals, the migrations of birds and animals, the growth of green plants, the laying of eggs, the fish runs, the ripening of the different berry crops, and the maturing of edible roots with the first frosts. The succession of fresh foods was all the more enjoyed because they had not been tasted for a whole year. Although most of the food obtained was prepared for storage, yet even these supplies had a seasonal character, since particular items were usually consumed long before they again became available.

The attitudes toward the native diet are well expressed by informants. Thus, one older woman had been talking to a White man:

“I almost scratch his mouth out last night.” He had been asking, “How did all those people [who lived on Khantaak Island] find enough food to eat? What did they do for a living?” My informant mimicked his accent.

“I told him, I just more than bawl him out—’They got camps all along the lake, all around the islands up there. They put up lots of things. They even got slaves to put up cał [caches]’—You know, that log cabin business to put up the grub.—’Put up all kinds of berries, all kinds of bear meat. And when the tide goes out, you go around the ocean beach. There's gum boots [chitons] and sea eggs [sea urchins] and mussels and two kinds of seaweed. And on this side [of Khantaak Island] cockles about that big—[she gestured to indicate a diameter of about 4 inches]. You can take it right in front of your house. They dry that and boil them and preserve them.’

“[He] make me kind of mad—’What do they do for a living in winter? What do they eat?’

“And it‘s no T.B. going on that time, either.

“They put up their own stuff. They know what to put it in. They put up tablespoon of berries and they can get a big Hudson Bay dish out of it [i.e., make a dish the size of a washbasin from a tablespoonful of dried berries]. They took hooligan oil and make ‘ice cream’ and dried strawberries [i.e., “ice cream” from dried strawberries and oelachon oil]. They used no sugar at that time. They used their own flavor. They invite one another, until the White people came with their molasses and sugar.”

“The old foods were good, healthy. People had no sickness, no epidemics when they ate them. They wouldn’t have died except that witchcraft set in.” (MJ)

“Before that,” a man said, “they used to live on the bear meat. The people lived on land game more than fish. They used to have it pretty good.”

The superiority of Yakutat food to that of other areas was often cited. “Even the seals don’t taste good in southeastern Alaska.” This is because the seals of Yakutat and Icy Bay are believed to get so much more fish to eat than those of southeastern Alaska or Prince William Sound. In other places they eat mostly “beach foods” and so do not have as good a flavor, it is said.

It was also denied that clams or mussels were ever poisonous around Yakutat, although they are known to be sometimes poisonous in southeastern Alaska.

“Mussels you can eat anytime—no affection whatsoever. Anything around the beach is pure as anything—no dirt or anything gets in there. But in Southeast of Alaska it tastes funny. You know Yeł [Raven] don’t want to eat anything down in Southeast of Alaska. When he come up here everything taste good to him. That's the story of it. From Alsek up, from Lituya up, they eat anything. Down in Southeast of Alaska when you take things from the beach and you eat it, you feel funny.” (MJ)

This statement was substantiated by citing the experience of relatives and by reference to the well-known case of mussel poisoning that killed so many Aleuts at Poison Cove. Peril Strait, in 1802 (cf. p. 169; Bancroft, 1886, p. 390). That Yakutat shellfish are never poisonous seems doubtful, in view of the diarrhea which followed our eating of some steamed clams on April 25, 1954. However, there was an epidemic of “stomach flu” at the time, and lack of any doctor or nurse prevented diagnosis.

The Yakutat people also believe that their varieties of salmon and methods of smoking are superior. When I commented on the fact that in southeastern Alaska many Tlingit rely on dog salmon for their winter supply, I received the scornful reply: “They make it so hard, it's like a board; you can’t chew it. Besides, the meat is kind of coarse. You can’t toast it over a fire. The only way you can eat it is to boil it. That is because it is so lean.” (MJ) The staples at Yakutat are the coho and humpback salmon, and the White man also would prefer these to the dog salmon.

One evening in September 1952, we showed colored slides, many of which were photographs of food plants, fish, and prepared foods, to a large and appreciative audience in the church. One woman said that she was proud of Yakutat when she saw our pictures (pls. 94–104).

DOMESTIC UTENSILS

Aboriginal tools and utensils used in preparing native foods were baskets and boxes for cooking and storage, spits for roasting, tongs for handling hot rocks, drills and strike-a-lights for making fire, spoons of wood, horn, or eagle beaks, large wooden platters and individual wooden plates, wooden bowls of various shapes, and baskets for water dippers and drinking cups. There were also wooden cutting boards, mortars of wood or bone or stone, wooden and stone pestles, square frames for drying certain foods, knives with copper blades, and scrapers of copper or shell. These last are now made of iron.

At an early period the people obtained china dishes. In the last century, “Hudson's Bay dishes” were used for feasts. These were blue and white Copeland porcelain platters and bowls, the largest of which were actually washbasins. A number of families still treasure such heirlooms. I also saw a beautiful Chinese plate that had been given to the present owner's paternal grandmother when she was born, and which must therefore be over 100 years old. The same man also owns a small brass kettle that had belonged to the commander of the Russian post at Yakutat when it was destroyed in 1805, and which has passed through the hands of many Kwacqwan chiefs. In addition, many families have cast iron pots of various sizes which are also said to have been obtained from the Russians.

The gear used for hunting and fishing have already been described, but mention should be made of the utensils used by women in food collecting. There was a wide flat basket (tał) into which blueberries were picked (pl. 129). Although it was not used for gathering other berries, it served as a mortar in which they might be crushed. Large baskets with handles (ákisAt) were used to carry loads on the back, and presumably served to carry other plants or beach foods. For gathering shellfish, crabs, and roots the women still use a digging stick. This is simply a stout stick with a pointed end, which also serves as a cane. A long pole was used to strip hemlock bark from standing trees.

Now, of course, gunnysacks, lard pails, and galvanized iron buckets are taken on collecting trips. Coal or fuel oil ranges and ordinary commercial pots and pans are used for cooking, and the table is set with our familiar array of cloth or oilcloth, dishes, silverware, and napkins. In former times, however, cooking was done by roasting over a fire, by stone-boiling in a basket or box, by broiling between hot stone slabs, or by baking in an earth oven, the last usually a hole under the fire that had been lined with skunk cabbage leaves. The spit over the open fire and the earth oven may still be used on camping trips.

Food in the 18th and 19th Centuries

The Tlingit met by LaPérouse in Lituya Bay in early July, 1786, were apparently living on salmon and halibut, which they boiled or roasted on spits:

“The wooden vessels, in which they cook their fish, are never washed. They serve for kettles, dishes, and plates: and as they cannot be set over the fire, they make the water boil in them with red-hot pebbles, which they renew till their food is sufficiently dressed. They are also acquainted with the art of roasting, which they perform in the same manner as our soldiers in camp.” [LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, p. 400.]

Beresford also observed stone-boiling at Port Mulgrave the following year:

“They dress their victuals by putting heated stones into a kind of wicker basket, amongst pieces of fish, seal, porpoise, &c. and covered up close; sometimes they make broth and fish soup by the same method, which they always preferred to boiling [over the fire], though we gave them some brass pans, and pointed out the mode of using them.” [Beresford, 1789, p. 175.]

Suría had ample opportunity to observe native methods of cooking, especially since it will be remembered that on one occasion the natives forced him to eat some fish (p. 150).

“Their sustenance and daily meal is as follows: they catch a fish and pass a stick through it from the tail to the mouth which they fasten in the ground. They keep turning it towards the fire. As soon as it is softened they place it in a straw basket which is very flexible and is so closely woven that not a drop of water can come out. In this they put it to cook with seawater, and so that the basket may not burn underneath they have various red hot stones which they throw inside, according as necessity demands, always maintaining the heat until the dried fish in small fragments forms a mess and then they eat it with some long deep spoons made of horn.” [Wagner, 1936, p. 254.] [A similar type of fish chowder is reported by Schwatka in 1886 (see below).]

“The pots and jars in which they cook are those already referred to. Their food consists of fish: salmon, smelts [which Newcombe advised Wagner were more likely to have been herring and oelachon], and another which looks like a conger eel.” [Wagner, 1936, p. 257.]

Malaspina himself was much impressed by these watertight baskets. Writing about native crafts, he observed:

“Among their manufactures those which are most appreciated are the blankets, the canoes covered with skins, and the baskets. Baskets are the work of the women and merit great attention as much for the taste with which are combined the straws dyed in various colors in little and very delicate ones, as for the closeness and strength of the weaving in the large ones, which not permitting the escape of liquids serves them just like our pots, casseroles and jars, since they carry water and do their cooking in them. Several times we saw the natives pour water into one of these baskets in which was the flesh of sea wolves [fur seal] or of nutria [sea otter], which they are accustomed to eat, place it near the fire, put heated stones into it with two little sticks [palitos], take them out cooled, and repeat this action until that stinking food was boiled.” [Malaspina, 1849, p. 288.]

There is little further information until almost one hundred years later, when Abercrombie reports as of about 1884:

“The chief dependence of these Indians for food is placed upon the salmon, a store of which, sliced, but not salted, is accumulated for winter consumption. To a lesser extent they rely upon the flesh of the bear, mountain goat and seal, and on the various shellfish, plentifully found on every beach. Certain berries, roots, and plants are eaten in their season, but with the exception of a few berries which are preserved [,] are gathered for immediate consumption only.

“The quantity of salmon which a native can consume at a single sitting is remarkable, and if it be provided for him, incredible quantities of tea will be drank.” [Abercrombie, 1900, p. 396.]

On his trip through the Ankau and Lost River system, September 1886, Schwatka saw some Indians who were cooking dog salmon in a kettle. They would spear out a piece of fish with a forked stick and leave it on a log to cool before eating it. “When the remaining mass, by a constant jabbing of the sticks, was converted into a sort of salmon soup, rough cups made from the horns of mountain goats, and holding about half a pint, were used to assist in conveying it to their mouths.” [New-York Times, October 26, 1886.]

Meat of Land Animals

The most important land animal meat was obtained from bears and mountain goats, although foxes and, presumably, other fur-bearers were also eaten. The meat of the black bear was preferred to that of the brown bear, and one woman explained: “because brown bear eat human beings—I think they do.” Bear meat (xuts tłiyI) was soaked in salt water, dried or smoked, and put up in oil to preserve it (MJ). Although bear hunting was a dramatic and exciting adventure about which many stories were told, it is doubtful that bear meat ever formed a substantial part of the diet (see however, p. 392). Certainly few bear bones were found on Knight Island, although the adjacent mainland is now a favorite place for hunting bears. This may be because the bear was usually cut up where it was killed, and only the meat, intestines, hide, and what few bones were wanted for tools were brought back.

Mountain goats were especially valued for their tallow (djInuwu qahagu or anei). The fat (ta) around the kidneys and in the belly of a single goat is said to yield five gallons of tallow. The fat was crushed with a hard wooden pestle, soaked in warm water, and squeezed with the hands to extract the blood. It was then rendered. The white tallow was not only an important ingredient of feast dishes but also of cosmetics.

“If you don’t smash it, it don‘t melt the grease out. When you smash it fine, it is just like lard, and smells fine. You can use it to mix with red paint. And they dry the meat.”

Since some of the favorite hunting grounds for mountain goat were behind the Saint Elias Range, where there is “just sunshine all the time” and timber is scarce, the meat would naturally have been dried, not smoked.

MJ recalled how as a child she loved to lick mountain goat tallow that had been heated in a horn spoon by the fire. Children also liked to roast it on a stick and eat it with dried fish or seal meat.

The mountain goat seems to have played a fairly important part in the diet of those who lived or camped near the areas where it could be obtained, to judge by the archeological evidence from Knight Island (de Laguna and others, 1964, p. 78).

The moose has appeared only recently in the Yakutat area, although the Dry Bay people were familiar with it because of their annual trips into the interior. “The moose nose is the best part, and if you like anybody you say, ‘I like you like a moose nose’ ” (MJ). A Yakutat woman who had been “married into Dry Bay,” said that moose meat was good smoked, although she had eaten only fresh meat.

One of Harrington‘s informants described a method of cooking meat, probably one employed by hunting parties; the kinds of meat so cooked were not specified.

“A way they roasted meat, they heated two slabs of rock and put a slice of meat between them. They heat these slabs in the fire, and then do the roasting away from the fire, laying one hot stone slab flat on top of the ground, then the meat on top of this slab, then the other slab on top of this. These rock slabs stay hot quite a time.”

Birds and Birds’ Eggs

The Yakutat-Dry Bay area lies on one of the great western flyways for migratory birds. The innumerable swamps, ponds, streams, and salt water lagoons, especially between Ankau and Lost Rivers, make this a favorite breeding spot for many species, while others frequent Yakutat Bay and nest on the islands. Although the native names for many birds were secured, I did not compile a list of all those which were eaten, although these probably included all the larger species except eagles, ravens, and crows. Those specifically mentioned were geese, and freshwater and saltwater ducks, such as mallards, black ducks, sawbills, and goldeneyes. Only a few people eat seagulls, presumably when short of other food. It is said that seagulls have to be skinned because it is impossible to pluck them (SJ). Actually, skinning removes some of the highly flavored fat. In one of the stories there is mention of boiling a small saltwater duck like a sawbill (see “The Chilkat Man who Visited Kiwa’a,” p. 772). A favorite game bird in former days was the swan. “It‘s good meat if they get a big swan” (MJ). Ptarmigan were also eaten.

Birds’ eggs are gathered in May and June. These include the eggs of ducks, of the Arctic tern, of seagulls, and of the kittiwake. Women and children gather those which are found on the beach (chiefly the eggs of terns or “sea pigeons”) while only men, boys, and active young women climb the cliffs of Haenke Island. Excursions are made here every year to gather eggs from the gull and kittiwake nests on the southern cliffs, to hunt some seals, and to enjoy a picnic on the beach.

Although birds and eggs are relished, and seagull eggs were formerly preserved in boxes of oil, they have never played an important role in the diet.

Seal Meat

The common or harbor seal was the animal most abundantly represented by bones in the middens on Knight Island, and undoubtedly furnished most of the animal flesh eaten by the prehistoric and protohistoric inhabitants of that site (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 77). This was equally true in later times, and is still true today. In other areas, especially Dry Bay, land animals were probably more important, to judge by native accounts, although we lack archeological evidence on which to base an accurate comparison.

Seal meat, like other meat and fish, was roasted, boiled, dried or smoked, and prepared in various ways for eating or storage. The fat was rendered into oil, considered an indispensable article of food, and the skins were scraped and prepared for manufacture into garments and other articles.

FLENZING AND PROCESSING

Seals are flenzed in such a way as to preserve the skins, fat and flesh. This work is done by women at Yakutat, but was formerly done by men at Dry Bay. The following description based upon observations made at Yakutat may serve to illustrate the method.

Late in the evening of July 28, Paul Henry drove up with a truck loaded with seals, and Minnie Johnson purchased a female seal and two pups from him. The bellies had been slit to let out the gas and keep the meat fresh. The carcasses lay on MJ‘s porch overnight.

FIGURE 46.—“Flensing seal hide, Yakutat Bay,” sketched at the sealing camp above Point Latouche during July of 1899. The woman squats behind a sloping plank and cuts the blubber from a sealskin with an ulo. There is a shelter of canvas (or blankets) with spruce bark roof behind her, in which seal meat is hanging to dry. (After Grinnel, 1901, p. 161.)

She was busy all next day flenzing the seals. She laid them out, one at a time, on sheets of cardboard. Using an ordinary kitchen carving knife, she extended the slit in the belly to the junction of the hind flippers and tail, slicing through the blubber to the meat. The skin and fat were removed in one piece, with the tail and four flippers attached to it since they had been cut through at the joints. Then she removed the entrails, saving only the liver, kidneys, and heart(?). She said that in former times the small intestines and lungs would also have been kept. (In addition, the stomach would have been saved to be used as a bladder or bag.)

Next, the head was cut off and discarded, although the old people used to boil it for the “scalp part,” and they presumably also ate the brains. Then the shoulders and thighs were detached, and we were given half of the latter for our dog. The ribs on one side were chopped from the backbone with a hatchet, but those on the other side were left attached. This is done only with a young seal, for the backbone of an old seal is cut free of the ribs. The old people are said to like the backbone. The ribs, including the attached vertebrae, she sold to us for 75 cents, and also disposed of similar cuts to her neighbors. The meat which she kept was washed and put into a box. She sliced the liver and washed that also, squeezing the pieces to extract the blood.

When she had flenzed the seals, she proceeded at once to cut the fat from the skins. For this operation she sat behind an inclined board on which the skin was laid, and sliced the fat off with an ulo, cutting down and away from herself, close to the skin. When she came to the attached flippers, she used the kitchen knife again to cut them off, leaving a small hole where the fore flippers had been, and simply slicing off the rear portion with the hind flippers and tail. The nose was cut off to be returned to the hunter for the $3 bounty. Although MJ threw away the flippers on this occasion because she had so much meat, she said that they were usually eaten.

Having cut off the fat, she dropped the skins into a tub of fresh water with a little soap to wash off the blood, while she attended to the fat. The latter was cut into 12-by 14-inch blocks and dumped into an empty 5-gallon gasoline can. On Wednesday, August 6, it was still there, and she commented that she had not yet had time to try out the fat, although she was buying more seals. The fat was eventually cut into tiny pieces, about as big as the thumb, and was put into a pot on the stove. Many people try out the fat in big kettles or cans over open fires out of doors (pl. 8). “If any water gets in, it makes slime on the bottom” (MJ).

The rest of the day, July 29, was spent in cleaning and stretching the skins in wooden frames to dry. This task was not finished until after supper (see pp. 423–424).

On August 7, MJ was busy trying out seal oil and putting up the rather stale meat of the three seals which she had purchased the previous day. These carcasses had been sold already gutted and without the noses. It is believed that seal fat should rot a little before it is rendered if the oil is to keep well, and since the newly purchased seals were not very fresh, she was probably able to render the fat from both batches of seals at the same time. When we saw her in the afternoon, she had already flenzed the new seals, and poured the rendered oil into earthware crocks. The new skins were soaking in a washtub of soapy water outside the door.

MJ had chopped up the meat, backbones, ribs, etc., into small pieces and was putting them into mason jars, with one tablespoonful of salt to each. No extra fat was was added and no water, “because the meat makes its its own juice.” The sealed jars were set in a large kettle of water on the stove. They rested on pieces of kindling so that the glass did not touch the bottom of the pot, and were covered with water. She said she would boil them for 2 hours because the seals were young, but that older seals would need to cook 3 hours.

Four hind flippers, still in their skins, were set in a roasting pan in the oven. The others she had thrown away because she had no time to bother with them and because there were too many blowflies on the front flippers. “You peel them after you cook them. Taste like pigs’ feet. But I promised I’d cook my granddaughters a good dinner. They don‘t like seal meat.” So the smallest child was sent to the store for a can of hot dogs.

Grinnell described the methods of flenzing and processing seals observed at the camps in Disenchantment Bay in 1899:

“The process of ‘butchering’ the seals absolutely reverses the method common in other regions. [I.e., common for other animals. As far as I know, seals are always flenzed in this fashion.] The product sought for is the blubber, which is attached to the hide. This being the case the Indian woman does not skin her seal, but opens it by a long gash along the belly and cuts out from the inside of the hide the meat and the bones, leaving the blubber attached to the skin. The flippers are cut off, the legs, the ribs, and loins taken from the body and put to one side, and the remainder, consisting of head, backbone, and attachments, lifted out of the skin and thrown away upon the beach. All the cutting is done with a broad crescent-shaped knife of iron or stone, the back of which, if of iron, is set in a rounded wooden handle, in which a thumb hole is sometimes made. When a woman has removed half a dozen seal skins, she kneels on the ground behind a board which she rests against her knees, and spreading the hide, hair side down on the board, rapidly strips the blubber in one large piece from the hide, which as she draws it toward her is rolled up by a twisting motion into a thick rope. The great sheet of pinkish-white blubber is then cut into strips and put to one side, to be tried out a little later.” [Grinnell, 1901, vol. 1, pp. 160–161.]

METHODS OF COOKING AND PRESERVING

The usual method of cooking seal meat is to boil it, and there should be some fat with the meat to add flavor, according both to the natives’ taste and my own. Salt is now added to fresh water, but in the old days sea water might be mixed with fresh water. The blood in the meat adds richness to the broth, but there is little marrow in the bones, unlike those of mountain goat or bear. One man, however, makes stew by changing the water several times to get the blood out, and likes to add celery, garlic, onions and chop suey sauce.

Pieces of seal liver, kidneys, and fat, arranged in alternating chunks on a skewer, may be roasted over the fire. The old people knew how to stuff the lungs with fat and roast them.

In former times, seal meat was dried in the sun or smoked, and put up in oil in wooden boxes. The flippers were singed to remove the hair, cooked, and also stored in oil. Sometimes the hide with the fat was sliced, singed, and smoked—“like bacon—strong taste.” Or the piece of fat and skin was put up (in oil?). It was roasted on a stick before being eaten.

The small intestines were dried and braided for preservation, and were presumably boiled before being eaten. Another method was to wash them out, stuff them with fat, and smoke them. These were preserved in oil, and when served were sliced across like sausages. Informants did not know whether they were boiled (MJ and friend).

Grinnell was impressed with the amount of seal meat hanging from poles at the sealing camps in Disenchantment Bay.

…“There are flippers, sides of ribs, strips of blubber and braided seal intestines. All these things are eaten; and, in fact, during this fishing the Indians must subsist chiefly on the flesh of the seal. The flippers appear to be regarded as especially choice. We saw many women roasting them over the fire. After they were cooked the women pulled them out of the ashes, and heating an iron in the fire singed the hair which remained on the skin and then tore the flippers to pieces and picked the meat from the bones.” [Grinnell, 1901, vol. 1, p. 160.]

SEAL OIL

Seal oil was not only essential for preserving many kinds of food but formed an important part of the diet. It was also used in a number of native medicines and was burned in stone lamps. In explaining why the TłaayIk-Teqwedi went to a sealing camp where they knew they risked attack by their enemies, the narrator said: “The old people believed that they had to have seal oil and use it with their food. If they didn’t have it they would get skinny and thin and weak. It‘s just the way white people think cod liver oil is good for them.” (cf. p. 263.) Children were regularly given doses of seal oil in a spoon and, as might have been expected, some liked it while others rebelled. Men might drink a cupful at a time in order to keep healthy. Seal oil is also used as a preservative and condiment with berries, and although the taste is one which has to be acquired by the White man, it does enhance the flavor of the fruit. A great deal of seal oil is therefore put up; Harrington reports that one industrious housewife in 1939 put up 10 gallons.

In former days, when the seal was flenzed, the fat was dumped into a bag made of a whole sealskin suspended from a square wooden frame supported by four posts. “My father used to take the biggest seal he can find. He makes a bag out of it. All the seal fat goes in there. It's called tsà gwéł, ‘seal bag.’ It's held up by four posts…. They fill it with dry grass on top to keep the nits out of there. When they are through they throw the sealskin away.

“The fat that they take out of the big sealskin they put in a pot and melt for oil. Then they put the oil in a big wooden box. They need lots of oil to preserve the food. They got to put oil over the meat so it won’t mildew.” (MJ)

MJ had been a child at the sealing camps visited by the Harriman Expedition, where Grinnell described the use of these skin bags and the trying out of seal oil.

“Here was seen a primitive form of kettle, common perhaps to all North American tribes; it was a large seal skin, laced by its margin to a square frame of poles, hanging down in the middle eighteen inches or two feet, and full of strips of blubber; it would hold from one to two bushels.” [Grinnell, 1901, vol. 1, p. 160.] (See pls. 78, 79.)

These bags were not strictly speaking “kettles,” for the blubber was merely put in them to rot a little; they were not used for cooking. The seal fat was, according to Grinnell (quoted, p. 314), tried out in a pot (presumably iron) that was set in the fireplace of the bark shelter. As the oil was rendered, it was ladled out into kegs, cans, and sometimes into old-fashioned rectangular wooden boxes.

Burroughs also describes the scene:

…“The dead carcasses of the seals lay in rows upon the pebbles in front of the tents and huts. The women and girls were skinning them and cutting out the blubber and trying it out in pots over smouldering fires, while the crack of the Winchesters of the men could be heard out amid the ice.” [Burroughs, 1901, vol. 1, p. 60.]

Meat of Other Sea Mammals

People formerly ate sea otter meat, which is said to taste different from seal meat. If fresh, it spoils in three days time, but is good when a day old. It can be preserved for a long time, “two years,” by boiling it, smoking it, and putting it in a five-gallon can covered with seal oil. It must be covered by about 2 inches of oil. If a piece sticks out above the oil, then it spoils quickly.

Porpoise meat was sometimes eaten. Porpoise bones were, in fact, next most numerous after those of seal in the middens on Knight Island (de Laguna et al, 1964, pp. 77–78). “It tastes like seal meat, but it makes you smell.” When the informant (MJ) was a little girl, her father made her a frying pan out of a piece of iron—“No such thing as stores at that time.” Her father's brother's wives borrowed it to cook porpoise meat, but her father made her throw it away afterwards because of the smell. This was when they were camped on Knight Island. “They were a poor hunter's family, otherwise they wouldn‘t eat it. My father was a great seal hunter—sea otter, too.”

Sea lion meat was eaten. “Some people just eat the ‘hands.’ I never taste one. They say it's good to eat.” Sometimes the fat and hide were cut into strips and roasted over the fire, “like wieners, or like bacon.”

Whereas some informants said, “We got no use for whales; we don’t eat them” at present, there is ample testimony that some people formerly did so. For some it seems to have been a matter of preference, and for others of necessity.

“They used whale bone for the spearheads. They found dead whales on the beach and used to eat the whale meat, too. They were lucky to find one in the winter, it meant lots of food for everybody.”

Thus, when people were starving at Diyaguna’Et on Lost River after the smallpox epidemic, they were saved when a whale drifted ashore (p. 278).

Whales were also eaten at Dry Bay. In fact, this is supposed to be the place where, according to the myth, Raven drifted ashore in the dead whale and tricked the people who were flenzing it into abandoning it for him (see p. 846). A woman who had lived at Dry Bay said that people used to eat the whales that drifted ashore, but never hunted them. She had never tasted the meat, but had been told that it was good and tasted like seal meat.

Another woman remembers being with her mother on the ocean beach near Yakutat when they found some whale blubber. They cut it into strips to carry home. “That's the only time I taste some. And I don’t know [now] what it tastes like—long time ago.” The grease made from it was “just like lard.”

Still another informant described a winter of starvation at Situk when she was a small child in the mid-1880's, when storms and intense cold prevented hunting and stopped the oelachon from ascending the river. Before the bad weather came, however, a big whale drifted ashore, and her parents and maternal grandparents had cut the fat from it, although no one else bothered to do so. Her grandmother also used to save the backbones of dried fish. Later, when her father's brother and his family were starving, they were invited over and given soup made from the fishbones and roasted whale fat dipped in oil. At first, they didn‘t like the soup or the whale fat, but soon “they like it and go for it like pigs.”

Fish

SALMON

Fish were the main article of diet, and salmon formed the staple winter provisions. Of these, the coho and humpback salmon were the most important, although the red and white varieties of king salmon and the sockeye were also preserved. According to native opinion, the ideal fish for preservation is one that is not as lean as the dog salmon, and not as fat as the sockey or white king, because fat fish become mouldy very fast and, though smoked, must be eaten soon.

Fresh fish are now fried in a pan, and in former days were most often boiled or roasted on a spit. A large king salmon might be baked in a pit lined with skunk cabbage leaves, as Raven did in one story (see p. 868). However, then as now, the major part of the fish is smoked, or rather, as Harrington has aptly observed, dried, since the amount of smoking is very light, and the natives speak of “smoked” salmon as ‘dried’ (’At eci). Some families now put up salmon in jars or have their own home canning outfit.

The oldest method of slicing fish for drying, one probably used before sharp steel knives were available, was to cut the salmon down the belly almost to the back, removing the backbone by a cut near the tail, and spreading the flesh out by means of one or two twigs set across. The backbone and the attached ribs with the adhering flesh were dried separately. Or, the backbone may have been cut free only as far down as the tail and hung over one side of the drying rack, while the body of the fish hung over the other. Harrington described this particular method, and reported that when the fish was dry, at the end of a week or so, the backbone was broken off and thrown away. Presumably it was these backbones which my informant's prudent grandmother had kept (see above). We saw both styles of cut fish on the Copper River in 1954, and the Atna methods appear to be those described by Yakutat informants.

Fish spread out with twigs in this fashion were called tłak, and this seems to have been the regular method employed at Yakutat when Eyak was still spoken. The use of the spreading sticks was said to have been unknown in southeastern Alaska at that time, for a Chilkat visitor was so impressed by it that he called the Yakutat people “fish stretchers” (át-’IC-qwan) (see p. 897).

The method of preparing fish most commonly employed now, but one which requires not only great skill but a razor-sharp knife, results in a single slab of fish, four times as wide as the original body, but very thin. It is not only opened down the belly, but the two halves are sliced from the center toward the sides, so that these inner pieces are unfolded. In addition, one or two extra filets may be cut from the thickest part of a large fish to be dried separately. When cured, the whole is folded together again, so that it looks like a complete fish, minus head, tail and backbone. This method of cutting is described below.

In slicing a king salmon, the whole belly is apparently cut off for separate drying, because the fish is so big.

A modern method of curing salmon, used especially for large fish like the king salmon, is to cut it into long slender strips, with the skin on one side, but without the bones (katłíA). Harrington noted that this method was used for large coho salmon and also for halibut, and that it involved real smoking, in White man's style.

Cohoes caught in the fall when it is cold could be preserved without smoking. The heads were cut off, the fish gutted, cut open, and hung on poles to dry in the north wind, “just like cold storage.” This style was called qa daIłin (MJ). When the Dry Bay people went up the Alsek River into the interior they dried king salmon in this fashion, covering it with cottonwood branches, and leaving it to hang and “take care of itself” over the winter (p. 87).

There were said to be altogether five methods of cutting fish, but I do not know whether these included any other styles than those already mentioned.

A number of supernatural regulations formerly governed the cutting and drying of salmon. Thus, the head of the fish was turned upstream when the most important cuts were made, and the women apparently faced downstream. “Don’t set towards the water. Among the fishes, it's like you set naked. You have to set sidewise to the river…. When you have finished splitting the fish out, you hang it with its head upstream.” This was obviously to insure the return of the reincarnated salmon in another run. The smokehouse is built with the door facing the river, and the sticks on which the fish are hung run across the house, according to this informant's sketch. The poles on any outdoor fishrack also run parallel to the river bank, and therefore the fish can be hung or saddled on the pole with the head upstream (see fig. 19, p. 304).

Cutting and drying salmon was perhaps the single most important work of the housewife, in which she was assisted by the men and the household slaves. It was hard work that had to be done before the fish spoiled, the women at the cutting boards and fish racks keeping up with the men at the weirs with harpoon and fishtrap. Albin Johnson reports that “a large family among the Indians dries and smokes approximately 2,000 to 3,000 salmon” (1924, p. 109).

The people are very fond of smoked or dried fish, and women who do not have smokehouses may simply dry slices of salmon or halibut on sticks hung up behind the stove. Many women also put up lightly smoked fish strips, as well as fresh fish, in jars or cans (pl. 100).

Dried or smoked fish may be eaten raw, sometimes dipped in oil, or it may be lightly toasted over a fire to soften the flesh by making the oil run out a little. This is a favorite and satisfying dish on a picnic. Dried fish, soaked overnight in oelachon oil, was regarded as especially healthy food for children (MJ). Dried fish might be soaked in water overnight and when boiled was eaten for breakfast in former days. As already explained, the provident housewife saved the backbones (’At tAE) of the salmon to boil as soup when other supplies ran low.

SMOKING SALMON

One informant gave a detailed account of the most elaborate method of cutting and smoking fish. She evidently learned how to do this when she was a young girl on the Kaliakh River, west of Icy Bay, and she still prepares her smoked salmon in this manner. (fig. 47; pl. 104).

The fish is laid on the cutting board on its right side, the head toward the worker. The head is first cut off, then the knife is set in the anus and cut forward to the severed head. The fish is held belly up, the guts removed, and the blood scraped out. It is then turned over on the other side, and the medial cut is extended from the neck to the tail and deepened so that it almost reaches the skin along the back. The fish is again turned over, with the tail toward the worker, and a transverse cut is made across the base of the tail so that the latter is attached to the left side of the fish, while the backbone is on the right half of the fish. It is now ready to hang on a pole (djIkaqa) in the smokehouse (fig. 19, p. 304).

FIGURE 47.—Method of cutting salmon for drying, from a sketch approved by Maggie Harry.

When the informant first tried to do this, “I caught ten salmon, but when I cut them, I put all the tails on the backbone side, and the fish fell off the drying poles. I half cried. I don’t know what would happen when I spoiled the fish, but he [Yakategy John] fixed it somehow. The tail weight balances the backbone weight. That's why the fish stay on the pole.”

The split fish (kàdúłxi, ‘spread out’) are hung two to a pole, head upstream and flesh side out, above the smoke-spreading boards in the smokehouse. They are left overnight, or “hang until all the water dries on it, till the skin dries out, only not too dry.”

The next stage is to split the fish again in order to spread it out. This is done on a slanting board, the upper edge of which is toward the worker, as with the board on which the fat is cut from sealskins. In this operation, eration, the backbone is removed, the tail cut off, and the fish split on both inner surfaces from the middle of the back towards the side edges (belly), so that the resulting thin slices hang free, though still attached to the edges of the belly. The dorsal fin is cut off to make the fish dry better, but the ventral fins cannot beremoved since they lie between the inner and outer pieces on each side and help to hold the parts together. One or two extra slices, depending on the size of the fish, are cut from the fleshiest part to be dried separately (‘At vuwaeci, or ’At da eci). The various slices should be “thin as paper.”

FIGURE 48.—A bundle (or box) of dried fish tied up for storage. Two cords are used; the shorter is marked a-a′. Sketch in 1952 by Catherine McClellan from a model made by Maggie Harry.

The last step is to make cuts through the thickest part of the fish on the flesh side near the back so that it will dry quickly. The major cuts are longitudinal, but each woman has her own special mark made by subsidiary cuts by means of which she can recognize her own fish. This was necessary in former times since the five or six families of the household might have three or four hundred fish hanging in their smokehouse at one time.

The “part dried” fish (naAdi) is now carried folded with the belly up into the smokehouse, and is unfolded to hang open with the skin sides against the drying pole above the smoke spreader, again with the head upstream. Every day the fish must be shifted, for they would spoil if left in the same place on the slimy poles. The fish are dried and smoked in this way for about a week.

Care must be taken to keep the fish at the right temperature, for if the fire is too hot the meat will be cooked off the skins. Green spruce and alder wood are preferred for smoking. About 9 o’clock in the evening the fire is banked and is started again about 6 o’clock in the morning, to burn all day.

After about a week the fish are taken down, folded and softened between the hands. Then they are spread out on a clean board, the first one skin side down, and the others laid with alternate sides up, so that the meat sides are together, with the topmost skin side up. About 25 are put together, making a pile described as about 4 feet high. A clean board is laid on top, and the heaviest men walk on it until the fish are soft (us). Then they are threaded on a pole, 25 to a stick, and are hung up very high in the smokehouse for another week until they are thoroughly dry. The men hang them up, for a woman is not supposed to go above the fish hanging below. Fish on the stick are called dułus. The dried fish (‘At eci) are then tied up in bundles of 50, skin sides out (fig. 48) and the bundles are packed in boxes or put in the outdoor cache.

This same process was described also by Harrington, who perhaps learned it from the same informant. However, we should note one difference. According to his report, at the first cutting the backbone of the salmon was completely removed, not left on one side of the split fish. The tail was cut part way through anterior to the caudal fin and bent. It would appear that this was to serve as a hook for hanging the fish, although it seems to have been hung over the pole in the ordinary way. He also does not record the softening process by pressing it between boards.

“Everytime they smoke fish, they got to cover their heads all the time—think those hookworms from the fish drop on their head and get into their body. I remember when I was small, I always took my hat off and they always tell me to put it back on.”

OTHER FISH

Halibut are obtained chiefly in the late winter and early spring, when supplies of smoked salmon may be running low. Most of the catch is now eaten fresh, since there is little other food available at this season. Halibut are also, however, sliced thin for smoking and drying, although we did not learn the details of how they were preserved. One informant who had lived on Controller Bay as a boy, said that they used to smoke the cod and halibut they caught in the spring. “The cod was just like wood when they dried it. You couldn‘t eat it. But when it was soaked in salt water for two, three days it was just like fresh. We took the dried fish with us when we moved…to Bering River about August to smoke salmon.”

Other edible salt water fish are flounder, sea bass, bullheads, candlefish, herring, oelachon, and smelt. The candlefish and oelachon are more valued for their oil than for their flesh, and the herring for their spawn (see below), although all of these little fish are eaten fresh. Oelachon may also be dried, either whole (ÁkAneí), or split in two (kusak). The fins of skates are said to have been eaten by a few people (MJ and CW, etc.). Among freshwater fish that were eaten fresh, usually roasted, were several varieties of trout as well as the lingcod or loche. There is apparently no belief that the liver of the trout is poisonous.

FISH EGGS

There are a number of recipes for preparing or preserving fish eggs (uqw), chiefly those of salmon. The eggs are obtained when cutting up female fish and should properly be called the roe. The eggs of king salmon are now boiled and put up into jars, but older methods involved drying and fermenting. Fresh oelachon eggs are also boiled.

Fish eggs that have dried a long time (uqw kahákw, or kahákw) will keep a long time. “It's sticky. It sticks to your teeth.” In this respect they apparently are thought to resemble dates, for the latter are called ‘Chinamen's fish eggs’ (TcanwAn uu).

One method of preparing dried fish eggs (uqw kahákw) was to crush the raw fresh eggs in a wooden mortar with an elongated cobblestone for a pestle. The pulp was shaped into balls and “half-dried” for winter, becoming like cheese. “It don’t stink. They take the stuff off the top [the crust?] and throw it away. It's high tone eats.” (JR)

Fish eggs were also buried in the ground to rot (kahákw kAix). “They just pack it away for so many days and then they had to eat it right away or else it would spoil…. Now they pack it in a barrel, but before they used to dig a hole and put some skunk cabbage leaves in. Then they cover it up.” Another informant specified that salmon eggs were wrapped in skunk cabbage leaves and left outdoors for seven days. “The juice is like medicine.”

A variant was called geł’. “They just put it in a jar and leave it there maybe two or three days…. They just eat it the way it is. It's cured—just like when you put it in vinegar or something.” Apparently these eggs were only slightly fermented and had to be eaten at once.

A more elaborate method was to make “Limburger cheese” (kaii uqw) from coho eggs. “They hang the eggs [i.e., the roes] two days…. Then they take fresh ones from the fish…. After you smash the fresh ones, put in the half-dry ones. You mash it together. Smoke it two days in the smokehouse…. Smash it again. A long time ago, before the Whites, they used them łAkt [wooden box] to smash it in. When yana’Et [wild celery] is old, just a stick, put it in four places in the middle.” She made a sketch to show how the hollow celery stalks were inserted into the mass of eggs in the box to permit the escape of gas as the contents fermented. “Then you make it. It's a very tough thing to make it. It boils. Give it lots of fresh air, never cover it. In maybe two weeks, a long time, it gets thick. Knead it for just 2 hours, just so it comes together…. [Then] we use tsa yuwú [seal stomach, to which about 2 inches of the esophagus is still attached]…. Put it [the fermented eggs] inside, after you knead it. Fill it to the top of the stomach. When you come to the throat, tie it up, hang it up. The seal stomach gets dry on it. When it's dry—one year—put it away. When you want it, cut it like a cheese. It's a medium soft cheese, red, just like this tea color…. Eat it with oil.” In southeastern Alaska, she added, they make it of dog salmon roe wrapped in skunk cabbage leaves and the resulting color is darker.

Another recipe involving salmon eggs is “rotten fish” (tAná’). “They dry the fish eggs, and then these fish [salmon?]. They slice them up and let them stink a little bit, and then they pack them with fish eggs.”

FISH HEADS

There are somewhat similar methods of preparing fish heads. Coho noses (perhaps the whole head?) were buried in the ground to rot (In). “Like cheese. I used to like it. I don’t know if I still like it.” This, like rotted salmon eggs, is considered by the natives and by a few Whites to have medicinal virtues. “The White people think the stuff will kill them, but it's only the smell, like Limburger cheese.”

Another form of prepared fish heads (át ’AAłtrn) was mentioned, but the informant had never seen it. The native term suggests that the fish were soaked (Boas, 1917, p. 136, t’in, ’to soak salmon’).

Coho cheeks are said to be good eating “fresh” (raw?), or else fried. The heads are kept fresh by threading them on an alder branch and hanging them in running water.

HERRING SPAWN

Herring spawn or eggs (aw kahagu or aw uu) are a delicacy, usually obtainable the latter part of May. A number of families make trips to Eleanor Cove to secure them. The method which has been in use only since about 1950 is to take small hemlock trees down to the low tide line on a steep sloping beach. These are laid with the tops toward the shore and the butts toward deep water, and are weighted with a heavy stone at the butt end. At first the top floats up, but after a few days of soaking the whole tree lies on the bottom. A line is run from the butt end of the tree to above the high tide line, so that the tree can be hauled up when the herring have finished spawning on the branches. Earlier experiments had apparently shown that if a pile of hemlock boughs were weighted down in the water, only the outer parts received the spawn. Now the whole tree is used so that the herring may swim among the branches. Only hemlock saplings are used because the herring will not spawn on spruce.

When asked if fences were ever set up with branches attached, one man said that this was a method used in southeastern Alaska, “but they don’t bother with that here.” Lack of elaborate preparations probably reflects the uncertainty of the herring runs, since many came in 1952 but none in 1953. In 1951, the people got no eggs until very late in the season, because killerwhales had chased the herring away. Sometimes the herring come to one place, and when the people go there, the fish have moved elsewhere. Then, when they do appear, “all at once the bay is just loaded with herring…. Those that have branches in the water are lucky.” (MJ) There are no proprietory rights to the spawning grounds.

“My grandfather never said anything about putting down branches to get the spawn. Sometimes they bring in a feathery kind of seaweed with eggs on it. They liked them, but there would be only a few eggs.” (SJ)

That herring may never have been very numerous in Yakutat Bay is suggested by MJ's remarks when describing a trip up the bay about 1894. “I remember when I was a young girl—same age as this one [a child of 10]—my mother took me to Canoe Pass. Was first time we know it come to spawn there. The eggs were just white all over. My mother and the boys went up there with canvas or anything. Can peel it from the rocks. Augusta [an older cousin] and I, they get after us for not bringing spawn to the canoe before tide comes. We don’t want to handle it. We’re sitting around—wash a piece in salt water—and eating it. It crackles. Pretty near the whole town was there. But mostly Yakutat people get it from Sitka—$5 a sack, already cured and dried. It don’t take long to dry.”

A method now used to preserve herring eggs is to put them still clustered on the hemlock twigs into a keg of brine. The contents are weighted down with stones to keep them submerged. The eggs are apparently eaten from the twigs without further preparation.

The eggs may also be dried or smoked. “It's good smoked…tastes like dried fish.” The dried or smoked eggs are soaked before boiling. “Then it comes back to fresh. Cook it with oil. It‘s good.” (MJ)

There is another saltwater fish that is said to resemble the herring and has spots on the back. It is called “Thunderbird's fish’ (xetł adi). It lays large eggs on the rocks that are gathered and eaten, but I do not know how they were prepared.

OELACHON OIL

Oelachon oil (’e, sak ’ei) was also preserved. Like seal oil, it was regarded as essential to health and little boys were regularly dosed with a spoonful of it. Probably the fish of the first run, caught in the winter (February ?), were eaten fresh, while those from the spring run (middle of March) were processed for oil.

Minnie Johnson described the methods used at Situk in the late 1880's to render the oil. The fish are piled for two or three days on skunk cabbage leaves, and are covered with branches to keep out the blowflies. This was certainly in a pit, although this was not mentioned in this connection (see however, p. 388). “When it gets real ferment,” the mass of fish is dumped into a canoe with water, and cooked, “all mashed up.” Apparently partitions are set in to block off the two ends of the canoe, and only the central part is used as a large pot. Rocks are heated in a fire, picked up with tongs, and dropped into the canoe to boil the fish. As the oil rises, it is scooped out with wooden ladles and put into wooden boxes or cans. “When one mess was done, they fill it [the canoe] up again.”

“Like seal oil, it's [the fish] got to start to decay. When it's fresh, it won’t last long. Tastes funny.”

A friend added:

“They put up fresh hooligan oil at Saxman [southeastern Alaska], but they keep it in a cool place…. They cook it fresh, not fermented the way we used to do. They used to put hooligans in a hole. Line it with atc [ferns] and stuff, so sand won’t go in it.”

Oelachon oil was put with boiled dried salmon. In winter it became solid and white.

“Beach Food”

“Beach food,” that is, marine invertebrates and seaweed, has always been important. It is gathered at low tide by the women, although men may furnish transportation to and from the beach if it is at some distance from the village.[75] This custom has become more necessary now than formerly, since skiffs with outboard motors are used to go across to Khantaak Island, and trips to the ocean beach beyond the Ankau lagoons are made by automobile. The implement most used to gather beach food is still the pointed stick which serves as a digging stick for prying up clams and cockles and for overturning crabs, and as a cane when scrambling over rocks where the seaweed and chitons are to be found. Gunny sacks and water buckets have replaced the baskets formerly used to carry home the spoils (pl. 101).

It will be remembered that Yakutat beach food was claimed to be purer than that of southeastern Alaska (p. 391). “Down in Southeast of Alaska you don’t take anything from the dry place [mud flats?], but here it's different. You grab anything you want.” When I repeated the saying of the Angoon Tlingit that you must not eat mussels when the salmonberries are in flower or fruit, or the berries and mussels will “fight” and make you sick, I was told: “I heard about that. You know that trip around the southeast of Alaska when the old man was alive? [to the ANB convention, 1929]. They try to drag that up here and say, ’You mustn’t dig no clams in March because R in it. They’re spawning then. But in February and January…[she pondered the R's,] clams is pure and fat.” (MJ)

Another informant said that about the middle of March 1954, she had been getting clams, cockles, and “gumboots” (chitons). Clams are good until April, but after that they begin to eat some “green stuff,” and will not taste good again until August. It was in April of that year that we were sick after eating clams which we had dug in the lagoon beyond the Old Village.

Two types of clams are gathered: butter clams (tsiw; pl. 100) and horse clams (gał’). These can be dug in the lagoon by the Old Village or simply picked up at extreme low tide in some of the smaller Ankau lagoons. Razor clams can be obtained on the ocean beach, but they are hard to dig and only a few people try to get them. This is because they can be found only at very low tide and burrow so fast that it is almost impossible to dig them out without a special long-bladed clam shovel. It is doubtful whether they were ever secured in former times, although one informant mentioned a tradition of sticking pins through their necks to force them to come to the surface. This reminds one of catching birds by putting salt on their tails, although this method of getting razor clams was reported as practiced by the Eyak on the Copper River flats (MJ). Clams were not preserved, because there were “plenty of them around.”

The large basket cockles (saw) were and are more appreciated than clams. They may be roasted over a fire and eaten fresh, or skewered on little spruce sticks, dried, and put up in oil (tutłÁkw). The long tough necks are not eaten, but the bodies, especially of the very large cockles, are tender and sweet. In describing an excursion to one of the Ankau lagoons. MJ commented: “Cockles so thick there—don’t have to dig them. Just pick them up. [Their squirts were] like shotgun shots. You can‘t step aside.”

Blue mussels (ak, ak) are probably no longer eaten as much as they were formerly, to judge by the middens at archeological sites and informants’ stories. The large California mussel (yi, i) was not eaten, although the shells were used for knives and scrapers. “But they toast the middle-sized ones [large blue mussels?] around the fire,” apparently with tongs (MJ).

Three kinds of crabs are recognized and eaten. The ordinary Dungeness crab (taw) was usually caught in the spring, especially around the smaller islands in the shallow waters east of Khantaak Island. One of these is, in fact, locally known as “Crab Island.” Crabs were caught at low tide simply by flipping them over on their backs with a stick. They were boiled, but soft-shell crabs were not eaten. The “spider” crab is occasionally caught when fishing for halibut and is therefore known as ‘crab of the halibut deep’ (’ítkÀ táwù). The “king” crab (I, é) is like a “spider” crab, but bigger. These are also eaten (CW and friend).

Chitons or amphineura, locally known as “gumboots,” can be pried off the rocks at low tide. The common, smaller type (cau) are boiled in salt water, but not too long or they will get tough. The black skin and the shelly plates below it are poked off with a stick. Judging from my observations, the live chitons may be soaked overnight in fresh water before cooking. A favorite time to get them is in May.

The large crypto-chitons (ku, kuw) are apparently not often gathered at Yakutat, perhaps because the tidal range is usually too limited to expose them. Dead ones occasionally wash ashore after storms. Once, when MJ was out in a motorboat with her first husband, she suggested that they stop at a reef where there were many of these large chitons. She had never seen them before. They took a number back to the village on Khantaak Island where all the people crowded around, because most of them had never seen any. They asked, “Can I have one?” and took almost all of them. MJ brought one to her grandmother and asked her to show her how to cook it. The old woman built a fire outdoors and “toasted” the chiton on a stick. Then she scored it across the back with a knife, and rubbed it on both sides on a flat rock. Then she dipped it into a pot of cold salt water to clean it. This made the “bones [shell plates] come out easy.” It was then cut into squares and dipped in seal oil to eat. Everyone tasted it and thought it very good, but my informant did not eat any.

Sea urchins (ni) are apparently gathered from early spring all through the summer (pl. 100). While still alive, they are cut in two through the vent with a knife. The orange-yellow ovaries are scooped out on the blade of the knife and are eaten raw without seasoning. They have the cool delicate flavor of raw oysters, but it is a little disconcerting to the uninitiated to see the spicules continue to move after the animal has been disembowled. The aboriginal implement (niA) used to remove the ovaries was described as “just like a table knife…. They used to use it. It‘s got a round point that goes in the back of the sea egg and twist it open. I saw them made of a stick.” (MJ)

The squid or “devilfish” (naqw), though more often used to bait halibut hooks, is said to be good to eat. I am not sure, however, whether it is classed with “beach food.” “It tastes like crab meat” (MJ). It is cleaned by reaching inside the mouth and pulling out the entrails with a jerk. The flesh is boiled and skinned before being eaten. Some of the true octopus have been found with “fingers” or tentacles 14 feet long, but as far as I know these are not eaten.

Two or three types of edible seaweed are gathered at low tide, from late April until about the middle of July, although they are considered best in May. The most tender, and to our taste the most palatable, is the black seaweed (łaÁsk). It grows on boulders on the beach near Ocean Cape (pl. 98), and eventually turns whitish in spots, when it is too old to be worth gathering. Of the ribbon seaweed (atc, atc) two varieties(?) or forms are distinguished: a dark kind (atc gutłAk) and a white (tłed atc). These grow on the sand between the boulders. “The best seaweed is that growing under the big seaweed. It keeps good a long time,” apparently because it is not exposed to the sun and air at low tide. (MJ)

Seaweed is preserved by spreading it out on planks or on the roof to dry in the sun (pl. 99). Children are especially fond of sucking or chewing on tough pieces of dried ribbon seaweed. We do not know whether it is ever eaten fresh. Black seaweed, either fresh or dried, is boiled, usually flavored with clam juice or salmon eggs. Although MJ specified that it should be cooked “10 or 15 minutes, until the seaweed is yellow,” that which we saw her cook was boiled for a much shorter period and remained dark. She added to it some boiled king salmon eggs from a mason jar. The mixture, ‘dried eggs with seaweed’ (kahákw tín łaAsk), looked like spinach and beans, and was very tasty, although the eggs were tough. It is probably the ribbon seaweed which requires a more lengthy cooking.

MJ is one of the few women in Yakutat who still dries a great deal of seaweed. In May 1953, she obtained a lot from Deep Bay on Khantaak Island, and although she sold most of it for $2 or $5 a paper bagful, she still had some left at the middle of the following February (pl. 100).

There are a number of taboos concerning the eating of “beach food.” We first learned of these one evening when we had delighted two of our friends by offering them the fresh sea urchins which we had gathered that morning. They each ate three with relish, but declined more, explaining, “At night time we don’t eat anything from the beach. We don’t eat stuff from the beach at night. It's łIas [taboo]. It gives us nightmares [omens of misfortune?] and makes bad weather. A long time ago they didn’t have any salty stuff in the house. And a young girl after she menstruates never eats anything from the beach for two or three years.”

This last restriction is so that the girl will be wealthy in later life. “Some people don’t like to eat things off the beach because they say they always be poor. I think it's too easy to get. I guess that's why they say it.”

Furthermore, a shaman and the members of his immediate family, including his wife, were not allowed to eat any beach food, except during one month of the year (February?, March?, April?), when the mythical Property Woman was supposed to go on the beach to gather and eat such food. Then it was eaten ritually by the shaman and his people to bring good fortune.

Plant Food

Although the Yakutat people were primarily eaters of flesh, they nevertheless utilized a great range of plants in their diet. It was impossible to make a complete and systematic record of all the plants used by the natives, yet our information, gathered largely at the initiative and with the expericence of Dr. McClellan, indicates that plant lore was well developed among the Yakutat, as indeed it is among all the Tlingit. Many plants were used for foods, medicines, and magic, as well as for various manufactures. Edible portions of the various species included the roots, bark, leaves, stems, or fruit.

ROOTS

Edible roots (àt) were those of the fern, Kamchatka lily, lupin, a plant with pink flowers called “native sweet potatoes,” and another with white flowers. Identification of these (p. 34) has been impossible in some cases, for we cannot be sure that the natives did not apply the same name to several similar species, and descriptions of the flowers given at a time when they were not in bloom were confusing.

The leaves of the fern (àtc), including the lady fern and possibly also the wood fern, were not eaten, but were used to line pits or vessels in which other foods were prepared. The roots (wAł; Boas, 1917, p. 157, WAł) were dug early in the spring, before the fronds had grown, because afterwards the taste is said to be lost. The root is described as round, about 3 or 4 inches in diameter, with rootlets as big as the little finger growing around it. “They grow kind of funny.” These roots were baked in a pit under the fire or boiled.

The Kamchatka lily (pl. 96) furnishes “wild rice” (ku). Again, there is flavor in the spring, and also in the fall when the frost comes in September, but it is lost when the plant flowers in June (MJ). Another informant believed, however, that the root could be gathered as early as the middle of July. The “rice” are the small white grains that cluster about the yellow central core of the root. The former are said to taste like rice, while the yellow center is described as “sour” or “bitter” although some people like it. The white grains may be boiled fresh like rice. Some people mash the cooked grains and add milk and butter, “just like mashed potatoes,” A former method of preservation was to mash the boiled grains, shape them into round balls with the hands, and dry these on a rack-like tray. This was apparently done in the smokehouse while fish were being smoked. When dry, the cakes were covered with a crust, and were put up in seal or oelachon oil with berries.

There may be two rather similar plants, both called by the same name (EntAkw), which furnished edible roots, or perhaps two varieties of lupin (pl. 96), the blue and the white, which were called by different names (gEntAkw or kantAkw, and gIÚs). The latter may be a beach pea (see identifications attempted, p. 34). It was described as having white flowers, or purple to white flowers, and grows at Situk. “Wild sweet potatoes” (tAC, tsats, or tats) are the roots of a plant with pink flowers, which also grows at Situk. It seems impossible without further investigation to make absolute identifications of the plants to which these native names are given, and since the methods of preparing them seems to be similar, these are simply summarized.

Informants differed as to whether the roots were dug only in the fall, when the frost comes, or whether they were dug and eaten in both spring and fall. They were boiled and dipped in seal oil (MJ). Of the plant (gIús) it was said that the roots were dug in May, and might be boiled, or dried (after boiling?), and put up in seal oil. “Wild sweet potatoes” were said to have a root that was red and as long as a finger. It seems to have been a favorite food of the mice, and the natives used to rob the mice nests of their stores or take the roots which the mice had spread out to dry for their winter stores. These roots would be baked overnight in the hot sand under fire (JR). Or, if boiled, “they say it's just like syrup, real thick.” This informant was impressed that no one had tried to make sugar of it.

All of these roots, as well as those of the fern, may be kept in a pit cache where they would be cool but not freeze. There were said to be many other edible roots about which I could obtain no specific information.

BARK

In spring before the people went to sealing camp, they used to gather the sweet inner bark (SA) of the hemlock (yAn).

“They shave the sweetest part of the bark, next to the wood—nice and juicy. Oh, it's sweet!…Grandpa cuts off that bark, then grandma cuts that [inner] bark…. They get the bark off of the tree. Lay it on the ground. Get a piece bigger than that table top. Then scoop up the inner part, shave it up, like. Get on your knees and take just shorty cuts, going around…. She [grandma] goes back and forth like a machine.” (MJ)

The informant demonstrated how the kneeling woman worked from one edge of the sheet of bark across to the other, beginning at the end farthest from her and scraping the shavings of inner bark towards her in a series of short strokes. When she had finished one row, she worked across the bark again.

“That knife (xíA) curls up so it won’t cut deep. She shaves off that bark and puts it in a pack sack and ties it up with spruce roots. [This is a] tut—a packsack made out of the outer sheet of bark to hold the inner shavings until you can dry them. If it's a stormy day, spread it out on that tray [an openwork wooden rack]. [Otherwise,] just chop that off, and the sun dry it up…. When it's dry, put it up in seal oil….

“They put it up this season of the year. [It was then July 1, surely too late; May would be more correct.] Sometimes the mosquitoes is just terrible. My grandma would make a fire to keep them away.” (MJ)

Sometimes a tree was cut down to get to the bark, but sometimes, and presumably always before steel axes were available, the bark was cut across and pried off the standing tree with a long pole. This was a task which required the cooperation of man and wife.

Another informant, in describing the method of scraping, said: “When you are shaving off the bark, you catch the thin peelings between your thumb and forefinger as you scrape them off. You scrape the bark on the line, and on the line, and on the line. It's the prettiest thing inside the bark! And you can see the juices coming out.”

The shavings were said to look like cornflakes.

The inner bark might be eaten fresh. One informant liked it with butter and sugar, another boiled the shaving with sugar. A third told how she used to steal handfuls from her grandmother, apparently when the fresh shavings were out drying in the sun. The dried bark was put with seal oil in a bag of halibut skin, and eaten with the oil. “I used to pack a bag full around and give it to my grandma. She knew what I wanted and would give me a handful of it at a time.”

In late winter or early spring, when there was still not much pitch in the spruce (‘as, or sit), but when the sap had already begun to run and the fresh inner layer was growing under the bark, this inner layer (cíyì) was scraped off and used as a less relished substitute for hemlock bark. The usual method was to scrape the standing tree, but “some of the people scrape the bark off and eat it.”

The knife used to scrape hemlock bark was like a small ulo with cupshaped blade (see fig. 51, p. 422). At one time it was presumably made of shell, for one name for the bark scraper is the same as that for the large California mussel (yi).

PITCH

Although not a food, pitch (ku) may be mentioned here. Children used to chew it like chewing gum. The most relished variety was traded from the interior.

GREEN PLANTS

There were also various green plants that were eaten.

Late in May, for example, the furry buds (ét) of the salmonberry are peeled and eaten raw.

“Wild celery,” cow parsnip, (yànà’Et) is also eaten raw late in May and early June, before the leaves open (pl. 97). The stalks are cut, peeled, and eaten like celery. It has a rather astringent taste. This is a favorite snack of the children, who gather and eat it by the wayside, and are scolded by their elders for burning their lips and faces if they have not peeled the stalks properly (MJ et al.). Burroughs noted that the natives at the sealing camps in Disenchantment Bay were eating “parts of the leaf or stalk of a kind of cow parsnip, a coarse rank plant that grows all about” (Burroughs, 1901, vol. 1, p. 60). This was at the latter part of June, 1899, but the season is a little later there than it is at Yakutat.

Another plant is the “wild rhubarb” (tł‘ÁwÀtc), probably the great western dock. The reddish stems and leaves are gathered in June and July, and are boiled. We found that it has a rather bitter and astringent aftertaste, and the natives were surprised that we did not like it as well as garden rhubarb. Some of them prefer to flavor it with sugar, and may even use it in pies (MJ et al.). If the plant is old and coarse, the boiled pulp is squeezed in the hands, and the stems picked out and thrown away.

The peas of a purple vetch were also eaten. (Is this wild pea, Lathyrus palustris?) “They beat those canned peas. My husband [a White man] used to like them.” (MJ) The name ‘Raven's garden’ (Yeł tai) was offered, but another woman (EV) applied this to the yellow vetch, which has a longer vine and no peas. The same name was also given to a yellow composite.

“Hudson's Bay tea” (IkcAłtin) was apparently used both as a substitute for tea and as a medicine (p. 657). The leaves are dried and then boiled. “That medicine is good for colds. It's good—like tea. Tastes more strong than that.” “It helps your stomach.”

The leaves of the fireweed (łúł), picked in the fall when they are dry and red, were also used “when we’re short of tea,” but apparently had no particular virtue.

Funston (Coville, 1895, p. 332) reports that hairy and Kamchatka rock cress (Arabis hirsuta, and A. lyrata Kamchatka) were both eaten raw by the natives at Yakutat. He also reported (ibid., p. 330) that the Siberian spring beauty (Claytonia subirica) was eaten, either raw or cooked, but our informants identified it as a medicine. The medicinal uses of plants are described on pages 655–659.

BERRIES

Berries (tłew) were the most important type of plant food in the past, and the women still gather and preserve quantities. Berrying grounds were formerly owned by sibs, and I heard accusations that some women were still attempting to exercise exclusive control over strawberry patches on sib lands, although this may have been only unfriendly gossip. When one informant was questioned about the rights to pick berries on the Teqwedi lands at Situk and Lost Rivers, she explained that in the old days the women of the two Raven sibs (TłUknaAdi and Kwacqwan) could pick berries there because they were married to Teqwedi men. When asked specifically about Kagwantan women, she said that any woman could pick berries there because the people knew that she was getting them to share and give away. This may reflect only modern practice, or may be interpreted to mean that berry-picking privileges were freely extended to any woman who could claim relationship to a member of the sib that owned the territory. Usually such a woman would be a resident of the area as a wife or unmarried daughter. Presumably visitors were expected to ask permission to pick berries or might be invited to join a berry party. It is clear from the story of how Knight Island was purchased by the ancestors of the Kwacqwan that to gather berries without permission was considered to be trespassing or stealing. In this instance, the basket of strawberries was cut from the offender‘s back.

In the former times very large supplies of berries were gathered and preserved, and even today most women put up many jars (pl. 100). Berries were, of course, also eaten fresh. The following varieties are gathered: salmonberries (WAan tłègu, Rubus spectabilis); blueberries (kanaá, Vaccinium ovalifolium) and a second variety with white blossoms (nana kanaá, ‘up-river blueberries,’ Vaccinium sp.); red elderberries (yeł’, Sambucus racemosa); highbush cranberries (kAxwé, Viburnum edule); wild currants (ca, Ribes bracteosum); lowbrush currants with hair or traling black currants (kAnEłtUk, Ribes laxiflorum or R. glandulosum); lowbush cranberries (Vaccinium vitis-idea?); lagoon-berries (Rubus stellatus); and strawberries (cukw). The Yakutat people are also familiar with a southeastern Alaska variety of gooseberry with prickles (áhéwÙ, perhaps Ribes lacustre), although it does not grow at Yakutat, and with the cultivated red currant (wek) in the mission garden.

Berrypicking begins the latter part of July when salmonberries and the first strawberries can be found. Then follow the blueberries of late August and September, elderberries, lagoonberries, currants, and the rest, with the last highbush cranberries (pl. 95) which may still be picked in October, when ice is forming on the ponds. Strawberries are and always were the most important and abundant variety gathered, but these do not ripen until the end of July and early August. According to native tradition, many areas, now wooded or overgrown with small bushes, were formerly open sandy flats covered with strawberries.

Gathering of berries was and is primarily the task of women, although men cooperated when large amounts were to be secured. Thus, the whole family or several families used to go in canoes to the head of Situk River to pick, and sometimes a young man would be kept busy, simply carrying the full baskets to the canoes (p. 287). “We get berries up Situk. We line the whole bottom of the canoe with skunk cabbage leaves and bring in a whole canoe full.” (MJ) And, on another occasion: “We used to get highbush currants, highbush cranberries, white berries, and lagoonberries [up the Situk]. The lagoonberries were one inch around. There are too many bears up there now. Nobody goes there. Then they used to take the day off to go get them.”

Even today berrypicking is a social affair. While each woman and her children will pick for their own family, parties of several women usually go out together because the noise made by many persons serves to drive away the bears. They call out constantly when they are among the bushes so that the bears, who may also be picking berries on the other side of the bushes, will not be taken by surprise and hence attack. Sometimes a single woman may be accompained by a boy with a gun, who also helps to carry home the full buckets. A man who owns an automobile may drive his wife and a party of her friends and relatives to a berrypatch, or the owner of a large motorboat may take those who share the cost of the gasoline across Yakutat Bay to Point Manby to get strawberries.

Berries are now put up in mason jars by conventional methods. Sometimes they are boiled first with sugar, or the raw berries and sugar are put into the jars to be cooked. Aboriginal methods usually involved drying the fruit.

One old-fashioned method, used especially for strawberries, but apparently also for blueberries, highbush currants, highbush cranberries, and lagoonberries, produced dry cakes (’Át kà Xwúkw, probably ’At kAxUkw). The berries are first “rough smashed” in a wide flat basket (tał) with a wooden pestle (eA). The mass is then dumped into an enormous sheet of spruce bark (‘as dai), about 10 by 4 feet, or even 15 by 5 feet, held up by four posts (takw) at the corners. The bark is lined with skunk cabbage leaves, and on top of the berries is a layer of fern fronds. “It makes a fine fragrance. It seems to make it kind of sweaty like, so it won’t dry.” Then comes another layer of skunk cabbage leaves and on top another layer of bark.

“They build two fires under the bark, one at each corner [end] so it will cook evenly. They cook it until the juice is dried up and it's ready to smash again. It takes two days of cooking at least. They are scared to burn it hasty, or it would burn right through the bark. They use any kind of wood in the fire, but it can’t be a hasty fire.” (MJ)

“They put the fire underneath. Sometimes it's just boiling like this, that berries,” said another.

Apparently the fire is allowed to go out at night, and before it is rekindled in the morning more smashed berries may be added to the mixture.

After the berry paste has boiled dry, “when it is good, thick, no water in there, they make ’Át kà xwúkw out of it. Gee, it's good, that thing!” To do this, the pulp is mashed again and the stems removed. Then it is put into square traylike frames (‘Át kà xwúkw qai) to dry. These are about 2 feet square and 2 or 3 inches high.

“My grandfather made squares like the cannery trays, but made of wood, all shaped with a knife. [She refers to the openwork trays made of iron straps on which the cans are cooked and cooled.] It's fixed so the berries won’t go through, like a dish drainer. You pat the berries down with your hand. There are two or three cross pieces in there. You put it in there so it dries quickly. They got skunk cabbage in there [to line the frame with leaves]. Then they got it overhead way high up to dry. They dry it so it won’t get sour. That smashed berries is wet. They want to get a crust over it, so it can harden and they can take the frame out. Then they spread it [the cake] out high up above the fire where it will dry until it gets hard.”

The cakes were apparently wrapped in skunk cabbage leaves while drying, and when cured were like dried figs.

These cakes could be kept in a dry place or might be put in a wooden box and covered with seal oil. In winter, a small piece of berry cake, “a little jigger of berries like that [about 2 or 3 inches square] would make a big Hudson's Bay plate full of berries if you soak them” in warm water (MJ). This recipe is traditional, even though a man born in 1914 confessed, “I never taste any like that, never see any like that.” MJ had described the method used by her mother and grandmother in the 1880's and 1890's, but explained: “It's too much work making berries. That's why this younger generation doesn‘t want to bother.”

From the dried berry cake was made a feast dish called ‘Raven's food’ (Yeł ‘At ái), consisting of the soaked berries beaten up with oelachon oil and snow.

A somewhat similar recipe was used to make “mixed berries” (kanégwAł’), so called because it looks like ‘paint’ (négwÀł’) when mixed with the fish eggs which were an essential ingredient.

It was described as a kind of jelly, and was used especially for berries other than strawberries, although the latter might also be prepared in this way since several kinds of berries were usually cooked together. Highbush cranberries and red elderberries were mentioned as one combination, as were highbush cranberries and strawberries.

After the berries had been cooked dry, mashed salmon eggs were added. “It makes it stiff, like custard. They mash the eggs and put the flour [egg paste] in the berries. It takes the sourness out of it. It's like cornmeal mush.” And, “with salmon spawn you don’t need sugar to preserve them—big saving. When you eat the berries you can add sugar and seal oil.” (MJ)

Another woman specified that to one dishpan full of cooked berries you should add the roe from four coho salmon, smashed with the “strings” taken out. “Cook it until it gets thick. The young folks like it but they don’t put it up the old way.”

In describing what was perhaps a variant of this recipe, a third woman said that the salmon eggs were cooked before being added to the berries, and that the mixture was preserved in boxes covered with seal oil. As her son explained it, “any kind of salmon eggs” are smashed and added to the cooked berries. “Put the eggs in there and just leave it like that. As long as they don’t touch it, it don’t spoil. Once they touch it, they got to eat it up or it will spoil…. I used to eat the salmon eggs out of it. They’re good. They generally get the eggs when they are prime, just loose. Otherwise it‘s hard to separate them.” That is, the roes were taken just before the salmon were ready to spawn. This dish was often served at potlatch feasts.

The old people are said to have been particularly fond of preserved elderberries. They used to leave some twigs and green berries in with the ripe ones to add to the flavor. The berries must be cooked as soon as they are gathered or they become watery and tasteless. They may simply be cooked until dry, but the wife of one of the missionaries used to make jelly of them by adding sugar and dried apples.

Some doubt attached to the use of the berries of the clasping-twisted-stalk or cucumber-root, a plant of the lily-of-the-valley family (Streptopus amplexifolius). When Dr. McClellan and I picked some of the plants, we were teased, “What are you doing with that ‘dead person's berries’ [ee qawu tłeu]?” We asked if they were good to eat, and were told, “They make the finest kind of a jelly—only slimy like. They don’t let us kids eat it. I never see my father and mother eat it. Plenty of berries without tapping that.” (MJ) The same kind of equivocal information was given at Angoon, where an elderly woman told of her horror or distaste when another had offered her some jam made from these berries. I did not discover the reason for this dislike, nor why the berries should be called by such an unpleasant name. Some of Emmons’ informants said that an intoxicant was made by boiling the roots.

Soapberries (hoktł’i, Shepherdia canadensis) can now be found in Nunatak Fiord but are apparently a recent intrusion. In the last century they were imported from southeastern Alaska, probably derived from the interior via the Chilkat. They were apparently dried, and before use were soaked overnight. As with other berries, “a tablespoon full of dried ones makes a big Hudson's Bay dish full” (MJ). The berries are whipped into foam with a handful of spruce root shavings, “excelsior like…. You tangle it around your hand and it beats up the berries pure white.” The dish was a distinct novelty in Yakutat. “My mother used to get soapberries from Douglas and Hoonah and those places. My mother's relations in Haines, my mother's aunty, put them up,” and sent them to her. “The first time I see it I was at Khantaak. I was out playing. My aunty's husband—my aunty on my father's side—her husband came back from Sitka and he brought some up. I wonder what it is after I come in from play. They eat it. They got a big plastic [!] dish the same color as the soapberries. My uncle wanted to treat his brother-in-law with that strange food. He was sitting in the middle of the floor, beating it up. I ran in and my mother said, ‘I was just hoping you would come in.’ I took a big spoonful—Ux! It taste just like the soap. My brother Charlie and the others ran in. They didn’t like it either—spit, spit, spit!” (MJ)

Haines, my mother's aunty, put them up,” and sent them to her. “The first time I see it I was at Khantaak. I was out playing. My aunty's husband—my aunty on my father's side—her husband came back from Sitka and he brought some up. I wonder what it is after I come in from play. They eat it. They got a big plastic [!] dish the same color as the soapberries. My uncle wanted to treat his brother-in-law with that strange food. He was sitting in the middle of the floor, beating it up. I ran in and my mother said, ‘I was just hoping you would come in.’ I took a big spoonful—Ux! It taste just like the soap. My brother Charlie and the others ran in. They didn‘t like it either—spit, spit, spit!” (MJ)

It is doubtful if anyone in Yakutat now eats it, although one woman who regularly visits relatives in Juneau reports, “They make it taste better now. They put in sugar and lemon or vanilla extract.”

The way in which the soapberries could be whipped up seems to have been a constant source of interest. “Just stop to think. Who in the world show them soapberries? Maybe they learn it from Yeł [Raven]!” (MJ) The same peculiar property seems also to have impressed Albin Johnson, for these are the only berries that he describes:

“Furthermore, there are dewberries and a kind of berry that grows among the mountains called ‘soapberries.’ These are valued by the people because they could be dried and pressed into cakes and be kept and used at feasts. The peculiar thing about these berries is that when they are put in water and worked over, the substance becomes like soap bubbles with a reddish color. The Tlingit people call it ‘Indian ice cream.’ For a little cake of these berries a high price is paid. At the big potlatch feasts the best dishes are made from these berries. A large tray is employed, fill it half with water, and mix in a piece of the above-mentioned cakes. Two young men work the mush till the foam flows over the edges, beautifully rosy red, and then the tray is carried around to the feasting crowd. Everyone presses in the direction of the tray in order to grab a handful of the ‘ice cream.’ In this way each one is given a chance to taste the dish as long as it lasts, which is not very long. These berries are not delicious, but bitter, and they are eaten mainly according to old custom and because of their beauty.” [Johnson, 1924, pp. 96–97.]

Some Native Recipes for Modern Foods

Although the missionaries tried to induce the natives to raise garden vegetables, their efforts were not very successful. A few men and women did make gardens at their summer fish camps, especially on the Ankau lagoons, but vegetables were not much relished. Traders and missionaries also introduced flour, tea, sugar, and other groceries; the natives were evidently making bread with baking powder before 1886 (p. 193). A few native recipes for such modern foods were mentioned incidentally by Minnie Johnson.

“My mother and grandma never cooked no carrots or turnips or other vegetables. They eat it raw with seal grease…. They don‘t care for no potatoes. They got native sweet potatoes.”

Tea (tcáyù) and the cup (téacka) from which it was drunk were both introduced by the Russians, and their names were recognized as Russian. “The old people like mountain goat tallow in their tea…. The old folks don’t use sugar in their tea. They use ‘fifty-fifty,’ half brown and half white sugar. They call it ‘old-fashioned taffy.’ You make a cake of it and then chop it up in squares. You don’t pull the taffy, just boil it until it is a syrup.” Brown sugar (cuga kati) was also served in lumps at feasts.

Bread (suknEníwù) was evidently made in two ways. One was to boil or fry the dough in fat. “I didn’t have any mountain goat tallow…but I cooked bread boiled in seal oil. You just dip it in like doughnuts. They call it Siwash bread.”

Bread was also made by more conventional methods. “They bury it in the sand. It gets about four inches thick. You use baking powder in it, and you bake it in a Dutch oven. Then after it is cooked in that [you take it out, and] you get it in a circle all around the fire until the crust gets high.”

Tobacco and Intoxicants

Native tobacco (gAntc) was formerly grown in the Yakutat area and made into snuff. It will be remembered that in 1788 Captain Colnett observed near Cross Sound “a house & garden neatly fenced in, & European plants growing” (quoted, p. 131), and that in 1791 Malaspina saw some cultivated fields on the shores of Yakutat Bay where presumably tobacco was being grown (p. 149). Beresford recorded the use of this plant at Port Mulgrave in 1787:

“The Indians are particularly fond of chewing a plant, which appears to be a species of tobacco; not content, however, with chewing it in its simple state, they generally mix lime along with it, and sometimes the inner rind of the pine-tree, together with a rosinous substance extracted from it.” [Beresford, 1789, p. 175.]

The plant seems to have been a true tobacco (Nicotianna), although of an as yet unidentified species, perhaps similar to N. multivalvis or N. attenuata (cf. R. B. Dixon, 1933, and Heizer, 1940, and references cited).

The leaves, presumably dried, were chopped up and ground in a wooden mortar (eAyit) with a pestleshaped stone (eA). Ashes of hemlock or alder bark were added to it to give it a sharper taste, but it was denied that lime from roasted shells was added (KDI). Probably lime was omitted when commercial tobacco was substituted. The snuff (tAwAgu) was shaped into balls (WAC ’At, ’cheek thing’) and sucked.

Men and women, and even small children chewed, or rather, sucked snuff.

Tobacco was also smoked in pipes, presumably after the habit was acquired from Europeans, from whom they also obtained commercial tobacco. Since tobacco was smoked primarily at feasts in memory of the dead and on similar ceremonial occasions, it is not surprising that many pipes were of wood, carved in crest designs. For example, the pipe collected from the DAdentan chief in 1888 represents Lituya Bay, the territory of this Hoonah sib, with the Frog, a bear, and the tidal waves at the entrance (pl. 123). A wooden pipe obtained by Emmons at Dry Bay represents the island in the middle of the bay, with the Eagle above and a Killerwhale below (AMNH E/229). From Dry Bay, he also obtained wooden pipes representing the Eagle, Murrelet, and a hand with six fingers (pl. 121; AMNH E/240 [to Dresden, 1898]; AMNH E/235 [to Emmons, 1921]; and pl. 122). This last is an Eagle pipe which belonged to a chief. A pipe representing the Bear, another carved like a ship's cannon, a bone pipe, and an ivory pipe trimmed with brass came from Yakutat (pls. 122, 123; AMNH E/2746, 19/432). A prized heirloom at Yakutat now is a meershaum pipe that was formerly smoked by the former Teqwedi chief, Daqusetc or Minaman, at feasts for the dead. Even small children smoked pipes in the 1880‘s.

Smoking or sucking snuff was obligatory for guests when tobacco was offered by their hosts, since it was for the dead. Now people smoke ordinary cigarettes on such occasions. For few use pipes or buy cigars. Some, of course, do not care for tobacco or have given it up because of missionary teaching.

In former days there were no fermented or intoxicating beverages, as far as I know, although Emmons reported that the Tlingit made an intoxicant by boiling the roots of the “dead persons’ berries” (p. 409). According to Krause (1956 p. 109), smoking at feasts might produce “a stage similar to intoxication…both sexes still chew pitch, as mentioned before, and the root of the lupine ‘kantak,’ which also induces a form of intoxication.” Possibly there were other plants which produced narcotic or hallucinogenic symptoms; indeed, faith in the effectiveness of the native “medicines,” roots which were carried in the mouth, may have been due to the effect which they produced on the user (see pp. 659–661). However, none of our informants at Yakutat mentioned any intoxicants or any drugs before the introduction of liquor.

Liquor (nau) was relished by the Yakutat people when it was introduced. This was evidently long ago, to judge by the literary evidence, such as the story of how the Russians gave “whiskey” to Raven (p. 873). (More probably it was brandy or vodka; rum would have been carried by British and American ships.) Many native songs are drinking songs or refer to drinking.

We do not know just when the Yakutat people learned to distill liquor. It may have been shortly after this art was acquired by the Angoon Tlingit, a few years after the purchase of Alaska (see p. 181; cf. Swan, 1875, in Morris, 1879, p. 146; de Laguna, 1960, p. 159). Such home brew or “hoochenoo” was being made on Khantaak Island in the 1880's, when the pipes for the still were simply tin cans soldered together, the cracks plugged with dough. The children liked to pick out and eat this intoxicating dough, while the adults entertained each other at drinking parties. These would begin with singing and dancing and “having a good time,” but too often ended in tragedy, to judge by the many stories of killings in drunken brawls, drownings or dying from exposure when drunk, or of deaths by poisoning from bad liquor.

Although Yakutat is (as of 1954) “dry” by local option, liquor is readily available, and drinking seems to be a regular accompaniment of the Saturday night dances. (More recently, sales of beer, possibly also of distilled liquor, by the cannery store have been legalized.) A number of individuals, both native and nonnative, have been privately accused of bootlegging, but it is virtually impossible to secure testimony for a legal conviction. Liquor from Juneau is received by plane, and it is also carried by the fish buyers who visit the fish camps to buy salmon for competing canneries. It is alleged that the fish buyers offer the first drink free, then sell the rest of the whiskey at $10 a pint. Some local men also make and sell beer. It is almost impossible for persons who do not want to drink to refuse an offered cup, for to do so would be grossly insulting. It is also difficult to stop drinking before taking too much. At the time of a death or a funeral, when people are sorrowing and remembering their own dead relatives of long ago, many individuals who do not normally drink attempt to find solace in liquor. Aside from the hard times due to the depletion of the salmon runs, it is safe to say that drinking constitutes the most serious problem in Yakutat today.

NATIVE MANUFACTURES

Raw Materials

It was difficult to learn much about aboriginal tools and manufactures because the Yakutat people have become so completely acculturated. While there are traditions about the tools and techniques of former days, they are rather vague, and many of the archeological specimens were strange to our friends. They expressed both admiration of their ancestors for their skills and ingenuity, and also pity because the old people lacked so much.

One knowledgeable elderly man summarized the history of tool materials:

“From the beginning, when people come here…when the glacier that covered Yakutat melted [and] they moved in…they used strong animal bone to make things out of. Everything we have now, they made it out of bone…even łìtÀ [knife]…. It's just like the White people copy it [the aboriginal knife]. Before the Russians discover Alaska, they used that…. After the Russians we don’t use much bone and wood, but iron and copper.

“After the White people lived on the Pacific Ocean, after there were boats on the ocean, there would always be iron, nails from floating logs. People used to look for it. Anybody who found it would be a rich person, and lucky.”

Yet with the simple aboriginal tools, the Yakutat people manufactured things which roused the admiration of the the early explorers. Thus Malaspina (see p. 394) admired particularly the blankets (presumably of woven mountain goat wool), the skin-covered boats, and the baskets with their delicately colored decorations and their tight waterproof weave. We have already quoted some of LaPérouse's observations and speculations on the working of metal (p. 116), for he observed weapons and other objects of both copper and iron in Lituya Bay. In addition to a mention of woven garments, presumably of Chilkat-blanket type (see p. 433), and of woven hats and baskets, LaPérouse also states:

“The Americans of Port des Français know how to forge iron, fashion copper…. They likewise carve all sorts of figures of men and animals, in wood or stone, in a very tolerable manner; make boxes of a tolerably elegant form, and inlay them with the opercula of shells; and cut serpentine into ornaments, giving it the polish of marble.” [LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, pp. 406–407.]

IRON

Drift iron (ayÉ) was certainly used and worked by the prehistoric inhabitants of Yakutat Bay, according to the archeological evidence (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 88–90). It was very precious, and the finder became an important person. He became a big man and could buy many slaves with it, I was told. There is a story about a man who was left behind by his people. He found drift iron. All the people who had left him starved that winter, but he got lucky and found iron and made tools out of it. The people knew how to work iron by heating it in a fire, hammering and grinding it, because they could already work copper in this way. I have already (pp. 233, 256) cited the tradition that, before the Russians themselves came to Yakutat, a schooner was wrecked on the shore west of Icy Bay, and from this the ałYI-Kagwantan obtained a great deal of iron which they made into spear points. Harrington also recorded from GJ what may be the same story or an account of a similar event:

“A ship get wrecked, drift ashore, lots of iron in there, big spikes. Indians get and make into knives, and into the blades of bear spear. Oh my, it was a rich man who found a piece of iron in those times. The old Indians were tough and long-lived.”

In addition to blades for spears, other objects made of iron were daggers, knives, arrowheads, awls, chisels, and possibly adz blades, to judge by archeological specimens and statements of informants.

COPPER

Our excavations on Knight Island in Yakutat Bay suggested that native copper (’iq; Boas, 1917, p. 123, ’éq’) was used before drift iron (de Laguna and others, 1964, pp. 87–88, 203–204). According to tradition the ancestors of the Kwackqwan brought copper with them from the Copper River (pp. 233, 237, 242). The discover of native copper and how to work it is credited to a poor Atna boy who received the knowledge in a supernatural way. Copper was received in trade from the Copper River Atna and possibly from the Nabesna, via the Southern Tutchone on the headwaters of the Alsek River. It was made into knives, awls (?), scrapers, tiny nails, arrowheads, and barbed heads for sea otter harpoon arrows.

“They used to make barbed spear heads—kAt—out of nails after the Russians came. Before that, they had copper. They brought copper from the Copper River when they moved to AnAWAS [Knight Island].”

There is a belief that the old people knew how to handle the soft native copper to “make it as hard as steel. Now they can’t do it. In the olden days they claim they tempered this copper almost as hard as steel.”

Copper was, of course, very valuable, and was prized largely for ornaments: bracelets, necklaces, pendants, and rings for the nose.

“These things…they were expensive. Just rich people had them—respectable people; ’anqawu use them. Whoever had it would be the proudest.” “Just high people use them things. A man like me can’t use it. ’AnyAdi [nobles] is the only one that use it. Sometimes they twist it like a rope, and they make it for their neck or for a bracelet. That's the only thing ’anyAdi use before.”

Informants hazarded that an object of copper, like a piece of iron, would be worth a slave. Copper was said to have been beaten into plates (tínnà), the largest of which were worth from 8 to 10 slaves (p. 354). Harrington's informant (GJ) was also impressed with the value of copper. When they were out at the Ankau cemetery on Memorial Day, 1940, he said:

“Some places in the mountains you see green spots there; that is a sign of copper. We used to find pieces 3 feet long, and 1 inch thick. Old natives dug for it. If you get a foot long piece you are a rich man and can buy 4 or 5 slaves; you don’t have to do anything.”

BONE, HORN, AND STONE

Bones (àq) from stranded whales, hard bone from animal's legs, especially those of the bear, horns (łenet) of mountain goats and moose, bird bones and eagle beaks, the teeth (‘u) of bears, seals, and beaver, and large mussel shells (i) also furnished materials for tools, weapons, utensils, and ornaments. Archeological specimens show that bone and horn were sawed into appropriate shapes, perhaps with sharp-edged fragments of chert, with small chisels and burinlike tools, or with abrasive stone “files.” It was carved and ground smooth and polished. Horn and antler were softened in boiling water before being shaped.

Stone (tE) was used to make blades for adzes, chisels, knives, scrapers, and weapons, as well as for lamps, pestles, hammers, drills, whetstones, and strike-a-lights. Most of the stones used were hard igneous or metamorphic rock, shaped by pecking and grinding. The only chipping seen on archeological specimens was very crude. Curiously enough, slate was little used. Some minerals were used for paints. Marble was carved for dolls’ heads; limestone was hollowed out for lamps; whetstones were of sandstone and claystone. The materials for which distinctive names were recorded are: greenstone (ùw tE), green chert (’In)—glass and flint are also called (’In)—white quartz (né, ne), mica (kÁtł’àk, kAtł’a), rock crystal (tł’èAkw), coal, lignite (yeł xudzi, ’Raven's ashes’), gold (gun), silver (dAna, ’dollar‘), red ochre (łéw, łéw), blue-green copper oxide for paint (neintE), and Harrington adds a brown native pigment dug from the ground (AkwAt, Akkwâat).

WOOD

Woodworking and painting of wood was done by the men. The local woods were chiefly spruce and hemlock, although there was yellow cedar, and red cedar could be found in the form of drift logs on the ocean beach or was even imported from the south. The last was preferred for many things since it floated well, did not rot quickly in water, and was easy to split. Yellow cedar was preferred for fine carvings. For many purposes, for example, making a canoe or making planks, care was taken to select a tree that was without branches for some distance up the trunk. For other purposes hard wood (Akw) was desired. Boas (1917, p. 128) gives this term (gAqu) as ‘heart of a tree,’ but my informants specified that hard wood came from the side of a tree, where it is bent, with “blond colors inside.” It was often obtained from the hemlock (yAn Agu). The heart or “middle of the tree, like a small string,” was ‘its inside place’ (’Atu ’iti). Bark (’às dai, łm) used for roofing material was presumably obtained and handled by men, whereas brush (wA, or ítÁn), which might be used to cover drying fish or as brooms, and roots (át) were obtained and handled by women. Burls (’as dai; Boas, 1917, p. 129, í) were carved by men in making bowls.

Bamboo (u, tu) was sometimes found on the beach and was considered a valuable rarity. A section of it was used for the girl's hair ornament (tin). MJ referred to it as “some kind of hard wood that drift from a long ways—must be from Hawaiian Islands or some place. That hard wood, you can’t hardly cut it with a knife. It's just hard! A bamboo tree—piece of hayik ’uu [‘below-here peg’]…. Wherever it grows, that kind of wood, that's supposed to be growing underneath of the ground…. No, it's very seldom they find it on the beach.” The pole that holds up the earth is supposed to be of bamboo.

Men's Tools

ADZES AND CHISELS

Greenstone and green chert were used especially for adz blades. Another name for such rocks was “weight on the glacier” (sit’kA uwu oruwu, literally ’pin or peg on the glacier’). Supernatural precautions had to be observed when obtaining pieces of these rocks, although I did not learn exactly what they were, and my informants at times seemed to confuse the hard greenstone with a soft greenish shale used for whetstones. Probably both occurred as morainic materials and both required special observances. They were found in Icy Bay, and probably also in Disenchantment Bay. When taking the rock, one had to “trade for it” or “borrow it,” presumably leaving some gift in its place, or else “steal” or “hide it away”—“otherwise, it's bad for you. I don‘t know why.” The penalty was, I believe, bad weather.

Such hard rocks were shaped by pecking and grinding into large heavy grooved blades for the splitting adz (taís, ‘stone wedge’) sometimes called “stone ax” (tE tcAnAwayE) with T-shaped wooden handles. They were also worked into the smaller, thinner ungrooved blades for the elbow-handled planing adz (Ot’A or Ut’A; cf. Boas, 1917, p. 149, yÀ-ut, to pull, to chop); and they were sometimes used for chisels (tíyÀ, ‘patching tool;’ cf. Boas, 1917, p. 136, yÁ-t’íy, to patch). Specimens excavated at Knight Island and other sites were identified by friends with considerable interest (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 90–98, pls. 5–8).

Adz blades were lashed to the handles with sealskin thongs (JR), but it is not clear whether all chisels were hafted. The large splitting adz was used for felling trees and chopping firewood, the planing adz for shaping canoes, smoothing planks, and roughing out carvings, while chisels of stone or even of bone served for finer gouging and carving. Informants had, however, apparently forgotten that in the old days trees were felled and canoes hollowed out by means of carefully controlled fires which charred the wood so that it could be adzed away. Within historic times, of course, steel axes, planing adzes with iron or steel blades (pl. 117)—note how eagerly the Indians of Port Mulgrave traded for such iron “toes” in 1787 (p. 126)—ordinary steel chisels, carpenter's planes (’ankA yeA, ‘shipboard whittler’), and saws (XACA, ’cutter’) have taken the place of the old stone tools. Johnson (1924, p. 50) has recorded the astonishment and joy with which the natives received the sawmill of the missionaries, from which they got planks to build new houses.

Stone adz blades, especially the heavy grooved heads of the splitting adz, obviously represented a considerable investment in labor, and were unfortunately broken too easily. Therefore supernatural as well as practical precautions were taken when using them. “The old folks used to believe that when a man is using that ax, the women folks can’t eat or it will break. They start chopping before daylight. The old people are like animals in the woods [because they are abroad in the dark?]. This time [now] the people can’t cut with them; the old folks had power”. “The owner would feel bad if a stone ax were broken—maybe kill a slave.”

A good carpenter using a planing adz would often leave evenly spaced adz marks for decoration. “My father used to make fancy work on his big logs. Make a little hole—just like a finger print. Make it so pretty. We play on it. We run around on it barefoot.” (MJ) The informant here referred to the bench around the inside of the house and to the plank walk to the bank of the Situk River.

The chisel of bone or stone, often made from a broken adz blade, was sometimes held in the hand and used with a pushing motion. Or, “when they are using a chisel, they hit it with a wooden hammer. Sometimes they take a piece of hard wood and narrow the end for a handle [for the hammer].” Small adzlike or chisel-shaped tools of greenstone and slate were very common at the site on Knight Island. Many were notched or grooved for hafting. There were also a few similar tools of bone (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 95–99).

KNIVES

The woodcarver used a crooked or “curled-up” knife (yukAtEn łítA) for hollowing out objects, such as wooden dishes, the bowls of spoons, and even the prows of canoes (JR). The blade was originally made out of drift iron or copper, later of an old file, a piece of a crosscut saw, or a large nail (pl. 117). In addition, the carpenter had a straight-bladed draw-knife (t’aci XACA, probably a-cr-xacA, ’board-cutter’). “It's a straight sharp knife. Old people used to make it from a nail—used to make boards with it, too.” The method of holding both knives was the same: they were drawn toward the user, the point of the blade down, and the thumb held up against the handle (Jack Ellis). Sometimes the knife handle had a hollow at the end as a thumb rest. A man might have a whole toolbox full of knives for carving, “just like razors” (MJ).

A number of archeological stone and bone implements were identified as men's knives (łítÀ); some for carving, others for skinning small fur-bearing animals. “Poor men like me can’t handle copper. The only thing we use is bone. I think they carve with bone. I think they carve with bone like a wood chisel.” (See specimens described above.) Some of the stone blades thought to be knives were poorly chipped scraps of chert; others were fragments of ground and polished slate and greenstone. Most carving, one suspects, was done with the small woodworking tools compared to chisels and burins, of which great quantities were found on Knight Island. Informants were obviously so unfamiliar with aboriginal knives that little credence could be given to specific identifications.

Bone knives used for skinning small animals will be described under women's tools, although they were probably used as often by men.

ENGRAVING TOOLS

Beaver teeth (egédí ’uu) which we excavated had evidently been used as tools, to judge from the signs of wear (de Laguna et al, 1964, p. 105, pl. 16, a, b). One informant who saw them said: “I just don’t know how they use this thing. Some of the old natives use them for carving things, I think. I think that's what they use for carving.” That he was correct is shown by the engraving or carving tools made of a beaver incisor set in a wooden handle which Professor Libbey obtained at Yakutat in 1886 (pl. 117; PU 5184).

WEDGES

Wooden wedges (is) were used for splitting out planks. “They make a wedge out of the strongest, hardest part of the hemlock. I seen it. They still use it when I was young [late 1880's]…. They pound it with an ax or a wooden hammer. My grandfather used to stay outdoors at Situk and split big blocks just like nobody's business. He came in (with) a big pile of shaving for the fire…. He use two, or three [wedges], as many as he want, for a plank. It depends on how big a block he wants to split. He hit the wedge with a wooden hammer.” (MJ) The informant denied that bone wedges were ever made.

HAMMERS

Hammers, as already mentioned, were often of wood (łuwu tAkł; cf. Boas, 1917, p. 130, ł’ùwÚ, wooden; p. 124, áqł, hammer). In addition, almost any conveniently sized cobblestone served as a hammer. A few were found that were grooved for lashing to a handle. One of these was carved to resemble an animal (frog?), but this may have been intended for a club (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 112; pl. 10, j; fig. 21, d). We saw no carefully shaped hand hammers or pestles, although they are known from Yakutat (fig. 49 and AMNH E/97, E/446). These seem, however, to have been used by women in preparing food.

WHETSTONES

Stone and bone tools were ground and sharpened on whetstones. Archeological specimens varied from large grinding slabs of sandstone to small, neatly shaped pieces of fine claystone (yàénÀ; referring to the smooth surface, ya; cf. Boas, 1917, p. 132, yAyénÀ, whetstone). A greenish type of stone, used for sharpening knives or as a file, was called sikda or sinA, although this was said not to be a Tlingit word. It will be remembered that it was also called “weight on the glacier,” perhaps confusing it with hard greenstone.

Such whetstones are still used today; the man or woman who is using a knife keeps a whetstone at hand and continually sharpens the blade.

DRILLS

Drill points were made of bone, of stone, and probably also of drift iron. The drill (tułU; cf. Boas, 1917, p. 137, yÀ-úł, to drill) had a wooden handle, about 9 to 12 inches long, and was rotated between the palms of the hands. Small bits were used in making holes for pegging the sides of a box together, and larger bits for the holes through which the thwarts of a canoe were lashed in place. Coal beads, found at the site on Knight Island, were pierced by very fine holes (2 to 4 mm. in diameter) which must have been made with drill points of iron or copper wire (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 159). “They got all sizes. I know my father used to have them…. They use any kind of wood for the handle.” (MJ)

Since the bow drill and strap drill, as well as the strike-a-light, were used to make fire (p. 307), it seems curious that no one mentioned the use of such mechanical drills for boring holes.

PAINTBRUSHES AND PAINT

Paint (négwÀł; Boas, 1917, p. 144, gwÀł’) was used for decorating wooden objects, especially those which bore sib crests. These ranged in size from house posts and house screens, canoes and paddles, to maskettes, rattles, and little boxes. The colors used were black, red, greenish blue, apparently mixed with grease or salmon eggs. At the late prehistoric site on Knight Island we found sandstone slabs and cobblestones on which red ochre had been ground and mixed, and one stone which had been rubbed in greasy black paint (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 116–117). More elaborately carved paint mortars were evidently made, for Emmons collected one at Yakutat carved to represent a frog (AMNH E/1898) and at Dry Bay, a plain one and another carved to represent a “rock shellfish” (AMNH E/92, 93). The paint was said to be rubbed in the dish and mixed with either water or salmon spawn.

Paintbrushes were made of hair, lashed tightly to a handle, and cut off somewhat at an angle to leave both a flat edge and a point at one end. Every artist had several; of different sizes to suit the work he was doing, and for the different colors of paint. Emmons obtained a set of paintbrushes in a skin case at Yakutat (pl. 139, top).

“The paintbrush is made of brown bear hair, tied together in a bunch on a handle. My father was a great painter. He tied my fingernails with twine to his paintbrush handle so I’d be a good painter and handy with my hands.” (MJ) The informant was a woman, and this magical procedure (see pp. 506–507) was probably intended to make her generally skillful, rather than a painter, since painting was almost exclusively a man's job. However, the same woman also mentioned that her grandmother painted red stripes down the sides of boxes (see p. 420).

Black paint (ùc) was sometimes made of powdered charcoal (also called ùc) or soot. However, magnetite, a black oxide of iron, was used on the masks and maskettes collected by Professor Libbey from Yakutat in 1886, according to the identification of Professor Donald Baird (pl. 174).

The red paint was made of hematite or red ochre (łéw), which could be found at the head of Disenchantment Bay. Some lumps of pure hematite were found, in the site on Knight Island, that showed marks of use; there were also some pieces of clay stone which had been burned to increase their red color (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 116), although Yakutat informants did not mention this practice. Red ochre was used both for painting objects and for decorating the face (see pp. 419–420, 447–448).

The greenish-blue paint was made from a copper oxide, probably azurite (nexintE). The Yakutat people had heard of it, but did not know what it was, for they confused it with greenstone. One said of it:

“Blue paint stone. It's used for dye. They grind it up on rough stones till the color comes out. Mix it up with salmon eggs. Smash up the eggs and mix it in the paint. It never fades. The juice of the salmon spawn makes it sticky. Use it for painting totem poles [i.e., any crest object]…. That‘s precious stone. It comes from some place in Southeast of Alaska, where the Teqwedi came from…where the Teqwedi get lost because they broke a piece of it [i.e., took some from a deposit and thereby caused a storm].” (MJ)

Another informant was also acquainted with this story (Swanton, 1909, Tale 17), and recorded part of the song said to have been composed by one of the men when threatened by shipwreck in the storm (NM; 1954, 6–1–I; p. 1165).

A white powder (wéynà), said to have been mixed with red ochre in painting boxes (see p. 420) came from Disenchantment Bay. The mixture produces a rather thin red. “They use it [the white clay or chalk] mixed with red paint for boxes. Can you beat it?—Old people, how wiseful they were!”

“They get white paint by the glacier across from KwA ai [’Egg Island,’ or Haenke Island]. There is pure white powder at the foot of the mountain. They call it Weyna ta, that place. You can’t get it out; it gets foggy.” (MJ) “Maybe you can get it on airplane,” suggested a friend, meaning that you might be able to get the white paint away before the fog came. “You make chalk out of it,” continued the first. “You tan skin with it. Skin is pure white when they get through with it.” (MJ)

The belief that gathering rare minerals or stones (greenstone, fine claystone, blue-green paint) is likely to cause bad weather or other misfortune has already been noted (p. 69), and may be why the same informant, on another occasion, denied that the “white dirt” was used to clean skins. “It's at a glacier across from Egg Island. It runs out like a glacier. They never try to get it to clean skins. Long time ago people belive when you touch it, it gets foggy for days and days.” (MJ) Despite these dangers it is obvious that such materials were gathered.

Harrington also recorded a type of brown mineral pigment (Akkwâat) which was dug out of the ground and used for painting the face and also for painting wood. The word for brown color was the same.

He notes further that the natives obtained both black and blue (uu, ’blue color’) pigments from charcoal made from the leaves and berries of the blueberry, “by treating this charcoal with some other stuff.” I am not sure, however, whether we are dealing here with a paint or a dye, since the natives often failed to make any clear distinction.

GLUE

In addition to the waterproof paste used for calking boxes, made of burned clamshells, mixed with salmon eggs, seal brains, or seal blood (see p. 420), a glue was made from fishskins (át ai, ‘salmon skin’). I was not told for what purposes this was used. The method of manufacture was described:

“They make a nice glue out of fishskin. My uncle used to make it. They used dried fish, tear the meat off. Scrape the outside off, throw the scales away. Heat the skin up in warm water. It gets nice and soft. Then put it between two pieces of wood and tie them together, and it holds them when it gets dry. My uncle used salmon skin.” (SJ)

“Native glue is fishskin. Boil it till the water gets away and it gets sticky. They use it to glue things together, long time ago…. [They used the skin of] any kind of fish, either sockey or silver [salmon]. Silver [coho] is best. They give more juice.” (MJ)

Another informant believed that halibut skin was used for glue. “Whenever you touch those skins, they’re kind of gooey.”

Domestic Utensils

The articles, utensils and tools, that might be found in the house have been enumerated (p. 306). Most of these, except baskets, were made by men, although used by women.

STONE VESSELS

Stone lamps have already been mentioned (p. 306), and numerous examples were found at archeological sites (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 117–121). These were chiefly made by hollowing out limestone cobbles, and when well made had a groove around the rim, or a deeper well at the bottom of the bowl. Seal fat was burned in them for light; the wick was a bunch of beach grass or a twisted rag.

James Skeek, one of Harrington's informants, described a cooking pot made of stone (thékk‘wÁtł, i.e., té wAtł, stone pot). It was made of a gray stone; some were darker in color. The material was too hard to cut with a knife, although it could be ground. Skeek though it might be some kind of slate. “They kept chipping and chipping with a harder rock for months and after they kept grinding it off with a coarse rock to give it a finished shape…. The biggest stone pot Skeek ever saw used for cooking was a foot [in] diameter and a foot high, dark in color. [In it they] boiled mussels, sea cradles (caaww) [chitons], maybe.” My informants mentioned nothing of the kind.

Harrington's informant also noted that cast iron pots are called ‘stone pot,’ while white porcelain pots are called ‘horse clam shell pot’ (áł núu wÁtł).

Large grinding slabs were used for preparing foods, medicines, and paints. A number of these were found at the site on Knight Island, and had evidently been used to sharpen or polish adz blades and other implements; some of the others were smeared with red ochre (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 114–115, 116–117).

MORTARS AND PESTLES

While most mortars (eAyit) were of wood, there were also said to have been some made of stone. Probably these were hollowed out of limestone cobbles, like the lamps. Although we found no specimen that could with certainty be identified as a stone mortar, one woman said that she had seen one in Dry Bay, shaped “like a bucket,” about 12 to 18 inches high, in which berries were crushed with a wooden “pounder.”

The wooden mortar for tobacco was a wooden bowl resting on a flat base with two projecting flanges. The man making the snuff sat down to grind the tobacco, steadying the mortar with his knees or legs on the two flanges. A snuff mortar photographed at Yakutat had the inscription carved on the bottom: “July 31, 1941, Italio River,” and had been made by the late Sam George (pl. 121). A mortar made of a whale vertebra with a flat base (6 inches in diameter), a height of 5 inches, and a diameter at the top of 7 inches, was found at Dry Bay, and was estimated by Jack Ellis as about 200 years old. The two pairs of round holes are natural. This mortar was also used for tobacco (pl. 121).

Pestles (eA) used for crushing tobacco seem to have been made of stone, usually elongated beach cobbles. A carved stone object from Knight Island, representing the Frog(?), may have been a pestle although it shows no signs of wear (deLaguna et al., 1964, p. 111, fig. 21, b.) Pestles or hand mauls with a nipple top, or stirrup-shaped with a handle like that of a flatiron have been obtained at Yakutat (fig. 49), although we found no examples. Emmons collected two stone hammers or pestles at Dry Bay and one at Yakutat, identified as mashers for berries and fisheggs (AMNH E/95, 97, 94). Informants said that such foods were crushed in a flat basket (tał) with a wooden pestle (eA), and Emmons also had a wooden implement of this kind from Yakutat (AMNH E/446).

FIGURE 49.—Hand hammers or pestles for mashing berries, fish eggs, and tobacco; collected by G. T. Emmons at Yakutat before 1889 (AMNH E/94, E/96). (Smith, 1899, figs. 12, c, and 13, f. One-fourth natural size.)

COOKING UTENSILS

Foods were boiled in waterproof baskets (icA wAł or wał) or in boxes (łkt). These are described below. Since these containers could not be set over the fire, the contents were brought to a boil by means of stones that had been heated in a fire. These stones were transferred to the basket by means of two wooden sticks used as tongs. It sometimes took four or five stones to bring the water in a pot to a boil. These methods of cooking in a basket have been described by 18th-century explorers (quoted, pp. 393–394).

The wooden tongs (’ínA or ł’Aa) were described by my informants as “big grabbers. They are two pieces of wood tied together [at one end]. The pieces of wood have flat ends. You have to use one hand to open it [left hand in the middle] and one hand to close it [right hand at the base].” Such tongs were also used for handling the hot rocks used for sweat baths, and for roasting mussels and other shellfish at the fire.

Harrington‘s informant also gave a good description of stone boiling:

“They use the łÁht [wooden box] also for boiling meat, fish, with boilingstones. The number of stones varies; as soon as one cools, then another is put in; they keep rotating, just one rock in at a time if the quantity is small; if big quantity then several rocks in there at a time. One rock boils the water for 5 minutes. You can get water to boil quicker and hotter that way than you could by fire.”

“łÁtaa, wooden tongs used for taking boilingstones from the fire. ’A-łÁtAyyI, my wooden tongs. Made of hemlock, spruce. They generally use green stuff so it won’t burn easy. They keep sticking the points in the water to keep it from burning…. He volunteers again that they always take the boilingstone with wooden tong from the fire and then plunge it for a moment into water to clean it before putting it into a wooden trough in which things are cooked.” The boiling stone was called xwéełłii-ttheeíi (i.e., xwéłi tei), literally, ‘steam-cooking stone,’ according to Harrington. The same name was given to the rocks used for the steambath.

Two forms of spits were used for roasting meat or fish. One of these was simply a sharpened stick (ti cf. Boas, 1917, p. 139, tsí, spit), that was thrust through the meat and set up leaning over the fire. It was often used with small fish. The other form of spit (wEna, ena; cf. wena, scallop) was a stick that was split partway down, so that a sliced and spread fish could be slipped between the two halves. This was judged to be the better kind and was used for larger fish such as salmon. The fish to be roasted was sliced open and held flat by means of two cross sticks or skewers (tłiA). These sticks prevented the split fish from collapsing. Charley White said that he had often cooked fish this way in camp.

I have already mentioned the earth oven lined with skunk cabbage leaves, roasting meat between two heated slabs, and the large bark tray on which berries were cooked.

SERVING DISHES AND SPOONS

Food was served on wooden trays or platters (qéłá), described as about 2 feet long and 9 inches wide, and also on individual wooden dishes (i). Large dishes or boxes used at feasts, were named for sib crests. They were said to be very large, and to hold a great deal of food which was offered to guests. Some vessels were decorated with carvings, for Minnie Johnson reported finding an old wooden dish “like a mush bowl. It was oval, with carvings on it.” Feast dishes were sometimes made of moose horn. Such dishes were very valuable, for the TłukwaAdi of Dry Bay were said to have killed two Teqwedi boys who failed to return the moose horn(?) dish in which they had been given a present of food (p. 276). The ancestors of the Kwacqwan emigrated after a quarrel over the inheritance of a Copper River chief, whose principal treasure was a dish made of the horn of a giant moose (p. 231). It was said to have been inlaid with abalone shells (tAe u tei), and there was also a platter inlaid with dentalia (tAe) (p. 238). At Yakutat, Emmons obtained a handsome dish for serving grease, made of horn and carved to represent an owl. It had originally been the property of a Wrangel chief, undoubtedly KiksAdi from the Owl crest (pl. 118).

Two feast dishes obtained by Emmons at Dry Bay were large baskets, decorated with colored grass (AMNH E/1870, 2457).

Baskets were also used for cups (PU 3987, collected by Emmons at Yakutat and taken back by him in in 1913), for dippers, and for cooking pots.

Five interesting grease containers, all carved from a single piece of wood, were obtained at Yakutat in 1886 by Professor Libbey: a dish in the shape of a seal, certainly suggesting that the contents would have been seal oil (PU 5175); a small oval bowl with flared rim (PU 5173); an oblong dish with opercula inlaid on the rim (PU 5174); a small dipper-bowl with a gut string, carved from burlwood (PU 5172); and a teapot of wood, complete with handle and spout (PU 5169). (See pl. 119, a-e.)

Dippers (guwA, see Boas, 1917, p. 144, AUxu ’bailer’) were made of wood, as were some spoons or ladles. Emmons secured a wooden ladle at Yakutat, the handle carved to represent a bear (AMNH 19/1090). Spoons (cáł) were of wood and also of polished horn. Each of two photographed at Yakutat in 1949 and said to be of moose horn (?, mountain sheep horn?), had a wide shallow bowl and a slightly curved flat handle (pl. 127). The owner liked them “because you don’t burn your mouth with a horn spoon” (MJ). Spoons were certainly made of mountain sheep horn, imported from the interior, for Emmons collected several at Yakutat (pl. 118), including some carved to represent a bear, a wolf, and a dead shaman tied down for burial (AMNH 19/1105, 1106, 1107), as well as a “feast spoon” from Dry Bay, made of the same material, and said to have been used for drinking oil (pl. 118). He also collected spoons made of mountain goat horn, one from Dry Bay, inlaid with shell and carved to represent a bear (AMNH E/293, sent to Dresden in 1898), and another from Yakutat, carved to represent a bear and a mosquito (AMNH E/292). Curiously, one informant said that he had never heard of spoons made of mountain sheep and mountain goat horn, but described small spoons, made of eagle beaks, but without separate handles. Emmons also collected two of these at Yakutat; they were apparently children's toys (pl. 118).

The wooden knife used to eat sea urchins has been described (p. 405).

Wooden Boxes

Square wooden boxes (łAkt, or qukw; cf. Boas, 1917, p. 128, q’úku, box or chest) were made for cooking and to hold water, oil, preserved foods, clothing and other belongings. The wooden boxes, for fresh water and for urine, that stood near the front of the house have been mentioned (p. 307). The box “with oil and stuff in it” was called dÁnét. These boxes were apparently of the traditional Tlingit pattern, and were made in various sizes and were equipped with lids. The smallest were used to hold personal ornaments, amulets, or other small valuables.

Two small boxes were seen and photographed at Yakutat. The larger, about 12 inches square and 12 inches in height, had belonged to Mary, wife of Lituya Bay George (pl. 127); the second, which measured about 4 inches in each dimension, belonged to Anna, wife of Xadane Johnstone, and is now in the Alaska State Museum, Juneau (pl. 127). These boxes were alike in being made of a single piece of wood for the sides, kerfed and bent at the corners, with a separate piece for the bottom. The lid, like the bottom, had a fiange to fit inside the walls of the box. The wood was unstained except for broad stripes of red down the four corners; the lid of the smaller box had a checkerboard design of four red squares. The lid of the larger was said to have been the same, but I did not see it. What makes these boxes distinctive is that the sides are not flat, but are gracefully rounded outward.

Professor Libbey obtained seven small boxes at Yakutat in 1886 (pl. 120). Four are like the two boxes described above, except that they range in size from 4 to 2 inches in each dimension, and the lids are threaded on a loop of sinew cord attached to holes near the top, so that they can be lifted off but not lost. The decorations of red painted areas are almost the same. Of greater interest, however, are three double boxes, the largest consisting of two compartments each 6 inches square, or 12 by 6 inches, and a little over 6 inches in height. The smallest has two compartments only 2 inches square. The central partition and the sides are made of a single piece of wood, cut and bent to form a squared figure 8, the piece for each compartment is fastened to one end of the central partition. The lids for these boxes are also double; that for the smallest is strung on a sinew cord attached to each end; a similar cord is missing from the others. These double boxes are decorated like the ordinary boxes with red stripes down the corners of each container; the lids have checkerboard or Maltese cross patterns.

These boxes all have the bottoms pegged on and the sides are either sewn or pegged together at one corner.

Fragments of small boxes or dishes, found at Old Town on Knight Island, indicate that some were oval in outline, with the bottom fastened on with tiny nails of native copper (de Laguna et al, 1964, pp. 175–177, fig. 23).

Although I saw no elaborately decorated boxes at Yakutat, Harrington's informant told him that boxes “had faces painted on them.” These have been described by Suría:

[Inside the house, see p. 312]: “Here you can see some square wooden boxes. All their ornament is reduced to a mask on the four fronts with the mouth open, badly carved with the teeth inverted and in others by way of ornament they have them placed in a parallel line.” [Wagner, 1936, p. 253.]

Grinnell in 1899 saw the women ladling seal oil into kegs and tin cans,

“or rarely into ornamented rectangular boxes of a primitive type. These boxes, as is well known, are made in three pieces, the cover, the bottom, and the sides. The thin plank which forms the sides is cut part way through in the line where the corners are to come, and is then steamed and gradually bent, and at last when the opposite ends come together to form the fourth corner of the box, they are fitted in a tight joint and sewed together with twigs or sometimes with cedar bark [more likely spruce root]. Such boxes were once universally employed to hold oil, but at present their use has been largely superseded by articles of white manufacture.” [Grinnell, 1901, vol. 1, pp. 159–160.] Grinnell's illustration (p. 159) shows an “oil box” with painted crest design on at least one side. The top is lashed on with double and triple strands of rope that pass twice in each direction over bottom, top, and each of the four sides, forming on each surface a pattern like: # knotted at each crossing. Anna Johnstone Daknaqin's box was tied up in the same way.

Some storage boxes were decorated with inlayed opercula (?), for MJ told how she and some other children 60 years ago found a box full of a shaman‘s paraphernalia, cached on top of a rock in the woods. It was a heavy box, about 3 by 2 feet, the cover and sides all covered with “those little bones,” about the size of her finger, “just white, pure white.” The box was tied up with a heavy cord of spruce roots (see pp. 699–700).

The grave boxes at Port Mulgrave that contained the ashes of the dead were painted with crest designs or decorated with opercula (pls. 59–61), according to the descriptions of Malaspina and Suria (quoted pp. 540–542).

When traders began to bring colored chests or trunks of camphor wood from Canton, these became prized possessions for storing clothing or for holding the ashes of the dead. An iron key, found at the site of Diyaguna’Et on Lost River, was identified as belonging to such a chest. These trunks were called ‘whale bone chests’ (yay age qukw), “just to give it a high respect name, I guess,” or ‘gold chest’ (gun qukw). Another informant (MJ) recalled how stacks of these Chinese boxes were piled up in her parents’ sleeping room, and how she herself as a child had owned a small one. These valuable chests did not, of course, replace homemade boxes for domestic purposes.

The Yakutat people still prefer to keep clothing and other personal possessions in trunks and suitcases or boxes, rather than in bureaus or chests of drawers.

MAKING WOODEN BOXES

Minnie Johnson explained how wooden boxes were made:

“My father used to make boxes for berries and oil. They were made of one piece of wood which he bent [for the sides] after he measured it and made three cuts [grooves, or kerfs] across it. He soaked it in lukewarm water before he bent the board. The water was not hot, just lukewarm. The bottom was pegged in with wooden pegs, and after food was put in the box these swelled up so you couldn’t see them. The lid fitted tight on. It had a flange that fitted inside the box, and the lid top fitted over the top edges of the box. [The joints or seams were sealed to make them watertight—see below.] When the box was finished, it was rubbed smooth with pumice [gwA?]. Then it was painted down the corners with red paint. Afterwards the box was tied up in a certain way with spruce root ropes so a heavy pole could be run through the cords and two men could carry it. Or, four men, two on each pole, could carry the box, no matter how heavy it was.” In this account, certain technical terms had to be supplied.

Two informants said that wooden pegs were used to fasten the sides together at the corner, and to attach the bottom; but another said that the parts were sewn together with spruce roots. Professor Libbey's boxes show that both methods were used at the corner of the sides, but that the bottoms were pegged.

The seams were calked by means of a paste made of clam shells.

“We used to take this clam shell, duck it down under the open fire, and after it‘s cooked, mix it with seal blood. You know those łAkt [boxes]. Put it in the seams of those boxes, like white lead. It never leak…. I see in the encyclopedia they used to mix quick-lime with ox blood—same thing,” said one man.

The cooked or calcined shells were ground “as fine as flour,” but after the seal blood was added the mixture was not cooked (KDI).

Another method of making the paste was described:

“They get a big pile of clam shells and burn them till they get mushy. Then they grind them very fine, like face powder, [using a pestle with a circular motion], and mix it with salmon spawn. If they have no salmon spawn, they could use seal brains.” This paste was put on the seams before the parts of the box were put together. “Put clam shells on top of big fire. Put more wood on it, till it turn into powder. Put inside of seal skull mix in with it. Get brains from seal, mix in with cooked clam shells. Make a paste out of it. Put that in cracks of łAkt [box]. When they put seal oil [in]—never crack a leak. I used to watch my grandma. Her fingers be just full of that stuff. Rub just on the cracks, and put łew [red ochre] on it. Makes it pretty. It gets just glassy.” (MJ)

This last probably refers to the broad stripes down the corners of the box and to the squares on the lid. This paint is said to have been made by mixing red ochre with a white clay (see p. 416). On another occasion, however, the same informant was understood to say that paint or stain made from red hemlock bark was used for decorating boxes.

Pottery

Jones (1914, p. 78) mentions that the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska once made pottery “suck-a-chew,” and we found fragments of baked clay at an early historic site near Angoon (de Laguna, 1960, p. 103). Abercrombie in 1884 saw the Eyak at the mouth of the Copper River smoking tobacco in home-made pipes with bowls of carved, baked clay (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 76–77). It is therefore not impossible that the Yakutat people once made something of the kind.

All of my informants, however, denied that their ancestors made anything like pottery or clay pipes. Pottery, specifically earthenware, is, however, called śá-ka-djux, analyzed by one informant as ‘glacier-mud rolled-up,’ and by another as ‘clay put-together.’ While pottery is declared to be exclusively a White man's manufacture, it is curious that the native term should indicate so clearly the method by which a local type of pottery could have been made.

“I think Ákadju is White people‘s. Or, maybe they [the old people] done it once…. They would have to mix something with glacier mud to hold it together.”

One woman told how, as a child in 1887 or 1888, she had found the bowl of a little pipe in the fireplace of their smokehouse up the Ahrnklin River. It was described as made of brown clay, like a brick, and lacked a stem. Whether the latter had been broken off or whether the bowl had a hole into which a wooden stem was supposed to be inserted, was not made clear. The pipe sounds like those made by the Eyak, except that the informant said that it had the bearded face of a White man modeled on it, and insisted that it had been made by the Whites. However, her parents could not imagine how it had gotten into the fireplace, so this find remains a mystery (MJ).

Harrington and his informants also discussed the problem of pottery. Clay, gray in color, is found in various places on the beach, or in riverbeds, and is called é; not À, as reported by Boas (1917, p. 155). American manufactured pottery, “a dish of dark color,” would be ‘clay-kneaded dish’ (é kkhAttchíixxu Í; i.e., é kAtcÍxu Í). The same verb is used for kneading bread. (Boas, 1917, p. 141, recorded k’A-łI-djù, ’to roll a ring or hoop‘.)

One man repeated the word ‘clay-kneaded dish’ and pondered. He “says he hardly knows what the word could be, and then looking at the spittoon, he says: ‘I think that spittoon, that's the one.’ “ He apparently added that é is dried mud. “ ’Bricks are made out of é, too.’ ”

“Skeek [another informant] heard it [pottery] discussed many times [Harrington noted]. One good proof that the Tl[ingit] had such a thing as pottery is the name which the Tl[ingit] still apply to dark colored pottery of American manufacture: é-kkhAttchÍixxu Í—lit. a clay-kneaded dish. This is the noun in common use and may have been the word for native pottery. Once when a boy, Skeek and Clifford Wayha, made dishes and dolls out of clay. They found that only slow baking would harden it without its cracking. They boiled water in one of their pots, but the water dissolved some of the clay from the inside of the pot, discoloring the water as it boiled…. It is a very common thing for kids to play with clay—to make dishes out of it in play. It is already wet—[they] get clay all over them[selves], go barefoot in summer. Skeek's wife made Skeek's kids cut it out, this playing with clay on the beach.

“[Skeek] has heard these dishes talked about many times; some believed the Tl[ingit] had had clay or pottery vessels. There is also a chance that they imported some.”

The possibility that some pottery might have been received in trade from the Koniag or from the Eskimo of the Kenai Peninsula was not, however, specifically mentioned, although these peoples did make true pottery (de Laguna, 1947, pp. 245–247). However, the toy dishes made at Angoon and at Yakutat remind us more of the playthings made of clay by the Chugach (de Laguna, 1956, pp. 211, 273).

Women's Tools

Most tools used by women were employed for preparing food, for working skins, and for making baskets, the three major occupations of the Yakutat housewife.

ULOS

The woman's knife or ulo (wEkc) is used both as a knife to flenze animals and cut fish and as a scraper to work skins (fig. 50; pl. 125). It has a wooden handle about 5 to 7 inches long, and about 3 or 3 inches wide, and is about 1 to 1K inches thick. The iron blade with curved edge is a little shorter than the edge of the handle into which it is inserted, and protrudes from it about 1 to 2 inches of its width. The traditional Yakutat ulo has a hole in the handle for the index finger, or for the index and middle finger, although some are made without the hole. The ulo with the hole is known to be also the Eyak style, and is felt to be superior to the ordinary Tlingit kind with solid handle because it can be held more firmly. According to an amusing story, a visitor from Haines took home an ulo with a hole in the handle as a novel curiosity (see p. 897).

FIGURE 50.—Ulos with wooden handle and iron blade, a, Outline of ulo used by Minnie Johnson at Yakutat on August 6, 1952, to soften baby sealskin for moccasin trims. b, Made by Dry Bay Chief George at Dry Bay in 1910 for his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Annie George. Sketched on May 25, 1954.

Ulos were not used at Dry Bay, and my informant suggested that it was because men, not women, skinned the seals there. This is in contrast to the practice at Yakutat, where “the women don’t want the men to touch it after they get the seal,” and where the flenzing is women's work.

Archeological ulos from Yakutat had a narrow crescentic blade of copper set into the edge of a plain wooden handle (de Laguna et al., 1964, fig. 10). The one complete wooden handle lacked a finger hole, although it had a slight concave curve in the middle, like an ulo collected at Yakutat by Emmons (pl. 124; TMB/WSM 1047 and one seen there in 1952. An ulo acquired by Professor Libbey in 1886 (pl. 117) has the wooden handle carved to represent the head of a bear, the large finger hole serving as the eye.

The ulo is sharpened on a whetstone when used for skinning a seal, for cutting the blubber from the hide, or when slicing fish; the edge is made dull when it is used as a scraper.

SCRAPERS

In former times an ulo-shaped knife or scraper was made from the shell of the large California mussel, and was called by the same word as the shell (yi i). This was the tool used for scraping off the sweet inner bark of the hemlock. It was smaller that the ulo, and the blade was cupshaped. Those seen at Yukatat were made of metal, (a thin scrap of iron, or a piece of a can), and I was told that in former times they might be made of copper. The grip may be simply the dull edge at the back of the blade, often folded over and hammered down, like a copper scraper of this type from Diyaguna’Et. Or the blade may be set into a simple handle of wood. One had a grip made of rags, the latter secured by a string run through holes punched through the metal with a nail (fig. 51). This type of knife was also used to scrape sealskins.

“I see my grandmother used to scrape with a mussel shell. She used to scrape sealskins with it. She get it sharp. She lay the skin on the wood in her lap and scrape with one hand. It gets the skin as smooth as this [tabletop].” (MJ)

These large mussel shells are said to be obtainable at the head of Russell Fiord. A dulled ulo may be employed for the same work on sealskins.

For softening sealskins a long-handled scraper (XwEtca or kuwut) is used (pl. 125). The latter has an iron blade about 4 by 4 inches, with a slightly rounded edge. The handle is a pole about a yard long that can be held in both hands when pushing against the skin in the stretching frame (see below).

A number of crude chipped ulo-shaped stone tools, found at archeological sites (de Laguna et al, 1964, pp. 105–108), were identified by informants as scrapers (XwEtca), although they did not say whether they thought any of these had been hafted at the end of a long handle, as are the modern scrapers also called by the same name. Stone scrapers are said to have been used for softening such tough skins as those of bears or seals, but were never used for thin skins such as that of the fox (MJ, JR). At Dry Bay Emmons collected a “stone skin dresser,” or “which-r,” which he identified as a scraper for dressing moose, caribou, and goat skins (AMNH E/106).

FIGURE 51.—Curved iron scraper with rag grip, probably owned by Mrs. Young George (1854–1927). Shown natural size as sketched by Catherine McClellan in 1952.

Another stage in preparing skins demands the use of a beaming tool, that is, a long scraper held at each end. Nowadays, a butcher knife, the point wrapped in a rag to make another grip, may be used, but some women still own bone beaming tools. A man made his wife a pair from deer and reindeer ulnae that he had saved from some imported meat (pl. 125). The bones were not split, but the natural longitudinal ridge had been sharpened. These were to work land otter and mink skins, he said. When using the beaming tool, the skin is hung over a slanting pole, flesh side out (see p. 424).

BONE SKINNING KNIVES

The skins of small fur-bearing animals were taken off whole, that is, they were stripped off like bags, not slit up the bellies, as were the skins of bears, seals, and goats. For skinning such animals as weasels, foxes, mink, and so on, the Yakutat and Dry Bay people used a small bone knife (ica). As described by a woman from Dry Bay, this was made of the humerus of a bear or wolf, cut across the middle and sharpened to produce a slightly flaring blade at the end. The user pushed it away from him. A special tool of this kind had to be reserved for skinning mink, because of the strong smell of the animal.

Emmons obtained several examples of such a “bone skin dresser—‘which-r’—used as a scraping knife…also used as a skinning knife for small animals such as the ground squirrel.” It was held in the right hand. Three are from Dry Bay and one from Yakutat (pl. 124; AMNH E/377, 378, 379, 2120). Only three fragmentary bone scrapers were found on Knight Island (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 108).

I did not learn how such small skins were stretched and cured, although this was presumably done by inserting paddle-shaped wooden stretchers inside them.

SKIN STRETCHING FRAMES

Formerly the frames (ic) used for stretching skins, especially sealskins (tsa íci), were not made of stiff planks like those used today (see below), but were of pliable branches run around the edges of the skin (’AtwAn ’Adi ic, ’frame around its edge’). Photographs taken at the sealing camps by the Harriman Expedition in 1899 show such frames, and they were also sketched and described by informants (fig. 22, p. 314; pls. 77–80). Sheldon James, who said he had once stretched 115 sealskins in this manner, explained how the frame was made. Two rather short sticks are run through a series of small holes cut along the top and bottom edges of the skin. Then a longer flexible pole is similarly inserted along each side edge. A central longitudinal stick, with notched ends, is set on the hair side of the skin to hold apart the end pieces. Finally, from three to five crosspieces, similarly notched, are put on the hair side of the skin to stretch apart the side rods. When inserting these last crosspieces, the longest middle one is placed first. “They use bushes for the sides, and common wood for the middle pieces” (MJ). This type of frame is said to have been used formerly for all kinds of skins. One woman in 1954 made some small frames of this type for the skins of unborn seals, since the rectangular frames of the common type are too large to be convenient.

OTHER TOOLS

Other implements used by women in their work are the cutting board (kAta kutÍa) which we have already seen used in flenzing seals, the awl (qénÀ) used in sewing, and the various bags and baskets in which the housewife kept her sewing things and her basketry materials. These objects can best be described in dealing with skin dressing and basketry.

Skin Dressing and Sewing

WORKING SEALSKINS

Since most garments are said to have been made of sealskins (tsa dugu), and since such skins are still worked today much as they were in the past, it may be well to describe these methods. The first stages of flenzing a seal have already been described (pp. 395–397), so this account can continue from that point.

On July 29, 1952, when Minnie Johnson had cut the fat from the sealskins, she dropped these into a washtub of cool soapy water, while she attended to the fat and meat. She then gave the skins a thorough scrubbing in lukewarm water with soap and Clorox. This done, she cut small holes about 4 inches apart all around the edges of the skin, using her ulo for this purpose. Meanwhile her granddaughter was dispatched to borrow some stretching frames (pl. 125). These are rectangular frames made of four narrow planks or laths, braced by short pieces across the corners, looking very much like the frames for window screens, without the screening. The sealskin was put into the frame by lacing a string alternately through the holes in the skin and hitching it around the wooden frame. When this was done, she tightened the string evenly to stretch the skin. Since the latter lacked the head, rear flippers and tail, it assumed an oval shape. The holes where the fore flippers had been cut off are usually skewered or stitched shut at this stage, so that the skin may dry flat.

Although skins may be kept in the frames for 2 or 3 days, MJ was anxious to finish one small skin for moccasin trims, so she began to work on it the next morning, July 30. I did not observe the first stages of work that day, but witnessed the same processes when she worked on another skin on August 8. This next step was to press the water from the skin. Perhaps this was omitted on July 29, since the skins had stood overnight in the frames, while those on which she was working on August 8 had soaked in a tub of water since the day before, and had only that morning been put into the frames when I saw her extracting the water from them.

To remove the water, MJ stood in front of the frame which was leaned against the wall of the house, and pressed down hard on the skin with her ulo. She began at the top and worked down and across both sides, until all of the surface had been scraped. She told us that one should begin with the flesh side, for if the hair side were treated first, this would make the fat which still adhered work through the skin to the hair and stain it. At this stage of the proceedings, the flesh side of the skin was still soft and white. As the skin dries in the frame it becomes stiff and dark.

This was the condition of the skins on which MJ began to work on July 30. One of these she had cut from the frame. Possibly it was not one of those that she had stretched the night before, but another that had previously been stretched. In any case, she hung it, flesh side out, by one of the holes in the edge, to a nail driven into an oar. The oar was leaned up against the wall and she stood in front of it, scraping down the skin against the oar, with a kitchen carving knife. This knife was held in both hands like a two-handed beaming tool, and to protect her hands she wore cotton work gloves. The scraping removed the remaining fat and flesh from the skin. The edge of the knife soon became clogged with bits of white fleshy matter which she wiped off. She repeatedly hitched the skin around on the pole to scrape in a fan-shaped area below the hole, then rehung it by another hole until the entire surface had been worked. She was busy all morning at this arduous task, but abandoned it in the afternoon.

The scraping was continued the next day, July 31. A friend who had stopped to visit her, observed that her own mother had fleshed skins faster and more easily by sitting down, the pole laid almost horizontally with one end in her lap. She scraped away from herself along the pole with an ulo. It was this process of smoothing and cleaning the inside of the sealskin with a mussel shell which MJ said she had seen her grandmother follow (see p. 422).

MJ finished scraping the skins that afternoon and soaked them in soap and water and Clorox to remove the smell. She left them in the tub overnight although this was longer than was necessary. She does not use kerosine to remove the odor, as some women do, nor does she employ any kind of commercial tanning oil.

The next day, August 1, the skins were again laced into their frames, and MJ rubbed the flesh side with flour and baking soda. (Was the white clay substituted for this at one time?—see p. 416.)

MJ did not work on August 2 and 3, but on Monday, August 4, I found her softening the skins in the frames. She stood again in front of the skins and rubbed the flesh side vigorously. For the nearer parts she used an ulo, and for the rest a long-handled scraper (XwEtca or kuwUt). MJ complained that the skins were too dry, and should have been worked while still slightly moist. It heats up the skin too much to scrape it for very long in one place.

The next day she completed her work of softening the skins and cut them from the frames. The smaller ones, destined for trimming moccasins, were cut into transverse strips, so that when these were sewed around the top of the moccasin, the hair would stand up. MJ softened the strips further by holding them, skin side down, against the table top with a dull ulo, and pulling the strip along under the blade with her left hand. She estimated that she could cut 10 moccasins from the larger skin. She also told us of an old woman in Juneau who could flesh skins by singeing them against the top of a stove. She would dip the skins in cold water to prevent them from burning. When she did this for others she charged $1 a skin for her work.

At present quite a few women, including MJ herself, send many sealskins to Juneau to be commercially tanned. When they are returned they have to be washed, stretched, and dried. One woman, however, claims that factory-tanned skins look dead because the hair is all flattened out. They smell queer and do not wear well. She prefers the old-fashioned method of curing, which she described as simply washing the skin three times in soap and water, scraping it, and rubbing it in the hands (HM). Before soap was available, skins were washed in urine (MJ).

DEHAIRED SKINS

For some purposes dehaired sealskins were employed. To remove the hair, MJ wets the skin with soap and water, rolls it up and leaves it for a few days in a warm place by the stove. When the hair becomes loose, she scrapes it off with an ulo. On the other hand, if well-haired skins are desired, the women do not like seals killed in September, for at this season the mother seals have shed and have only short hair. Presumably these skins were dehaired.

It is hard to tell how much the Yakutat people themselves tanned skins, for although “chamoix skin,” as they call it, was desired especially for dance costumes, these skins were usually secured in trade from the interior.

GUT SKINS

The intestines (’At nai), especially of large bears, were used for waterproof jackets, for bags, and for windowpanes for the bath house (p. 306). Minnie Johnson explained how these were prepared.

“I used to watch my mother after my father clean a brown bear. He gets the guts out right away and puts them in water. And it gets just pure white. And she soaks it in a can until the lining of the guts is loose. Then she gets the insides out of the guts…. She cleans its inside out with a stick in one end. Clean it and scrape it…. [Apparently the intestines are turned inside out at this point.] She dare not make a hole in it. She scrape it with a knife or something. You can use a clean shell, as far as that's concerned…. Wash it again. She lets it lay in the water until there's a chance to dry it in the sun…. [Sometimes this is the second day.] Then all the bushes has strings of it—like a Christmas tree. She blow it up to get it in shape·…She uses wild celery when it's old and dry [as a tube or mouthpiece for inflating the intestines]…. And she blows it out when it dries. It gets dry quick, too…. She won’t let me blow it up. She thinks I’ll get sick from it. It takes powerful breath…. [When it is dry] she splits it and gets it into shape and sews it.”

The intestines of a large brown bear make strips of gut three fingers wide (MJ).

Another informant showed us a strip of brown bear intestine of the kind used to make coats. It was about 5 inches wide, a translucent yellow, and rather crinkly. Black bear intestines, she said, were soft and white if properly prepared. She also explained how the intestines were cut into convenient lengths and their contents squeezed out. This was done the day after the animal had been flenzed. Then they were turned inside out and scraped with an ulo (dulled?), washed thoroughly in soap and water, and inflated. When dry, they were split open.

BIRDSKIN AND FISHSKIN

For certain warm soft robes or garments, birdskins were used. The coarser feathers were removed to leave the down, and the skins are said to have been chewed to remove the fat, since they were too fragile to scrape. Presumably they were softened with the hands after drying, although I learned nothing more about how they were processed.

The scaly skin from the feet of swans, and perhaps of other large birds, was used to make bags. The skins seem to have been simply dried, with the claws still attached.

Fishskin was also used for waterproof bags. Skins of the largest halibuts were preferred for these, although I believe that smaller fish were also used. The method of preparation was as follows:

“Split the halibut for eating. When it's dry enough, scrape all the meat off the skin. Wash the skin with soap and water. Wrap it in a towel to keep it damp and sew it while it's damp. It's supposed to be stuffed with sand [while drying, to keep the shape]. When it's in shape, you can throw it [the sand] away. It's waterproof.” (MJ)

MJ‘s grandmother “used to make the bags in Khantaak in the spring. She would wash it and fill it with dry sand to get it in shape while its drying…. She goes down [to the beach?] once in a while and pounds it and shapes it. Sometimes she pours the sand out and moves it to a dry place. Then she fills it with sand again.”

Presumably the birds’ feet bags were shaped and dried in a similar fashion (see p. 426).

SEWING

No bone needles with eyes were found in archeological sites in the Yakutat area, although eyed needles were made by the Chugach. That needles may have been known to the Yakutat Indians at one time is suggested by the word for “some kind of needle” (tagatłiu[?]; cf. Boas, 1917, p. 161, aÁł’, ’needle’; Harrington, thaaÁł’, ‘needle,’ and khA, ’to sew’). This term was applied to some archeological points of birdbone. Emmons’ unpublished notes indicate that the Yakutat, in contrast to other Tlingit, used to tatoo by means of a needle and stained thread, calling tatooing “sewing on the body.”

Within the memory of the oldest Yakutat people, an awl or ‘stitcher’ (qénÀ) was used to make the hole, and then the thread was poked through. Awls were of bone and were made in various sizes. Most informants had never seen any, although they identified as awls a number of pointed slivers of bone or pointed bird bones found in the archeological sites.

For thread, the Yakutat people preferred to use porpoise sinew (tcitc tAsi), although sinew from stranded whales and mountain goat was also used, especially at Dry Bay where porpoise sinew was not available (MJ). According to one man “It comes from the inside of the porpoise arm—from inside somewhere. They split it, pull it out little by little. They twist it between the fingers and on the thigh” to make two strand thread.

MJ explained, “Porpoise—big ones—my brother used to kill just for the tAsi [sinew]. Throw away the skin and meat. It's woman's job to get the sinew out…. They cut the tail off. Take the tough skin off just the tail part, don’t bother the body at all. Cut the meat off until the cord shows up. Then get one end of the sinew…. Get it from the body down to the tail, back side…. My grandma got a big stick, sharp…. She gets a bit of the string on the stick until she gets an end around the stick, and just twist.”

The sinew was washed in fresh water and hung up until it was nearly dry. Then it was straightened out. “When it's straight, it's easy to split. Twist, twist, twist—big strings of it. Lots of work to it, but when it gets cured it makes the old people feel good.”

On another occasion the same woman said: “My mother had lots of it. She made all sizes of twine by hand. Made it square [i.e., square sennit]. She tied one end of it to the wall to twist it.”

Her grandmother used to make thread in lengths from her left shoulder to the tip of her right hand, and evidently preferred this for sewing. Porpoise sinew has the advantage of swelling when it becomes wet, and thus made the seams of skin boots and other articles watertight.

The Yakutat women now stitch in all the styles familiar to us, some doing fine embroidery work. Skin articles collected in the last century show running stitches and overhand stitching. I was unable to discover whether waterproof blind stitching like that of the Eskimo was ever done, for example, for skin boats or waterproof skin boots.

Skin Containers

Bags (gweł) for various purposes were made of skin. Many of these were waterproof. The largest were probably the globular bags of halibut skin (tcatł ai gweł). Some of these were up to 3 feet in height, others were smaller. They were used as containers for clothing, roots and straws used for basketwork, or supplies of food to be carried on long canoe trips. The Russians were believed to have come to Lituya Bay because they found the halibut skin bags full of sea otter furs which had floated out to sea after the Tł’UknaAdi canoes capsized in the bay (p. 275).

FIGURE 52.—Halibut skin bag sketched by Minnie Johnson.

These halibut skin bags were made with a circular piece for the bottom, and the sides were of alternate strips of dark skin (from the back) and white skin (from the underside). A drawstring of spruce root cord ran through holes around the top (fig. 52). Some bags, however, are said to have had a “cloth sack sewed around the top, and a string around to tie it up” (MJ).

Minnie Johnson made a small halibut skin bag, from “chicken halibut,” as a model of the old style bags (pl. 126). However, she made this into a “shopping bag,” with a top of tanned moosehide (traded from the interior), and moosehide welting in the seams. The bottom was half dark and half white skin. The beaded designs on the panels were cut out from moccasin tops, purchased from Helen Bremner, and represent a Thunderbird totem pole, Raven stealing Daylight, and Raven going down a kelp stem to steal the fisherman's bait (p. 873).

A small rectangular bag made of alternating strips of tan and brown fishskins, apparently used to hold sewing materials, was obtained by Professor Libbey at Yakutat (pl. 128).

Professor Libbey also obtained a dehaired skin bag containing a set of gambling sticks (pl. 138). The bag is rectangular, with a long flap ending in a point, to which is attached a thong and a bone toggle. This could be wound around the bag to secure the contents.

An interesting bag from Yakutat was made of the skin of a swan's foot (pl. 116). Although it was empty, Dr. Baird (1965 b, p. 6) hazards that it might have served as a bullet pouch. As he describes it: “To make this bag a Yakutat Indian skinned the foot of a swan, removing the bones and carefully separating the scaly skin of the upper and lower surfaces, leaving the claws in place. This bag could be worn with the shank-flap looped over the Indian's belt….” The bottom of the foot serves as the bottom of the bag, while the narrow bottleneck is made of the skin of the leg. Similar bags were made by the Copper River Eyak and Chugach.

Small bladders and lengths of intestines (nasi) served as waterproof bags for small objects. For example, Professor Libbey obtained a tobacco pouch at Yakutat, made from what seems to be a piece of intestine (PU 5209). This is about 18 cm. long and 6.5 cm. wide. A band of coarse red blanket material is sewed around the neck, and there is a carrying loop made of buff broadcloth. Emmons also collected several bags made of intestines at Yakutat; one is made from the gut of a seal or sea lion and is ornamented with red paint (AMNH E/2044, 19/905–909).

On one occasion (May 1954), MJ saved the two front flippers and the part with the two hind flippers and tail from a young seal. She said she was going to split them, take the meat out and use the pieces of skin for a bag. She used to make bags and wall pockets out of flipper skins.

Gutskin was also used for wall pockets—“fancy beaded wall pockets to keep sewing things in” (MJ).

I have already described the bag of raw sealskin used to hold seal blubber (p. 398), the container for rotted salmon eggs made of a seal stomach (p. 402), and have mentioned the skin quiver or skin bag for spare arrowheads carried by the hunter of land animals (p. 369), and the skin sheath for the dagger.

Matting and Cordage

Woven mats were formerly used but informants knew little about them.

“They made it out of grass, some kind. They made blanket out of it. I don’t know what they call it.”

Another woman (MJ), who saw a picture of a Chugach Eskimo mat of twined grass (Birket-Smith, 1953, fig. 24) and was told that it was used for bedding, immediately volunteered: “They get married on that, too.” She explained that the groom would sit on the mat and the bride would come out of the back room of the house to sit beside him.

Cedar bark mats (gatc) were evidently imported from the south, according to informants.

“Łun, they call it [cf. Boas, 1917, p. 129, łùn, ’bark of hemlock and cottonwood’]. My mother or grandmother never made it. My grandmother used skins. They make the łun over here [i.e., in Yakutat, not Dry Bay], I guess, or in southeastern Alaska. I don’t know, I just hear it. I’m not sure about it. They used bark, I think, I hear it. They dye the bark different colors, and some of it is just one color.”

“Ła dayi [red cedar bark], I think that's it. They made it down below, Ketchikan and Saxman,” but she knew only that the mats were made of some kind of bark.

The shaman, Te-’ic, who died about 1890, is said to have had a “straw” mat (gatc) with which he was covered when performing some of his clairvoyant feats (see p. 704). His niece, (MJ), who had lived in his house on Khantaak Island as a small child, remembered that she used to see him sleeping on the bench, away from his wife, on a “West Coast Indian mat—cedar bark mat.”

The only article of this nature seen at Yakutat was a “shopping bag” (gatc gweł) obtained at Saxman, a southern Tlingit town. The rust-colored red cedar bark of which it was woven was decorated with black and golden straws. “In Juneau, they use it for handbag, just like that.”

A fragment of a twined grass mat was found on the floor of a storage house at the site on Knight Island, suggesting that in former times the Yakutat made mats similar to those used by the Eyak and Chugach in their sleeping rooms (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 179–180). It is unlikely that the Yakutat people would have had enough red cedar bark to make mats of this material, although shredded cedar bark was imported; either raw, or made up into such items as the shoulder rope to hold a blanket in place, or the rope band for a shaman's headdress (cf. the grave goods of the shaman, obtained by Libbey).

Fine thread and string (ti) were made of sinew; archeological examples are of two-ply S-twist thread. Sinew was also braided into square sennit for bowstrings and harpoon lines. Heavier lines were of untanned sealskin, and ropes (dzas) of sea lion hide. In addition, lines and ropes were made of twisted spruce root, often laid up as two-strand rope. Archeological examples of two-ply Z-twist cords of spruce root (?) were found (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 178). Some lines, especially those for fishing, were made of kelp stems (tł’eyani). In one episode of the Raven cycle, it is implied that the lids of oil boxes were tied on with such cord. “That's what our grandfathers been using;” and “That kelp string, it's pretty strong” (MJ).

Baskets

Twined spruce root basketry was used for containers and hats. The Yakutat people in former days cooked in baskets, gathered berries and shellfish in baskets, kept trinkets, tobacco, shot, and other small objects in baskets and even had baskets, hanging on the wall, in which spoons were put. Baskets were used as drinking cups, feast dishes, and as bailers in canoes. The baby carrier or cradle was made out of half of an old basket. Plain basketry hats were worn as protection against the rain; others with woven or copper rings on top and with painted crest designs were for ceremonial wear.

Emmons (1903, p. 229) reports that according to one tradition the art of weaving spruce root baskets was taught by Raven; according to another tradition, the original basket was a tiny one made by the woman who married the Sun. The Sun made it big enough to hold his wife and their eight children, “and in it they were lowered to the earth near Yakutat. This was the first basket, and from it was learned the art of weaving.”

Although I cannot accept his theory that the origin of basketry was “in the vicinity of Bering [Yakutat] Bay, under the shadow of Mount St. Elias” (ibid., p. 230), there seems to be no reason to question the statement that:

“The Yakutat have always held the first place in basketry. With them the industry has ever been of commercial importance [their baskets traded to Kodiak, the Aleutians, and to Puget Sound]…. They produce the largest baskets, and they excel all others in the careful selection and treatment of the material and in the regularity of the weave. The older work is distinctive in the beauty and the wealth of embroidery which oftentimes covered the entire outer surface of the walls; but of late years this has greatly changed. Since the establishment of a trading-post in their midst, about 1890, the increased demand for their labor, together with the introduction of aniline dyes, have combined to produce many more baskets, smaller in size, and ornamented in the narrowest lines of vivid greens and glaring yellows.” [Ibid., p. 231.]

In comparing Yakutat baskets with those of their neighbors, Emmons finds that the basketwork of the Indians from Cape Yakataga through Controller Bay (“Guth-le-uk-qwan”) “differs only in the coarser strands of root employed in the woof….” The Eyak of the Cordova area (“Eeak-tella”) make “but a few small, coarse baskets, ornamented in color, but seldom embroidered with grass-stems.” However, the few families still living at Dry Bay in “Gun-nah-ho country” are so isolated that they “incline to the old customs, which accounts for the beauty of their basketwork, both in weave and decoration” (ibid., p. 232). Finally, among the Chilkat, “…for a few years back every family of standing possessed many beautiful old baskets which had been procured on trading-trips with the Yakutat, back in the old Russian days” (ibid., p. 233).

Malaspina had been impressed by the firm close weave of Yakutat cooking baskets and by the patterns of colored straws in the small, delicate baskets (quoted p. 394). Of basketry seen in Lituya Bay, LaPérouse wrote that “Hats and baskets of rushes [sic] are no where woven with more skill; and they ornament them with pleasing figures” (1799, vol. 1, p. 407).

The Alaska Steamship Company, as publicity for the tourist trade, featured Yakutat basketry (McDowell, 1907), and the chance to buy some was one of the attractions of a voyage to Alaska (Higginson, 1906, p. 19).

Informants were also aware that Yakutat baskets were famous for the fineness of their weave and sturdy quality, so much so that inferior products were advertised as Yakutat work. As one woman (MJ) reported:

“Once I went down to Seattle. We went by a place and they got a big basket. [The label] said ’Yakutat basket.’—That's not Yakutat! It's so soft. The Yakutat baskets is just like wood. But the southeast Alaska ones are kind of irregular like, less shape. They use spruce [roots] and finger [in tightening the weave]. We use mouth—more sturdy to it. But southeast Alaska use finger.” Again she observed: “Long time ago down in Southeast of Alaska, the women weave baskets, just use their fingers, so their baskets wobbling. But us, we hold the roots with our mouth when we put the colors in there [put in the colored straws]…. [That's why the store claimed that was a Yakutat basket]. We can use it for bucket and we can use if for pot. But Southeast of Alaska baskets is just like a piece of rag—can’t stand up straight.”

This informant on various occasions described the processes required in making baskets. The spruce roots (àt) were gathered in the spring and early summer.

“This time of year [June 6] they used to go to the island [Khantaak] to get roots. Camp there until they get enough. You have to go out and gather the spruce roots. Some places is easier to pull them right up—where the trees are big in the deep woods, you can pull them right out.”

Actually, the only roots we saw her gather were those of a young spruce at the edge of a small stand of immature trees on Khantaak Island. In referring to her early childhood at a camp near the head of the Situk River, she said:

“My mother is putting up roots before it is too late—before the middle of summer. If you don’t pick your roots right away, it turns red quick, and it's no good. My mother and aunts sit up all hours of the day and night to get them. There's not much money in basketry, but they do it just the same.

“Curing roots is a lot of red tape. It's pretty hard. When you dig the roots, it has to be a certain kind, not crooked, but nice straight ones. You get more benefit out of it. You have to shave the crooked ones straight.

“Then they have to toast the bark off. Then they split the roots in two with their mouths. Then they soak them in water. After that, you split it fine to suit you. You sort it into fine and coarser ones….

“All they do is sit around scraping roots. They hold the roots with their teeth. If your hands aren’t steady, you get it apart [i.e., split the root crookedly so that it breaks]. They scrape it with yì, a big mussel shell.” (MJ)

In splitting roots, the knife or scraper of shell, or of metal shaped like the shell, was held with the thumb parallel to the cutting edge, and one end of the root was held between the teeth.

“You have to steam the bark off the roots right away” within a day or two after they are gathered. “They cook the roots and take the bark off and split the roots in half, and then split them some more.”

The pieces from the outside of the root that are shiny on the outer surface were used for the weft of the basket, the smooth shiny part on the outside of the basket where it would show. The pieces split from the interior of the root were used for the warp which was hidden by the weaving.

Roots were often split on winter evenings, when some old person would be telling stories by the fire. Women in groups of two or three would sit near the seal oil lamps in the corners of the house. Behind them were wooden racks on which the split and sorted roots were hung.

While the larger watertight baskets were usually plain, or decorated only by variations in the twined weave, smaller baskets had designs made by dyeing some of the weft strands and by introducing plain and colored straws. “You couldn’t see where the straws were woven in from the inside.”

After the roots had been gathered and peeled, “then you pick the straws. The straw is just right now [July 22]. Later on it‘s coarse and breaks easy. Then you color the roots [and straws]. You do it this time when things are ripe.”

The following dyes were used:

The roots of the wild “rhubarb” made a “kind of gold color,” “yellow,” or “a kind of yellow.”

Hemlock bark gave a “kind of dark gold color,” or “a kind of reddish color.”

Both of these colors were also used for staining wooden armor and for dyeing the wool used in weaving Chilkat blankets.

Red was obtained from small red berries called ‘dog's earrings’ (ketł tu U kadjacé, or ketł gukw kAdjàcí, Rubus pedatus and R. chamaemorus).

The black, inedible part of the sea urchin, or the “juice” of this animal made a “pretty color, kind of brownish,” or a “pretty shiny dark brown color.”

“Blueberries’ color can be navy blue, but they like to have it dark because the blue fades quick. You have to boil the berries.” When dark, the color was described as “black” (MJ). The color of the blueberry dye was also called “dark purple” as well as “navy blue.”

“Blueberries mixed with hemlock bark makes a dark reddish, brownish blue.”

“I never seen green—only from Diamond dye [the commercial product].”

The dyes were prepared by boiling these materials, some of which also required mashing or squeezing. Then the split roots or basket straws were boiled in the dye and left to soak in it.

“They soak it for days and days until they want it. They do the same way for roots and straws. There is a different dye for each set. Some of the straws they leave white.” “They used kwAS [urine] right in the dye. I never see that, but I heard about it. Then they wash it ever so often because we use our mouth for weaving baskets…. You boil the straw in the dye. Leave it there for days. Then wash it over and over again until no more dye comes out…. Wash it in salt water, like any ordinary dye…. They color the roots first because it takes a long time to color the straw…. Because the straw's slippery and shiny. They use the shiny side [outside] for the basket.” (MJ)

Dyed roots and straws were hung to dry on racks, then put away until they were to be used, the roots in hanks or bundles—in halibut skin bags(?)—the straws in gutskin bags.

Roots and straws were moistened before weaving, and had to be kept damp during the making of the basket. Apparently the end of one of the two weft strands was held in the teeth, to keep the weft tight while the woman manipulated the other with her fingers. Aside from its firmness and finess, Yakutat basketry was much like that of the other northern Tlingit. Weaving started in the center of the bottom, and for the usual flat-bottomed basket additional warp elements were inserted with each round of weft until the bend for the side was reached. In making the large, shallow, and slightly rounded basketry trays, fewer additional warps had to be added for each round, but the addition was continued up to the rim to make an even curve.

Baskets which were to be rendered watertight (presumably plain ones) had to be rubbed and smoothed to flatten the stitches and close the interstices between them.

“They shine up the basket so it won’t leak.” “They wash the basket, let it partly dry, and smooth it with a bear's tooth” (MJ). “They keep the bear tooth…the big front teeth [canines]…and when they make Indian baskets they smooth it out where they’re lumpy. They smooth it inside and the place where they put it together. They used to do it…. The bottom of the basket is flat. And when it gets watertight, it gets like it‘s sealed up. If they rub it with the tooth, its like it just swells up. It comes even,” a man reported.

Often the tooth used for this work was grooved for suspension. Some informants believed that beaver teeth were also used for this purpose, but identified a bear canine found at the site on Knight Island as a tool for smoothing baskets (de Laguna et al., 1964, p. 179, pl. 16, i).

The Yakutat women made large plain baskets holding up to 3 or 5 gallons. These were provided with two small loops through which a shoulder strap could be passed. A simple decoration might be made by varying the weave. “They used that for packing berries in…. It's easy to pack on your back.” Smaller plain baskets were also made, and both were called “without the grass, without the color” (ákisAt) or qakw (cf. Boas, 1917, p. 128, q‘Aku’, basket for berrying). Baskets with open weave, “like a net,” used to hold dry things and carried like a bucket, were called kàt. A basket for cooking was ‘basket pot’ (iCA wAł’). Flat traylike baskets into which blueberries were picked, and which also were used as mortars in which berries were crushed, were plain or had a simple decoration of one or more encircling lines of dyed wefts (pl. 129). These were called tał. Decorated or “fancy baskets” (pls. 130–133) were called caktuqagu. Small baskets with lids, woven with rattling pebbles or beads inside the knob (pl. 132), were called yEna qAkA ’ági. These might be decorated both with false embroidery and with variations in the twined weave (pl. 132). The patterns of the false embroidery in straw are those described by Emmons (1903).

Although my informants did not mention the type, Professor Libbey secured at Yakutat two double baskets, that is, narrow and relatively tall, almost cylindrical baskets decorated with false embroidery, each provided with an outer basket as a cover. The smaller (pl. 128b), labeled “needle case” and “shot pouch,” is only 2 inches tall, and has a plain cover. The larger (pl. 128a), a “work basket,” is 6 inches tall, and the cover is decorated with a patterned weave.

If baskets were still being made and used at Yakutat it would doubtless be possible to obtain more specific information about types and about methods of manufacture. I did not have an opportunity to observe any basketmaking, for this has been given up as unprofitable, despite the high prices offered by curio dealers. MJ claimed that she had made a large basket for a museum for which she received only $60, although she had worked on it all summer. “I was young and foolish then—nobody home!” She also used to cover bottles with twined basketry for sale, and even managed to cover a teapot in the same way, although she “nearly got stuck figuring out how to do the spout.” Her White husband pointed out that at $10 to $12 a covered bottle she wasn’t making anything. Another woman received $50 for a large basket in 1912. “The last one I made I sell it for $25, just a small one…. My goodness, I used to make lots! I still got something to make it with, but I don’t want to get my hands wet [in moistening the strands continually while weaving], and I’m sick.” Her daughter-in-law had never made a basket: “There's too many [strands]—just like hairs.”

One type of basket (ta djrni qAkw, ’eagle's foot basket’) made at Katalla and Yakutat just for sale to the Whites had a single bird's foot for a stand. The style was not aboriginal, but evidently represented a fad of the early 1900's. The bird's foot, usually that of an eagle (although a blue heron and an Arctic owl were mentioned) was cut off at the first joint of the leg. It was soaked in warm water to make it soft, set on a board to spread the claws, and nailed(?) down. The leg was held upright by a string, apparently until it had dried in position. The basket was then built up on the leg by tying or wrapping the warps for the bottom of the basket to the upper end of the leg. Some of these baskets were as big as water buckets.

“There are no more baskets in Yakutat any more—only the little one in the church. This was the last basket made by Mrs. Joseph [1867–1950], who did very fine work before she went blind.” (MJ) This statement is unfortunately only a slight exaggeration, for a few women still treasure a basket or two as heirlooms. Certainly no one makes baskets any more, and with the death of the older women it will become a lost art.

BASKET-MAKING AT YAKUTAT

Tlingit basketmaking has been thoroughly and authoritatively described by Emmons (1903) and Paul (1944), but it may be of some interest to compare the accounts given by my informants, not with Tlingit procedures in general, but with the observations of basketmaking at Yakutat which were apparently made by Professor Edmond S. Meany of the University of Washington early in the first decade of this century. The following account, although written by a purchasing agent of the Alaska Steamship Company for advertising purposes, credits Professor Meany with one quotation, and in general seems to be based on his information.

“The Yakutat Indians obtain these [spruce] roots from the younger trees, and the task of gathering them falls to the women. Each root is taken from the ground separately, and many are from five to fifteen feet in length. Root gathering for the manufacture of the pretty and costly baskets is looked upon as an outing for the squaws, and the old women often form a party and live for days in the woods collecting a supply that will last them for months. After the spruce roots reach the native camp they are first scraped and then parboiled, after which they are placed in pans of water and left for two or three weeks at a time. When in the judgment of the experienced weaver the roots are finally ready for use they are soaked in a pan of lukewarm water. The next move on the part of the weaver is to loosen from the root a fibre of desired size. A peculiar little knife blade fitted into a bone handle is used by the weavers. After the slender fire [fibre] has been separated from the root one end is fastened to a stick set firmly in the ground. With a crude copper instrument or mussel-shell it is scraped until it has a fine, glossy or smooth appearance.

“This is a long and tedious task, but the weaver cannot commence her work until hundreds of the slender strands have been secured. In each instance the bottom of the basket is first woven. It is held in shape by crossed sticks temporarily sewed to the circle of fabric while the sides or walls are slowly built up. Collectors say that one of the many reasons for the superiority of Yakutat baskets is the fact that weavers use every possible care while engaged in the work of weaving. Each piece of basketry is wrapped in silk or other clean cloth, and this invariably follows to completion. Those who have visited the Yakutat villages tell how the women wrap the basket in cloth to prevent dirt from working its way in between the strands and spoiling the effect of the color work. After the basket is finished it remains covered until sold to the tourist or dealer. Many persons who have made the trip to Alaska will recall how the Indians came out to the steamer in their canoes to display their wares, and it was a noticeable fact that each basket was neatly wrapped.” [MacDowell, 1907, pp. 187–188.]

The illustrations, supplied by another purchasing agent of the Alaska Steamship Company, show a fine series of baskets of conventional shapes and traditional decorations, a covered and footed basket, and three very beautifully woven baskets painted with crest designs (Eagle, Wolf, Killerwhale). They are not definitely identified, however. Covered bottles are also mentioned, and prices quoted as ranging from $2 to $50 for Yakutat baskets (ibid., p. 188).

Chilkat Blankets

Although modern Chilkat blankets seen at Yakutat are almost certainly the work of weavers at Klukwan, Yendestake, and other Chilkat towns, there is some evidence that such blankets were also once made at Yakutat. MJ claims to be able to make them, “but they are too much work.”

“My grandma learned how to make Chilkat blankets because she married into the Chilkat Tribe. Then she came back here and taught my mother…. You pluck the coarse hair off—use the fine hair off the skins [of mountain goat]…. There's only mountain goat here, you need mountain sheep wool [sic]. My mother used to help my grandma. She twisted the wool on her right thigh. She didn’t change hands. She kept using her right hand.” (MJ)

Her mother apparently had baskets full of wool dyed pretty colors: “red” from cedar bark, yellow from a special kind of moss, and a dark color from blueberries. Quite possibly some of this information applies to basket straws, rather than to wool. The informant said that wool was dyed yellow with wild “rhubarb.”

I was able to learn only the most sketchy details of manufacture. For example, the wool of the warp was just hung down over a bar. It was strengthened by mixing cedar bark with it. The edges of the blanket that received the most wear were also woven of wool reinforced with bark, but one couldn’t see the bark. The informant gave no further information, and it seems likely that she had forgotten the details of this difficult technique. (See pl. 72 for part of a loom.)

No pattern boards exist at Yakutat at the present time, and their use was not mentioned. In fact, it is doubtful that the crest-patterned blankets were ever woven at Yakutat. Even those who now own such Chilkat blankets are unable to interpret the designs, knowing only what they are meant to represent (pls. 15, 148).

Fragments of a woven goat wool blanket, found in a shaman's grave on Knight Island which probably dates from the Russian occupation, has been analyzed by Carolyn Osborne (de Laguna et al, 1964, pp. 187–199, fig. 25, pls. 18 b, 19). It is trimmed with an upper border of sea(?) otter fur, and is woven in a purely geometric pattern of dark brown wool against a background of (undyed?) light brown wool. There are zig-zags and a series of concentric rectangles, with heavy tassels hanging from the corner of each rectangle in the body of the blanket, and heavy fringes along the sides and bottom. On the basis of careful comparison with other geometric patterned blankets, Carolyn Osborne has established that such blankets were being made by the northern Tlingit in the late 18th century. Quite possibly the Yakutat blanket was of local manufacture.

An incised pebble, found in a late prehistoric section of the site of “Old Town” on Knight Island, may be a rubbing amulet. I have interpreted the design as representing a shaman, wearing headdress, mask, fringed dancing apron, and on his back a blanket with a design identical with that of the blanket from the later grave (de Laguna et al, 1964, pp. 168–172, fig. 21 a, a′). This argues for the manufacture of such blankets at this period.

Furthermore, LaPérouse noted cloaks woven of animal “hair” (wool) mixed with slips of sea otter fur at Lituya Bay in 1786, Ismailov and Bocharov noted a cape of wool (lined with fur?) and “woolen clothes of their own manufacture” at Yakutat in 1788 (p. 134), and Malaspina in 1791 remarked at Port Mulgrave blankets of bark with otter fur on one side (see pp. 433, 434, 435). For none of these woven blankets or capes are stylized crest figures mentioned; they would surely have been noted had they been seen. On the other hand, the sketches by Suría show men wearing long robes of what appear to be woven materials, liberally tasseled like the Yakutat blanket from the shaman's grave (pls. 50, 60, 61). I have already noted the distribution of plain or geometric decorated blankets from Sitka (1804), the Copper River Eyak (1884), and Prince William Sound (1778, 1783, 1786) (de Laguna et al, 1964, pp. 180–181), to which should be added the specimens studied by Carolyn Osborne.

All this evidence makes it extremely unlikely that the Yakutat and Eyak, and also the northern Tlingit, were ignorant of the art of weaving goat wool blankets in the late 18th century, even though with the introduction of crest designs a monopoly of blanket making seems to have shifted ultimately to the Chilkat.

DRESS AND DECORATION

Aboriginal Clothing

It was difficult to secure information about aboriginal dress since this was replaced by White man's clothing at an early period. In 1880, the Yakutat people were already wearing ordinary American shirts, trousers, coats, dresses, and rubber boots, although some people still had gutskin shirts and sealskin footwear, and preferred a woolen blanket to an ordinary overcoat as a wrap in cold weather (pls. 62–65). It was impossible to discover whether any undergarments were worn under the old-style clothing, for my oldest informant could remember only cotton underwear.

Aboriginal clothing at Yakutat was made of skins, and garments for everyday wear were said to have been of sealskin, although other furs were also used, as were birdskins and the intestines of bears. My informants mentioned shirts and trousers for men, dresses or frocks for women, boots, skin stockings, hat, caps, and mittens. In addition, elaborately decorated garments and blankets were worn at potlatches and other ceremonial occasions. These are described as fully as my information permits, but for an understanding of truly aboriginal dress and personal decoration we must turn to the reports of the 18th-century explorers and traders.

LITUYA BAY, 1786

LaPérouse has given us spirited descriptions of the appearance of the natives encountered in Lituya Bay, some details of which have already been quoted.

As is characteristic of Tlingit in the summer time, no moccasins or boots were worn: “Though they go barefoot, the soles of their feet are not callous, and they cannot walk over stones; which proves, that they travel only in canoes, or on the snow with snowshoes” (LaPérouse, 1799, vol. 1, p. 400). Their difficulty in walking over rough ground might also help to explain the behavior of the guides who undertook to lead some of the French officers to where one of the bodies of the drowned seamen had washed ashore. It will be remembered (p. 120) that the party had to walk 7 or 8 miles over stones, that the guides repeatedly demanded more presents on the way, and eventually disappeared into the woods.

The Indians at Lituya Bay lacked beards because they plucked out the hair (p. 122). The appearance of the men is further described:

“The men of this country bore holes through the cartilages of the nose and ears, and append to them different little ornaments. They make scars on the arms and breast with a very keen iron instrument, which they sharpen by rubbing it on their teeth as on a whetstone. Their teeth are filed down to the gums, by means of a rounded piece of sandstone in the shape of a tongue. [This is evidently a rubbing amulet intended to prevent hasty or insulting speech.] Ochre, lamp-black, and plumbago, mixed with seal oil, are employed by them to paint the face and the rest of the body, which has a frightful appearance. On occasions of high ceremony, they wear their hair long, braided, and powdered with the down of sea-fowl [probably eagle down]. This is the height of their luxury, and perhaps engrossed by the heads of families. A simple skin is thrown over their shoulders, and the rest of the body is left naked, except the head, which they commonly cover with a little straw hat, curiously woven; though sometimes they wear on their heads caps with two horns, eagle's feathers, and entire heads of bears fitted on a skull-cap of wood. These kinds of head-dresses are greatly diversified, but their principal object, like that of most of their customs, is to render them frightful, perhaps to awe their enemies.

“Some of the Indians had complete shirts of otter-skins; and the common dress of the grand chief was a shirt of tanned elk-skin, bordered with a fringe of deer's hoofs and beaks of birds, the jingling of which when he danced was not unlike that of sheep's bells. This dress is well known to the savages of Canada, and to other nations which inhabit the eastern parts of America. [This tanned, fringed shirt was undoubtedly traded from the interior Athabaskans.]

“I saw no appearance of tatooing, except on the arms of some of the women.” [Ibid., pp. 401–402.]

[In describing manufactures in general, woven garments are mentioned. Thus, the Indians of Lituya Bay know how to] “spin the hair of divers animals, and form with the needle, [[76]] of the thread thus procured, a stuff not unlike to French tapestry. They intermingle with this slips of otter-skin, which gives their cloaks a resemblance of the finest silk plush. Hats and baskets are no where woven with more skill; and they ornament them with pleasing figures.” [Ibid., pp. 406–407.]

We have already read LaPérouse's observations on the dirty, disgusting appearance of the women, who were not even dressed in tanned skins, and whose labrets caused an unpleasant flow of saliva (pp. 121, 123). The women's labret certainly held a horrid fascination:

“These [women], however, have a custom, which renders them hideous, and which I could hardly have believed, had I not seen it. All without exception have the lower lip slit close to the gum the whole width of the mouth, and wear in it a kind of wooden bowl without handles, which rests against the gum, and which the slit lip serves as a collar to confine, so that the lower part of the mouth projects two or three inches. The drawing made by Mr Duché de Vancy, which is extremely accurate, will render more plain than any description this custom, the most disgusting perhaps that exists upon the face of the earth. [The charts and plates, Nos. 23 and 24, are plates 38 and 39.] The young girls wear only a needle in the lower lip: the married women alone have a right to the bowl. We sometimes prevailed on them to lay aside this ornament; but it was with difficulty; and they made the same gestures, and testified the same embarrassment, as an European women on discovering her bosom. The lower lip dropped on the chin, when the piece of wood was removed, and this second exhibition was scarcely more agreeable than the first.” [Ibid., pp. 402–403.]

I have already quoted the passage (p. 116) in which copper collars, bracelets, and “various other ornaments” are mentioned, as well as necklaces of beads, presumably trade beads. Illustrations show that men sometimes wore necklaces of beads, or an amulet[?] hanging from the neck, as well as the dagger in a sheath. Women wore, besides the labret, a string of beads hanging from the lobe of the ear, and two bracelets on the wrist (apparently like those excavated at Knight Island, Yakutat Bay; see de Laguna et al., 1964, fig. 19).

Apparently some of the ornaments were of amber, for we are told that: “Among their trinkets I found pieces of yellow amber: but whether it be a production of their country, or procured, like their iron, from the ancient continent, by an indirect intercourse with the Russians, I am ignorant” (LaPérouse, vol. 1, p. 407). The amber, I assume, was procured in trade from the Indians of the Gulf Coast to the westward, since Chugach informants told us that “amber, which was prized for ear ornaments, was found on the beaches of Kayak Island in Controller Bay” (de Laguna, 1956, p. 6), and this was, I suspect, the nearest source.

The native copper, tanned skins, eagle feather headdress(?), and some other furs indicate trade with the interior Athabaskans. The cap with two horns, rendered by the engraver as a bishop's mitre (pl. 38), seems to be the peculiar headgear (‘bear's ears’) worn sometimes by Tlingit warriors and shamans. We shall also encounter at Yakutat the ordinary basket hat and fur robe of the men, although these were equally common in southeastern Alaska. The women's labrets are, of course, Tlingit, not Athabaskan or Eyak. The bear head worn by some of the men (pl. 37) would appear to be headgear denoting the totemic crest of their sib, which we may venture to identify as Teqwedi or Kagwantan, since both of these sibs in southeastern Alaska claim the Bear as a crest.

YAKUTAT 1787 AND 1788

Unfortunately we are given little information about the clothing, worn at Yakutat, which Beresford and Colnett must have observed. The natives certainly wore fur robes; while Beresford (1789, p. 176) mentions cloaks of marmot skins and Colnett observed a man with a “dress trim‘d with Chinese money” (quoted p. 131), the cut of the garments is not further described.

Fortunately, Ismailov and Bocharov appear to have brought back somewhat more specific information, as reported by Shelikhov:

“The men do not shave their hair, but bind it in a knot on the crown of their heads. They daub it with red paint, by means of a pencil made of wool, and ornament it with feathers. They cut their beards, and paint their faces, with stripes of various colours; they bore their ears, but not their lips. Some wear caps, like those of the grenadiers, with brass ornaments which they procure from Europeans [is this the mitre illustrated by LaPérouse?], others cover their heads and necks with cloth made from the filaments of roots, and the back part ornamented with eagles’ feathers.

“Their upper garment, the outside of which is woollen, is thrown over the shoulder, and like the Tunguses they sometimees tie round their necks a kind of apron [dancing bib?], ornamented with beaks of birds, and other trifles, which make a rattling noise.” [Coxe, 1803, p. 326.]

There is also mention of “garments of different skins, woolen clothes of their own manufacture” which they offered to the Russians in trade (quoted p. 134). In addition, the Chilkat chief who came to Yakutat gave them six shirts of sea otter fur, presumably obtained locally, although again the cut is not described. The Yakutat people and the Chilkat chief also seem to have had (worn?) amulets of iron shaped like the heads of crows or ravens (p. 134, see also p. 377).

“The dress of the women is similar to that of the men. They part their hair with a wooden comb into tresses, which they bind together in a tuft. They make a slit in their upper lip, parallel to the mouth, and of the same length, and place therein a piece of wood shaped like a spoon, two inches long, and one inch and a half broad. They bore five or six holes in their ears, and some of them tatoo their chins.” [Coxe, 1803, p. 327.]

[Beresford also gives us a description of the woman's labret:]

“An aperture is made in the thick part of the under lip, and increased by degrees in a line parallel with the mouth, and equally long: in this aperture, a piece of wood is constantly wore, of an elliptical form, about half an inch thick; the superficies not flat, but hollowed out on each side like a spoon, though not quite so deep; the edges are likewise hollowed in the form of a pully, in order to fix this precious ornament more firmly in the lip, which by this means is extended at least three inches horizontally, and consequently distorts every feature in the lower part of the face. This curious piece of wood is worn only by the women, and seems to be considered as a mark of distinction, it not being wore by all indiscriminately, but only those who appeared in a superior situation to the rest.” [Beresford, 1789, p. 172.]

As already suggested, the labret was probably worn only by women of aristocratic position, probably Tlingit women who had married into Yakutat, or perhaps members of already resident Tlingit sibs (Teqwedi, Tł’UknaAdi) who felt superior to those of Eyak or Athabaskan derivation.

YAKUTAT, 1791

We already have an impression of the appearance of the natives of Port Mulgrave, for Suría's description of the Ankau and his son has been quoted (p. 145). Some men wore full beards, and their faces were painted with red ochre and black soot (p. 144). The captured crest hat or helmet of the Ankau also has been described (p. 145).

Malaspina (1849, pp. 286–287) summarizes the dress of the natives:

“The clothing of the men is regularly a cape of nutria [otter] pelts, of wolves or of martens over the body, with a band (sash) on the lower part of the abdomen. They cover their heads with hats of straw [spruce roots] in the form of a truncated cone. The women are decently clothed with a kind of under tunic of tanned skin, and on top wear a cape of nutria or marten which is very well sewn together with thread. The men have the septum of the nose perforated, and in the perforations put a nail or some other ornament. In the ears they are accustomed to have five holes from which hang various baubles. The women have under the lower lip the aperture in which is placed the piece of wood which we will describe in another place.”

Suría offers a much fuller description, while remarking that the children are all naked, as are some of the men (Wagner, 1936, p. 254). It is not clear, however, whether this is as common outdoors as in the huts (see p. 143).

Referring to the men in the two canoes that came out to meet the Spanish vessels (cf. p. 141), he writes:

“They were dressed in skins of various colors, well-tanned, large and flexible. With one which hangs from a skin tied around their waist [i.e., an apron] they cover their private parts and the other which reaches to the knees they hang from the shoulder like a cape. The skins seem to be those of bears, tigers, lions [identified by Wagner as Alaska brown bear], and some of deerskins, and of marmots, with the hair outside. Their aspect would not be so disagreeable, although always wild, but the crude colors with which they paint themselves disfigure them entirely, as it seems that their idea of gala dress is to make themselves look as horrible as possible. Their hair is very thick and flaccid without any dressing or care, loose in the wayward natural manner, and covered with the greatest abundance of red ochre and grease, which according to the odor must be deer grease [or rather, mountain goat tallow].” [Wagner, 1936, p. 247.]

“The dress of the men is as I have stated [see above], of various skins, the most ordinary being of black bear, and very hairy. When it rains and they have no hats they cover their heads with the same skin of the head of a bear, which makes them look like Hercules. The rest of the skin they gather in at the waist by means of a piece of leather and what is left of the animal, claws and tail, etc., hangs down to the middle of the leg. From this it may be inferred that the arms, breast, stomach and belly are uncovered except the shoulders and the rump. In order that this skin may not get loose they sustain it on the right shoulder by means of another connecting piece of leather. Some besides this wear another skin which we can call a cape or cloak, as it serves the same purpose. Others go entirely naked with a breech clout. Their hair is loose (among the women also) but groomed with more care on one side than the other, leaving the parting of the hair uncovered, covered with red ochre, and their faces painted with it which makes them look horrible.” [Wagner, 1936, p. 255.] [The passage concludes with a description of armor (see p. 586).]

“The dress of the women is very modest. It consists of a robe of tanned skin and without hair which covers them from their throat down to their feet, and the breast and arms, down to the wrist. There is a sleeve which is wide but modest. In all, this tunic has the same form as that which they put on the effigy of Jesus Nazareno and tie around the waist. Besides this robe they wear a cape or square cape also of skin which is held on the right shoulder by a piece of leather and some living on the banks of the sea wear [only] * a fringe. Some use these cloaks made strictly of marten skins.” [Wagner, 1936, p. 255.] [* Inserted by Wagner.]

Not all the robes were of fur, for Malaspina observes:

“Finally among the woven materials, special attention is merited by the blanket made of pine bark, spun and woven, on which is inserted on one part with good symmetry the fur of the skin of an otter.” [Malaspina, 1885, p. 348.] This would appear to be a blanket of Chilkat-like twining, probably similar to that observed by LaPérouse in Lituya Bay (see p. 433).

The Spaniards were inevitably interested in the labret and nose ornaments and in the tattooing. Thus Suría writes:

“As soon as they are born they pass a very delicate feather through the cartilege of the nose for the purpose of making a hole in it, and in consequence the hole gets bigger so that when they are grown up they can put a nail of considerable size through it as they do, as they all have holes in their noses. The women in addition to the hole in their nose make one in their lower lip horizontally in which they place a roll of wood of eliptical form, hollowed out on one side and the other, and thick enough to hold it between the teeth and the lip. The size of it appears incredible as well as the custom of wearing it. Clasping this roll with the lip, they talk, eat, and do everything. We do not know if this is distinctive of the married women, although to me it seems so, because I have not noted it in other than these, and the unmarried ones do not use it. All of them tattoo their arms and hands in lines of various designs and so remain forever.” [Wagner, 1936, pp. 254–255.]

It is not clear whether tattooing is restricted to women.

Malaspina writes about the labret and nose ornament:

“The incision of the lower lip differs a little from that observed by Captain Cook and Don Salvador Hidalgo at the entrance to Prince William Sound [i.e., among the Chugach Eskimo]. The tribe at Port Mulgrave substitute for the false teeth or other subdivided ornament of the same incisions, a kind of eliptical pulley-wheel (roldana), which is attached to the lips by both rims, and, placed in a horizontal position, serves as ornament only for the women. This roller [Footnote: “An example of this ornament has been sent to the Royal Cabinet.”], very well polished on all sides and made of pine wood, is two inches and one English line in its major axis, one inch in its minor axis, and seven lines thick from one edge to the other. The men usually have the septum of the nose pierced for the insertion of some ornament, but we have never seen this composed of anything other than bones or nails, instead of the rings, strings [of beads] or rows of shells which the inhabitants of Prince William Sound are wont to wear.” [Malaspina, 1885, p. 344.]

The sketches by Suría, however, suggest that one woman, at least, is wearing a nose ornament and ear pendants of dentalium shell, and the elaborate nose ornament of the Ankau may also have been made of dentalia (pls. 44, 45, 56).

Dress at Yakutat

As reported by my informants, sealskin garments were worn at Yakutat on ordinary occasions. Thus the man wore sealskin pants (ł’Ukwatał) and the woman wore a long sealskin dress (ł’ák; Boas, 1917, p. 156, tł’ak’). The latter, at any rate, had the fur turned inside for warmth, and apparently had a high neck and long sleeves. The man's shirt (gudA; Boas, 1917, p. 128, udÁ) might be of sealskin, although shirts of fox or mink fur and of eagle and swan skins were also mentioned. Birdskin jackets were worn in cold weather and had attached hoods.

Men and youths, however, were supposed to go without clothing in order to be strong. This was particularly enjoined when they were performing hard work in the early morning as part of their toughening exercises. On such occasions they rolled up their shirts (MJ) or went clad only in a “belt” (sik). The latter may have been a breechclout. In summer, men went barefoot and, in all seasons, when going hunting took only a minimum of warm clothing and blankets, often “just a piece of canvas or something.” In describing a bear hunt, we remember that the informant mentioned how one of the men stripped naked in order to “fight” better (p. 365).

The most valued furs for clothing in the old days were sea otter, wolf, and beaver, while “marten is the highest class of fur,” used for clothing by the rich and noble. Other valuable furs were those of the ground-squirrel or gopher (tsAlk), obtained from the interior. Mink is a “low class skin,” because the mink is associated with the evil land otter (see pp. 745, 751, 754), and some informants even denied that mink was worn in the old days. However, an elderly man mentioned jackets and caps of mink fur (CW), and one woman said she had even made such a cap for her 6-months old son.

Tanned skins were also used for clothing, especially at Dry Bay where moose and caribou skins were more readily obtained in trade or on trips into the interior. Such skins were also traded from the Copper River. Deerskins were imported from southeastern Alaska. Tanned skins were left white or might be smoked with rotten wood and pine cones to make them brown (MJ and friend).

Moosehide was favored as a “strong skin” for the man‘s shirt worn under wooden armor (p. 590; pl. 161), but lighter skins, especially white ones, were used for dance costumes. The latter were often fringed, beaded, or decorated with porcupine quills. Since the porcupine is not found in the Yakutat area, the quills must have been obtained from Controller Bay or the upper Alsek River; more likely, however, finished garments were imported, since they are described as being in Copper River Atna or in Alsek River Athabaskan styles. What purports to be an Athabaskan dress was copied for a doll made by MJ in 1952 (pl. 134).

The shaman wore an apron of tanned skin when he practiced. This was fringed around the edge and ornamented with rattling bones. At other times he dressed in ordinary clothing.

GUTSKIN COATS

Jackets made of bear intestines were almost the only garment, other than moccasins, about which we received any detailed information. These were called ‘animal gutskin shirts’ (’At nai gudA).

“They used to have coats just like plastic coats, with hood and drawstring fastening at the collar. They sew the hood right on. The shirt reaches to the knee. And the sealskin boots comes up to the hip. My mother and father use high boots, and they use it in the canoe to paddle around…. That's why long ago they got the biggest brown bear. They got the guts.” (MJ)

The processing of the bear intestines has been described (p. 424). The waterproof jackets were made by sewing the strips of gut together so that these ran vertically on the body and on the sleeves (fig. 53b). It was denied that jackets were made with the strips running horizontally around the body as on Chugach gutskin coats (Birket-Smith, 1953, fig. 3). The seams were sewn all on the same side (overhand), and one informant believed that they were welted and that two threads of porpoise sinew were used (i.e., that the seams were double?). According to most informants, the hood was stitched to the jacket; only one woman described it as separate. There were drawstrings at the neck and wrists. The coat reached either to the knee or to below the bulge of the calf. Such jackets had been seen or made by informants at Dry Bay, Yakutat, and Katalla.

FIGURE 53.—Sketches by Minnie Johnson to illustrate (a) her grandfather's rainhat of spruce root and (b) the shoulder detail of his rain shirt of gutskins.

HATS

In rainy weather, a conical basketry hat (axw) woven of spruce roots was worn. This had a sloping brim and was tied with a thong under the chin but was not otherwise described (fig. 53a). Similar hats painted with crest designs and topped by a series of basketry or copper rings, from the summit of which some ermine skins hung down, were treasured heirlooms worn on ceremonial occasions. A few of these are represented in old photographs or by specimens in museums (pls. 143–145). The only crest represented seems to be the Killerwhale.

The seal hunter also had a cap (axw) of sealskin, with flaps which could be turned down over the ears and the back of the neck. Presumably caps of other furs were similar in design. The small baby had a cap which was supposed to mold the ears close to the head (MJ). Since the infant was completely covered in the baby carrier, and the latter was under the mother's blanket when she took the baby outdoors, only the child's head needed protection. The cap, then, was probably the only garment made for a baby. We do not know what women wore on their heads before kerchiefs, woolen caps, and hats were obtained. The most popular head-covering for girls and women at Yukatat in the 1880's and today is a large silk kerchief (cada t’ai), “something over your head.” These are of various colors, but widows always wear black. In winter, woolen kerchiefs or scarves are used.

MITTENS AND GLOVES

The seal hunter wore long mittens of sealskin, that “look just like long socks.” These were tied up high on the upper arm. They were called “ice gloves” (xatł U t’A) because they were used especially when hunting seals among the ice floes. Undoubtedly both sexes wore mittens during the winter, although we learned nothing about them except the name tca (t’A ?); gloves are called kAł’na tcaE (TJ). It is probable that women wore some kind of work gloves or mitts as protection against sunburn when working outdoors, since they valued a white skin. At one period (but not now) they used to cut the fingers from knitted gloves and wear these as mitts when working outside in summer.

Dancing gloves were mentioned by one informant (JR) and are illustrated in old photographs (pls. 211l, 214). Skin gloves (“kar-kahk-kate-sark”) were worn by the shaman when he cut out the land otter's tongue that gave him power (see p. 677). A pair were found by Emmons in the outfit of a at’kA’ai shaman on the Alsek River (AMNH E/1615).

BOOTS AND MOCCASINS

Native footgear, especially at Dry Bay, seems to have survived longer than almost any other article of aboriginal dress, and we were therefore able to learn more about the cut of boots and moccasins. Furthermore, moccasins which are still made by most of the women for sale to tourists partially reflect the aboriginal patterns.

There seem to have been two types of footgear in former times: high-topped boots (wAn, or wan kutaEt), and ankle-high moccasins (usket, ’footcover’). It should be remembered that men traditionally went barefoot except in winter.

One informant (MJ) described the boots as follows:

“Waterproof boots were made in the old days out of sealskin sewed with porpoise sinew. You used a seal that has been shot in the head, so there will be no holes in the skin. They sew it so tight you can blow it up like a balloon. If air is coming out, they sew it up tighter.”

The complete skin of a male seal was required for each boot. The skin was not tanned. “They don’t scrape it, just rub it and wash it. They just soften the rough part of the skin with some kind of stone. If they rub the skin the water goes through.” “You dare not tan or scrape the sealskin—just rub it with mountain goat tallow…. Rub and rub and rub and rub.”

The boot was made in two pieces: sole (wÀncu tiłr) and upper (wÙn; probably wAn or wan). The piece for the sole was cut rounded at the toe and straight across at the heel. Two slashes were made at the heel and most of the “trailer” between these was cut off. The two side flaps of the heel were then brought together to make a T-shaped seam. The upper was of one piece seamed up the back. It was rounded at the lower end to fit over the top of the foot. There was no separate piece for the instep, like the “top” of the modern moccasin. When boots made with such a piece were described, informants recognized them as Eskimo. In order to fit the sole to the upper, the former was gathered at the toe, and sometimes at the heel also, but no bootsole creaser was used, and this Eskimo implement is not used for moccasins today. The upper was first basted to the sole at the toe and at the sides, to be sure that it was properly fitted, and the final seam was begun at the toe, with the boot held so that the sole was toward the seamstress. The boot was stitched inside out, that is, with the fur side out, but we could not discover whether blind stitching was employed. When finished, the boot was turned right side out, so the fur would be on the inside. The upper over the top of the foot was shaped after washing.

In addition, “they made stockings with the hair side in. And then there's moss around, and then the boot…. They used moss for socks, just pad it around the foot. They made it just like a sock…. The moss socks are up to the ankle…. Sometimes my father would come home and take his boots off and his feet is as dry as chips. Even if he wade in the deep snow in the mountains, their feet don’t get wet.” (MJ)

The moss used was probably the variety used for diapers and found on the limbs of trees (p. 31). Possibly the “skin stockings” correspond to the deerskin leggings (“qwun”) which Emmons obtained at Yakutat (AMNH E/1120).

The high boots reached to the hips, and were worn both by men and women. As a little girl, MJ was given high-topped boots of young mountain goat skin to keep her feet warm.

The other type of footgear (ukEt), more properly called a moccasin (tił), was worn both by men and women. It was said to have been made of untanned deerskin, but almost certainly other skins were more commonly used. A cord attached to the front was tied behind the ankle. The cut was not described, except that the upper part of these moccasins or boots was of strong white “cable” cloth. This probably formed the ankle flap. In all probability this footgear was an ordinary ankle-high moccasin, of the type made by the Athabaskans, and is that represented on the doll made by the informant (MJ; see pl. 134). These moccasins are made in three pieces: sole, “top” over the instep, and ankle flap.

Some women now make “mukluks” to sell, although these are probably not of native Yakutat pattern. Each of these boots requires four pieces of skin and four pieces of felt for the lining: sole, side, instep, and ankle.

One woman made a pair of high boots for a White man, but again the pattern was probably not completely aboriginal. These had soles of imported tanned mooseskin cut moccasin-fashion with T-shaped seam at the heel. The front (instep and tongue combined) was a long piece of sealskin, fur side out and decorated with an applique design of beaded green felt representing a killerwhale eating a salmon. The rest of the upper consisted of two panels of furred sealskins at the back, and a panel of mooseskin on each side. The outer one of these on each foot has a beaded applique design on red felt representing a bear. The seams were all welted with mooseskin, and the top had a cuff of furred sealskin. For these handsome boots she charged $25 (MJ).

Moccasins (tił), as already mentioned, are now made for sale. They are usually purchased from the makers by one of the native storekeepers and forwarded by her to a wholesale firm. The latter specifies the numbers wanted in each size. Moccasins are also sold directly to the two stores, and are made on order for the White residents of Yakutat. I did not see any natives wearing moccasins, as I did at Angoon, but some beautifully beaded ones were worn at a potlatch in 1916 to judge from a photograph of the guests (pl. 214). It is hard to tell how closely the modern commercial pattern follows an aboriginal model.

Moccasins are made of two pieces of sealskin: sole and instep. The latter is actually covered with a piece of beaded felt, the so-called “moccasin top.” The sole is cut with a T-shaped seam at the heel, is puckered at the toe, and comes up over the sides of the foot. The hair of the sealskin is outside, pointing back. Around the top of the moccasin, just below the ankle, is a trimming of fur, usually of commercially tanned imported rabbitskin. A few women use the fuzzy white fur of unborn seals for trim. The moccasins are lined with cotton outing flannel. In cutting out the skins, the women use patterns of heavy brown wrapping paper, labeled according to our standardized sizes, and when sewing, put the moccasins over wooden last with very turned-up toes. These lasts are also graded according to size. Most women have several sets of patterns and lasts, and lend or borrow freely.

FIGURE 54.—Patterns for beaded moccasin tops, traced from brown-paper patterns made by Minnie Johnson at Yakutat. a, Represents a copper (tInna). b, Represents the spirit of the shaman, Te-’ic, dressed in his master‘s crown of horns, standing on the box in which his master kept his “uniform.” The box is a separate stencil and the spirit is put on it “for the pattern”; he did not really stand on it. Minnie Johnson made this pattern “just to remember” her uncle, the shaman.

The felt “tops” are in every imaginable color and are sewn with very fine beads. For this work, two threaded needles are used, one to carry the beads and the other to catch this thread to the felt between every pair of beads. Patterns for the designs are exchanged between friends. There is also a very wide sale of moccasin tops; women at Yakutat may buy them not only from each other, but from friends and acquaintances in southeastern Alaska. They cost 50 to 65 cents a pair. These tops are not nearly as heavily beaded as those made by the Athabaskans on the upper Alsek or Copper Rivers, but some are very beautiful. One man works out designs for his wife to bead, while her mother stitches up the moccasins. Most women have a fine collection of design patterns, boxes and strands of beads of all colors, and finished tops.

Most moccasin tops now have ALASKA spelled out in letters. A great many have floral patterns; others may represent bear's heads, totem poles, eagles, bluebirds, Indians in feather headdresses, and other themes (pl. 134). The most interesting, however, are those which illustrate myths. Thus, a popular design is that of a killerwhale surmounting a human face in a triangular frame. The latter represents Raven who turned himself into a woman in order to marry the Killerwhale (kit ’axugudi cawAt). Another, of a woman's face very much like that on the post of the Whale House at Klukwan (Emmons, 1916, pl. 4, R), is that of the woman who nourished the Woodworm (Swanton, 1908, p. 408). Another beautiful design is of a whale and a raven superimposed, derived from the myth of Raven in the Whale. A devilfish design is said to represent a shaman's spirit. Others are a “copper” (fig. 54a), a Chilkat blanket with the Tł’UknaAdi's Frog crest, a man (Teqwedi?) wearing the Wolf Hat, and so on. One very interesting design (fig. 54b) represents the spirit of the Teqwedi shaman, Te-’ic, and is called “shaman's spirit” (‘it’ An yegi). The figure is squatting on a decorated box, in which his “master,” the shaman, kept his regalia. The spirit wears the shaman's crown of mountain goat horns, here said to represent the rays of the sun, since the spirit is the “Sun's Children.” The niece of the shaman made this pattern, “just to remember” (MJ).

Formerly the patterns for such beadwork were cut out of heavy paper and were stitched to the felt as a guide in sewing. Now the design is transferred to the felt with carbon paper.

ROBES

Fur robes served as wraps and as bedding in former days, but were gradually displaced by ordinary woolen blankets. Only a few people have robes of gopher skins (tsAłk uw), imported from the interior. One woman who has one that came from Whitehorse via the Chilkat, wanted me to photograph it as background to a carving. Robes formerly were made of many different skins.

“Brown bear skins—not big ones, just pup.—It's warm in winter, like blankets. We line them with Hudson Bay blankets.” (MJ) The man who went to the sky, łayaw, had a bearskin cape.

“My father got all kinds of robes—lynx robe, fox robe, swansdown robe—for my grandmother…. He had fox paw robes, lined with gopher skin.” (MJ)

“My mother made a swansdown blanket for her mother. It was the prettiest thing you ever saw. Just the down was used. They cut the swan down the back and they just used the breast part. Sometimes they get a one-foot square piece. They cut them all the same size. You could never tell it's sewed. And they line it with gopher skins on the other side…. When it's real cold you put the swansdown side against you.” (MJ)

The informant remembered how her grandfather chewed the swanskin to get the fat out, for it was too thin to be scraped. The coarse feathers were plucked out to leave only the soft down. She also mentioned her grandmother's robe of mink fur, and another of lynx fur on one side and eagleskin on the other.

Emmons obtained an eagleskin robe at Yakutat, which he recorded was worn by both men and women as a ceremonial robe (AMNH E/2298).

When woolen blankets were procured, the favorite ones were, naturally, those of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Ceremonial Costumes

A number of ceremonial costumes, worn at potlatches in the past and treasured as heirlooms, have been preserved at Yakutat until fairly recently. Some were seen and photographed there in 1949, 1952, and 1954. Others that had been sold or lost are represented in photographs taken between 1886 and 1920. Some of these specimens are now in museum collections. These items of dress consist of masks (for dancing, not shamanistic performances), feather headdresses of various kinds, hats, caps, helmets, coats, shirts, vests, blankets, gloves, bibs, and bandolier-style bags. Other ceremonial garments we learned about only through descriptions given by informants.

FOREIGN STYLES

The man's dance shirt worn especially at Dry Bay by the TłukwaAdi who claim an Athabaskan origin, was described as made of tanned white moose or caribou skin, with “porcupine quills all over.” A sketch (fig. 55) made by Emma Ellis indicated a shirt with a beaded collar, a slit in front down to a V-shaped beaded and fringed yoke, beaded and fringed straps like epaulettes from the collar to the shoulders, and similar decorations around the bottom. The under-arm seam was sometimes fringed and there was beading at the cuffs. These fringes were said to have been made of beads with tufts of yarn at the ends. (Some were obviously cut into the tanned skin itself, to judge by such jackets in photographs.) The Dry Bay men wore boots that came up to about the knee and that were also decorated with procupine quills. Probably this dance costume represented an elaboration of the ordinary man's dress at Dry Bay.

On the other hand, Copper River Atna dress was favored by the Kwacqwan of Yakutat, because of their traditional origin. Possibly the Atna dress was once worn more commonly here, although recently it was described only for potlatches. The man's shirt is said to have been decorated with dentalia (tAe). A Tł’UknaAdi man from Yakutat, who attended a potlatch in Sitka given about 1901, was described as “dressed like genuine Copper River—them tAe business all over. Just pretty. He had tight pants and a belt, slip shirt over, and tAe sewed on the side, and a fringe is hanging, and the tAe business right up to the hip on the side.” (MJ)

FIGURE 55.—TłukwaAdi man's dance shirt of tanned white moose or caribou skin with beaded ornamentation, as sketched by Emma Ellis.

The “Copper River woman's dress,” also worn at potlatches, is represented by a doll (pl. 134) made by MJ for Dr. McClellan. The dress is a long frock of tanned skin, reaching below the knees, with a high neck and long sleeves. It is belted at the waist and trimmed with fur at the hem and cuffs. A strip of fringed skin runs from the armpits across the chest to form a V, the point of which is at the waist in the middle. The yoke above this is beaded. There are also fringes along the underarm seams. High-topped moccasins that cover the ankles are worn, made in three pieces: sole, instep, and ankle flap.

With such Athabaskan costumes, the women were apt to wear their hair in braids, with beaded headband and feathers, and the men also adopted feather headdresses (pls. 210–212, 216). The face paint was also supposed to be in Athabaskan style, or a dancer might wear a mask purporting to represent an Atha-baskan's long face.

The Yakutat people have apparently been eager to adopt other foreign styles of dress for ceremonial occasions. Thus, at one potlatch at Dry Bay, the women cut their hair in Japanese style and wore kimonos. A Japanese ship that had been wrecked nearby was said to have been the inspiration for the costume. The Kagwantan at Sitka once adopted the American Navy, and therefore Kagwantan women there and at Yakutat sometimes wear middy blouses or dresses with sailor collars. Some Yakutat men and women at potlatches in 1904 and 1916 wore wide flat brims (without crowns?), trimmed all around with long beaded fringes (pls. 210–212, 214). This style of headdress was said to have been “captured from the Russians.”

CREST SHIRTS

Other ceremonial garments were crest shirts. One of these is a magnificent garment of Chilkat weave representing the Brown Bear (pl. 145), which had belonged to the Teqwedi house head, Situk Jim, who died in 1912. The coat is trimmed at the neck and cuffs of the long sleeves with land otter fur, and two gussets of the fur have been let into the sides because it was too tight. In addition to the main overall bear pattern, there are three faces down the center representing the bear husband, his human wife and, at the bottom, their cub. On the back of the shirt is an inverted face, signfying that the wearer would promptly invite his host to a return potlatch.

Another crest shirt of the Teqwedi was of cloth, with the outline of the Bear stitched on with dentalia. It was worn at the dedication of the Golden Eagle Screen in Drum House (pl. 213).

A Mount Saint Elias coat acquired by a private collector in 1946, and now in the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, is of cloth ornamented with buttons and beads that form floral designs on the cuffs and hem and has the conventionalized figure of the cloud-ringed mountain in the middle (pl. 147). This was a crest of the Kwacqwan, and the coat was probably worn by a man.

In addition, there was a sleeveless cloth shirt with beadwork outlining the mountain, within which is a squatting figure with enormous head (the spirit of the mountain?) and various faces (pl. 144). This was named as the Mount Saint Elias “Blanket” (ae t‘a ca u), even though it is a shirt, perhaps because it replaced a blanket of that name.

The Kwacqwan also had a Raven shirt, worn by a woman (pl. 144). This was a loose fitting cloth shirt with long sleeves, and decorated with a beaded design that included the Raven.

OTHER COATS AND VESTS

Photographs (pls. 210–212) of Yakutat guests at a potlatch in Sitka, December 9, 1904, show both men and women wearing similar beaded cloth garments, with long sleeves and without belt, some with floral designs and others with beaded crests figures (Eagle, and Raven?). Other cloth shirts or frocks evidently copied the Dry Bay Athabaskan costume with beaded yoke, neckband, shoulder straps, belt, cuffs, and hem. The fringes on the yoke were of buttons and beads.

There were also coats of whole ermine skins, including the tails, and one of groundsquirrel fur. These were decorated with elaborately beaded shoulder, neck, cuff, and hem of flannel, usually bright red. Some of these were caught at the waist by a beaded belt. The designs on these were floral (pls. 1, 141, 146).

An ordinary cloth vest, decorated with floral bead-work, was traditionally worn by one of the Teqwedi song leaders, and is now in the Alaska State Museum. With it he wore a head ring and shoulder rope of cedar bark, evidently a style imported from the south (pls. 140, 147)

BIBS

Over these fur or cloth coats, shirts, and frocks, beaded cloth neckbands were often worn. These had two or three rectangular tabs hanging down in front or over the shoulders, or had a large bib in front. Again the designs might be floral patterns, but more often depicted sib crests. For example, the Kwacqwan had one representing the big rock at the Humpback Salmon Stream, and above it, a Raven that became drunk, flew upside down, turned white, and fell down (pl. 1). The CAnkuqedi have a bib with a Thunderbird in the center and stars in the corners (pl. 15). The Teqwedi had a number of bibs with the Eagle, a double-headed Eagle, two Killerwhales chasing a seal, a single Killerwhale, and so on (pl. 214). A bib with a Frog probably belonged to the TłUknaxAdi, although it was not specifically identified by my informants.

BAGS

Men and women might wear one or two beaded cloth dance bags, slung bandolier-fashion over one shoulder and under the other, (pl. 141). These ended in four wide finger-like appendages, and were therefore called ‘devilfish finger bags’ (naqw tł’ei [tł’eqi] gweł). In one photograph (pl. 214) taken in 1916 a number of young Teqwedi men, guests at a potlatch, wear such bags as caps, but this may have been only for a stunt, since one man is wearing a woman's hat and the two white feathers of the Peace Hostage.

BLANKETS

On these ceremonial occasions men, women, and children might wear blankets, often together with bib and headgear. The blanket was usually pulled over the shoulders, fastened at the throat with a short beaded strap that ran across the neck, with the straight edge falling down in front over the arms and body (pl. 213). In former days, thongs were used instead of the strap. The song leaders who needed freedom of movement to wield the paddles or batons with which the singing and dancing was directed, wore the blanket wrapped around the body, sometimes under the armpits, or over one shoulder and under the other. These blankets were Chilkat blankets, beaded crest blankets, and button blankets. To judge by the old photographs these blankets were worn over ordinary shirt and trousers or dress, not over a decorated shirt, but this may have been because there were not enough costumes to equip all members of the family in full regalia.

CHILKAT BLANKETS

Chilkat blankets (naxen) were imported from Klukwan and Haines. They were made on order, and were therefore of different sizes to fit adults and children. The desired crest was specified, but the purchaser had to rely on the maker to carry out the order, since the Yakutat people were apparently not able to interpret the designs. Two men in the photograph taken at Sitka in 1904 are wearing Chilkat blankets (pl. 212). Jim Kardeetoo owned the Teqwedi Brown Bear Blanket (xuts naxen) and his Kwacqwan daughter wore a child's Chilkat blanket, design unidentified (pl. 143). The Tł’UknaAdi wife of adane Johnstone, Anna, had a Chilkat blanket that represented the Raven (pl. 148); Sam George, CAnkuqedi, owned one with a Thunderbird design and the words “Chilkat Blanket” spelled out in the weave at the neck (pl. 15). A child's blanket, collected at Yakutat in 1914, but with unidentified design, is in the Washington State Museum (pl. 149).

CREST BLANKETS

There are two important beaded crest blankets at Yakutat. These are made of heavy dark blue cloth and are trimmed with red borders across the top and down the sides. One of these was made for Jack Peterson, CAnkuqedi (1870–1938), and has the figure of a Thunderbird in the center, two wolves(?) in the corners, and a face with protruding tongue below the Thunderbird, all executed in beads on red felt applique (pl. 150). The border is trimmed with very, large pearl buttons, said to have belonged to Jack Peterson's father, the famous shaman, utcda.

The second crest blanket represents the Ahrnklin River, and belongs to the Drum House Teqwedi (pl. 151). The beaded figures on red applique represent the river, with the spirit at its head and another at its mouth. Above on each side are two faces (clouds?); farther down are two large eyes or faces (mountains?) and two small wolves.

A modern crest blanket, representing Mount Saint Elias, is a fine white Hudson's Bay four point blanket, on which the mountain with a face inside the peaked outline and clouds about the summit, four moonlike faces below, two Humpback Salmon, and a double-headed monster (the mouth of the Humpback Salmon Stream ?), are all outlined in colored machine stitching (pl. 152). It belonged to Young George, Kwacqwan, who drowned in 1915.

BUTTON BLANKETS

Whereas these Chilkat or beaded crest blankets seem to be worn only by chiefs, house heads, and the immediate members of their families, other persons chiefly women and young girls, wore button blankets (ai kawu uw). These blankets are of dark blue woolen cloth, preferably of lightweight broadcloth, “so they won’t sweat so much when they dance” (MJ). It is said to take 2 yards of such cloth, at $10 a yard, to make a blanket for an adult. The blanket is trimmed with a wide border of red woolen cloth across the top and down the two sides (fig. 56). The more ordinary kind is called the “four stripe blanket” (daundati), because there are two additional vertical stripes of red inside the side borders. The more expensive kind has these and also another cross stripe of red near the top, making three red-outlined squares on the upper part of the blanket, and is therefore called “crosswise over the shoulders” (tł’ícaki t’áÈ). A little girl‘s blanket might have only two vertical red stripes (pl. 166). These blankets are further decorated with one to three rows of old-fashioned commercial shell buttons (mother-of-pearl) sewn on the blue background next to the inner edges of the red stripes. On some of the older blankets these buttons may be as big as dollars, but more recently small buttons were used, either because they were preferred or because they were the only kind available. Men also wore button blankets, for the shaman, utcda, wore one when he came to Yakutat. Two older men among the Yakutat guests at the Sitka potlatch in 1904 wore what seem to be elaborate button blankets (pls. 210, 211). One has a light background and dark stripes and appears to have several folds of material; the other blanket is dark but seems to be decorated with a fringed silk scarf on which Chinese coins are sewn.

FIGURE 56.—Button blankets sketched by Minnie Johnson. a, “Four-stripe blanket.” b, “Cross-wise over the shoulders.” These blankets were of blue broadcloth with red stripes. Three rows of mother-of-pearl buttoms are supposed to be sewn on the blue cloth next to the red stripes.

GLOVES

Dancing gloves or mittens were mentioned but not described. They are perhaps represented by a pair of white cotton gloves, ornamented with tasseled fringes from the tip of the little finger to the wrist. These were worn by one of the Yakutat song leaders at the Sitka potlatch in 1904 (pl. 211l). Perhaps the cotton work gloves worn by young Teqwedi guests at a potlatch in 1916 served the same purpose (pl. 214).

HEADGEAR

The most common headgear for men and women consisted of black silk kerchiefs, wound like turbans, and ornamented with cockades of dyed chicken feathers, of the type brought by the Hudson's Bay Company into Yukon Territory (pls. 1, 127, 153). These were called ‘Canadian feathers’ (níngÈnín t’awu).

At the Sitka potlatch in 1904, a pair of feathers, like those worn by the peace hostage dancer, might be thrust into a beaded headband or be worn with a headband of alternate dark and light colored down (or fur?). An elaborate headdress worn by one man had a maskette on the forehead and a crown of stiff white feathers. There were also beaded caps of soft cloth with tassels (pl. 210).

The Tł’UknaAdi formerly had a cap of red felt, trimmed with ermine, and 31 braids of human hair (pl. 153). It is said to have come from Gue, and had been owned by Dry Bay Chief George, and then by Lituya Bay George. “It was a cap with braids on it for every slave killed” (MJ). It is now in the Alaska State Museum.

Other headgear included a cedar bark ring with tassels, worn as crown by a Teqwedi song leader, apparently a southern Tlingit fashion.

HEADDRESS WITH MASK

Dancers, men or women, and even children, might wear the square wooden masklike headdress, surmounted by sea lion whiskers and flicker feathers, and trailing a veil of ermine skins (pls. 62, 142). This type of headdress (cAki’At) was probably made by the Tsimshian although it was referred to as a “Haida head piece,” because it was worn when dancing at a potlatch to “Haida mouth” type songs. It was also worn on other occasions; for example, Chief Yen-aht-setl posed for Professor Libbey in 1886 wearing such a headdress. Dick Manson, a TcukAnedi man from Hoonah, is apparently wearing the same headdress in a photograph (pl. 215d) of a funeral group in Thunderbird House, Yakutat, taken in 1918 or 1921. One wonders whether this was the “Bear Head piece” that Blind Dave Dick offered as bride price for MJ when she was young (p. 459), although the figure seems to be more like a Golden Eagle. The Teqwedi also had a headdress of this type representing a Golden Eagle on a rock. It formerly belonged to Jim Kardeetoo, but is now in the Portland Art Museum (pl. 156). Another headdress representing the Golden Eagle, made by a Tsimshian Indian before 1886, belonged to the Drum House lineage, and was photographed at Yakutat in 1949 (pl. 157c; fig. 57). A Golden Eagle mask for a similar headdress was also seen and photographed (pl. 157a). It was said to have come from the grave of Kadaetł (either Chief Minaman or his predecessor). It is not the same as that worn by Chief Yen-aht-setl (Minaman) in 1886.

FIGURE 57.—Headdress sketched by Edward Malin at Yakutat in 1949.

The flicker feathers (kun t’awu) used in decorating these headdresses were very valuable. They were not obtainable at Yakutat, but are said to have been imported from the Tsimshian, and presumably were already incorporated in the cAki’At.

CREST HATS AND HELMETS

The most important headgear were the crest hats (aw) and helmets (i) worn by chiefs. There have been several woven spruce root hats collected at Yakutat and, as far as I know, all of them have the Killerwhale crest, painted on the twined weaving or embroidered in straw. The original model is supposed to have been one acquired by the shaman, atgawet, on a visit in spirit to the Tsimshian (see p. 711). Libbey collected two fine old hats at Yakutat in 1886. One has a design in red and black paint, suggestive of a Killerwhale and other figures (pl. 155); the other, with four woven cylinders on top, has a red, blue, and black Killerwhale painted as if coiled around the brim (pl. 154). The Portland Art Museum has two hats which belonged to Jim Kardeetoo, the Teqwedi chief. One is a very old one with painted Killerwhale decoration (pl. 145); the other, a much newer hat with the Killerwhale embroidered in green, black, and orange straws (PAM 48.3.598), is said to have been modeled after a wooden Killerwhale hat or helmet, of which I have no record. The older hat is now topped by six cylinders, three covered with hardwood, three with copper, but it is exident that these were taken from some other hat. Photographs taken at Yakutat some years ago show the same set of cylinders, topped with a panache of ermine skins, on the newer hat (pl. 143). The older hat is supposed to have been found in a box on the beach at Situk River, where it had floated as part of the wreckage from the canoes that capsized in Lituya Bay (p. 270). The hat was unfinished, but when given to the chief, he ordered it finished, paying five slaves for the work. Afterwards, the chief gave a feast and added the top. To put on the three copper rings represented the cost of two valuable slaves. In another statement in the catalog, we are told that the first chief added only one ring, and his two successors the other two. The copper represented slaves killed over the hat, which also was said to “have the spirits of the drowned owners.”

Although the Tł’UknaAdi claimed a Raven Hat, this may have been owned by the chief of the sib in Sitka. However, in the photograph of dancers at the potlatch in Sitka, 1904, there are two older men wearing wooden hats or helmets (pl. 212). One of these has a carved figure of what appears to be a Raven, and is topped by two basketry cylinders; the other has the figure of what appears to be a bird of prey (Eagle?), and is topped by four cylinders. Unfortunately, I have not been able to identify the wearers. At Dry Bay, in a shaman's grave house, Emmons found a crest hat woven of spruce root and painted to represent the Frog (AMNH E/1082). This was for “general dance occasions,” that is for potlatches, not for shamanistic practice; the crest indicates the Tł’UknaAdi or TłUkwaAdi.

In a 1918 or 1921 photograph of Thunderbird House, Yakutat, one of the CAnkuqedi youths (Sam Henninger, Sr.), is wearing a wooden helmet carved in the shape of an animal (pl. 215c). The face at the front suggests a Bear, but the high crest might be the fin of the Killerwhale. The carved wooden helmet representing an Eagle, formerly owned by Tanu (Jim Itinesku of Golden Eagle House in the Old Village), is now in the Alaska State Museum (pl. 158). Curiously enough it was collected by Axel Rasmussen from Billy Jackson, Kwacqwan, brother-in-law of the Teqwedi house head. A wooden helmet, unfinished, representing a Frog on top of some other animal, was at one time owned by MJ, and seems to have been Tł’UknaAdi sib property (pl. 158). With this specimen, however, we seem to pass from ceremonial sib regalia for potlatch wear to the crest-decorated helmets worn in fighting (see pp. 590–591).

MASKS

Not all Tlingit masks were reserved for shamans. A few from Yakutat were definitely used in dances at potlatches. For example, the Alaska State Museum now has a wooden mask, carved and painted by Tom Coxe, and used by the Teqwedi for dancing (pl. 157). The eyes are pierced and the face is that of a man with gaudy face paint. There was also an Eagle mask, made by B. A. Jack for Ned Daknaqin, for a big potlatch given by that Teqwedi chief. The eyes of this mask are not pierced (pl. 157). In the U.S. National Museum there is a fine mask of copper, decorated with inlays of abalone shell, and brown bear fur for the hair. It represents a Brown Bear (USNM 332,801). It was collected in 1926 by the late Alèš Hrdlika, at “Yakutat River, British Columbia.” That this may well refer to Yakutat, Alaska, is suggested by a photograph taken in Thunderbird House, in which a CAnkuqedi woman (Mrs. Jenny White), holds in front of her face what appears to be an identical mask, except that this is painted and lacks bear fur (pl. 215g). The mask was said to be used for an Athabaskan dance. (JW)

Personal Adornment and Grooming

To judge by the archeological evidence, ornaments worn in the Yakutat area were large and medium-sized beads of coal, a few pendants of animal teeth, beads of birdbone, nose pins, and danglers, bracelets, and rings of native copper. The last were evidently too large to have been worn on the finger. The labret was not represented in the archeological collections, although it was described by explorers of the 18th century (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 154–165). The labret remained fashionable for women until about 1875. Only a few old women were wearing them near the end of the century. In this connection, Emmons noted that the Kwacqwan women wore no labrets and that the men of that sib wore long bone pins in the septum of the nose. The original Drum House Teqwedi (whom he believed were Athabaskans from the upper Alsek), and the now extinct ł’uedi, or “Muddy Water People” of the Situk area, did not wear labrets. The archeological evidence would support the hypothesis that the original non-Tlingit inhabitants of the Yakutat area followed Athabaskan style in not wearing the labret, although this is not conclusive, since many labrets were of wood. Presumably this ornament for women was introduced by the Tlingit.

LABRETS

Minnie Johnson, who was born in 1884, remembers as a child that there was an old woman who wore a bone labret (aq enaa) as big as the end of her thumb. It was probably hat-shaped. There were apparently none of the large dish-shaped or pulley-shaped wooden labrets being worn at that time, like those described by Beresford and LaPérouse, and sketched by Suría (pl. 52). This informant's own mother (1847–1912) wore a small silver pin in her lower lip, called “smart pin” (Anuw), which she could suck into her mouth and poke back into place with her tongue. Formerly all high-class women wore labrets. When the informant's father and grandfather wanted to have her lip and nose cut for ornaments, her mother and aunt refused to allow it. “My daughter ain’t going to cut up her face for it”—which indicates the change in fashions. A woman born in 1900, for example, does not remember ever seeing a woman with a labret.

Emmons obtained five sandstone labrets and one of bone at Yakutat (AMNH 19/317–321, 549), probably in the 1880‘s, when these had already gone out of style. Professor Libbey in 1886 obtained a very small labret like a pin, made of some white metal (zinc?, German silver?; pl. 135).

Harrington renders the word for labret as ‘mouth-wart’ (eenâawaa, or éenâaxaa) from ‘mouth’ (een, or An), and ‘wart’ (âaw). The small pin used as a labret is (wÁnnùu), possibly ‘mouth-nut,’ although he does not offer that etymology.

He also records the following information, obtained from Jack Ellis:

“When asked about labrets, he says that a small slit was cut in a woman's lip—(gest. at ” or more below the edge of the lip) and on growing older, this hole was stretched larger. A plug was worn in this hole. This custom was employed so that women would not talk too much. A high-born Tł[ingit] woman talked very little. The high-born Tl. people had had experience of women talking too much and thereby causing gossip, dissentions and WARS, and that was why they made the women wear plugs.”

I heard similar folk-explanations of the custom.

NOSE ORNAMENTS

Yakutat men and women wore noserings (łùnás) of silver, and presumably before that of copper. Archeological copper rings were identified as “Copper River noserings,” worn while dancing (MJ and friend). The old style of ring required a slit in the septum, because the rings were closed (de Laguna et al, 1964, fig. 19, c), but the silver rings worn in the present century were broken hoops of silver that could easily be slid over the septum. These hung down to the upper lip, or even over the mouth (pls. 1, 140, 210). In a photograph taken of “Sheet ahn do tin” and his family in Yakutat, 1886, both the man and his baby are wearing very small noserings (pl. 63).

At least some men wore nose pins, for Jim Kardeetoo (1862–1937) is wearing one in a photograph taken in 1916 (pl. 214a). In photographs taken at Sitka in 1904, Sitka Charley, head of the Tł’UknaAdi Whale House at Sitka, and a song leader identified only as George Dick, “Don-nah-icth” (DAna’ic, ’Dollar Father’?), both wear nose pins (pls. 210, 212). These ornaments were painted by Suría (pl. 56). Two bone bodkins which may have been nose pins were found on Knight Island (de Laguna et al, 1964, fig. 19, e,f).

EAR ORNAMENTS

Rings were sometimes worn in the ears (EE), but ear ornaments were usually of other shapes. Some earrings (gukw kA djAc, or gukw ’At) were pendants of fossil(?) shark teeth (cAxdÁq ’uu), obtained in trade, or copies of these in silver. Some earrings worn by Tł’UknaAdi women were described as made of abalone shell (tAe u tei), shaped like crows (MJ). Earrings worn by women when dancing at potlatch festivities were long strings of beads (gukw tłen). Earrings of more recent make are all of gold, and these are still worn by women and girls with pierced ears. The gold earrings which I saw at Yakutat all seemed to be of White manufacture.

BRACELETS

In prehistoric times, copper bracelets (kis) were worn by the rich and noble, and each is said to have been worth one big sea otter skin. These are represented by specimens from the site on Knight Island (de Laguna et al., 1964, fig. 19, a, b, d), and also by two specimens from the Yakutat area collected by Emmons (AMNH E/1295, 2563). Later, bracelets were made of coin silver, engraved with crest designs or floral scrolls. A silver bracelet with “dog fish design,” probably the Teqwedi's Shark, and another with an American Eagle; and three with floral or scroll designs come from Yakutat and Dry Bay (pl. 135, from Yakutat; AMNH E/2429, 2431, 2432, from Dry Bay). Professor Libbey also purchased a bracelet of beadwork at Yakutat in 1886, along with a beaded cord and long beaded band (pl. 135; PU 5197, 5196), but these may all have been made for the tourist trade. The bracelets at Yakutat most highly prized at present are of gold, carved or incised with crest designs. Most of the older women at Yakutat have these, inherited from their mothers.

BEADS AND NECKLACES

Necklaces (sed, sAkA ‘At, or sAkA kawút) were once made of twisted copper. To judge from archeological examples, these were cylindrical spirals of copper, strung like beads (de Laguna et al., 1964, fig. 19 h). Probably the beads of other materials, coal and bone, were worn as necklaces (ibid., pl. 17).

Glass beads (kawut) were among the articles of trade obtained at a very early period by the Yakutat people, and were used for necklaces, earrings, hair ornaments, and for decorating clothing. One of the earliest kinds of beads were of pale blue glass, like those seen by Captain Cook in Prince William Sound in 1778 (de Laguna et al., 1964, pp. 202–203). Specimens of these, found at the early historic site of Nesudat on Lost River, were called ‘smoke [colored] beads’ (eq kawut). They were said to be very precious, and could be worn only by “owners of slaves.” Other glass beads, obtained from the Russians, and also found in historic sites, including the shaman's grave, were dark blue, red, and white, and were called ‘Russian beads’ (‘Anuci kawudi). Necklaces were described as made of red and blue beads, or of red and white beads with brass pendants interspersed at intervals of 2 inches. The latter (‘At kanudji) were like beads with small projecting claws—“It's like a diamond ring when the diamond came off”—and were said to have been worth a sea otter or a slave!

Scratching amulets of stone, carved in various shapes, and incised with designs, were worn around the neck (see p. 666).

Dentalia (tae, tAe) were used for ornaments, and were certainly obtained in trade. They were described as shiny little things that look like abalone shell. They get them from the bottom of the water, by sinking a piece of meat for bait. The tae are supposed to be alive, so they “clean out the live things inside.”

“The thing they called tae was just like beads, about an inch, I think, or an inch and a half long. It's white but it's a live thing. They call them almost the same thing as the [teredo worm] that eats the wood in the dock…. There's a shell on it, and when they take the inside out it's like beads. But it's more like a pearl, all shiny…. They get them from the water—around Hydaberg someplace, in the deep water.”

Abalone (haliotis) shell, used for earrings and inlays, was called tae u tei, and was said to “come from the same thing [as dentalia]. It's green, almost square. It's a good stone. It's pretty expensive.”

No one remembered any tradition of making beads from coals.

HAIR AND HAIR ORNAMENTS

Except for shamans who wore their hair in very long tangled locks and braids, men in former times wore theirs to the shoulder. It was cut by putting a board behind the hair and slicing the latter off with a knife.

Women let their hair grow, since long abundant hair was much admired. An Athabaskan style, assumed at potlatches, was to wear the hair in two braids falling over the shoulders, with a band around the head, trimmed with beads or porcupine quills, in which two feathers might be thrust. Dry Bay women also wore their hair in two braids on ordinary occasions. Yakutat women wore their hair in braids, or coiled high on their heads. In both areas, women frequently let their hair down, to hang loose. Sometimes this was done on festive occasions, sometimes when the women “get tired of braids.” When Mrs. Frank Dick, from Dry Bay, posed for her picture, she brushed out her long hair over her shoulders (pl. 4). MJ remembers how her mother's long hair used to reach to the floor when she was sitting and how it moved back and forth as she wove baskets.

The hair was dressed with combs, some of these evidently carved in crest designs. Thus, a wooden comb from the site on Knight Island, is crudely carved to represent a Raven (de Laguna et al., 1964, fig. 20, c). Professor Libbey obtained Chief Yen-aht-setl's wooden comb (pl. 136). This is carved to depict a Bear(?), between whose ears peers a spirit's face. The animal's body is sketchily indicated on the back of the comb, with an inverted face where the tail is turned up.

It is thus evident that combs were not restricted to shamans.

Little girls wore a long heavy hair ornament (tin) at the nape of the neck. (There was also one type of headdress worn by the shaman that was called by the same word.) The girl's ornament hung down in back, and “when you move, it's like the wind is waving the bushes. It makes you grow.” (MJ) The hair on each side of the head was braided into two or more braids, and these were drawn into a big braid behind that was pulled through a ring of driftwood bamboo or rawhide. The ring was shaped like a napkin ring and was covered with beadwork. The hair was evidently folded back into a bundle to make this secure.

“[Bamboo]—they used to use it for the tin, for the body part. They put beadwork on it. It's only that long [3 or 4 inches]. It rolls back and forth on my neck. I swing my head back and forth to feel it.” (MJ)

From the ring hung a netlike arrangement of moosehide, covered with beads or dentalia, and ending in a beaded fringe. Such an ornament might be 6 inches wide and 24 inches long. It was lined with soft tanned skin, or with cloth purchased from Canadian Indians. It is not clear whether ornaments of this kind were made in Yakutat, or were always imported. One which had been worn by a young Dry Bay woman about 1900 was supposed to have been made by the Tsimshian Indians or by the “Flatheads.” Actually, the article as described must have been very similar to that worn by the adolescent daughters of Nootka chiefs (Drucker, 1951, fig. 16). MJ had worn one as a child in the late 1880's, which her father's sister had brought from southeastern Alaska, but said she hated it because her mother had to braid her hair so tight that it hurt and the big bundle of hair to which it was attached would fall down when she played.

Such an ornament might be worn by a little girl, or by a young girl after her puberty confinement. It was normally provided by the father's sister, who received a handsome gift in exchange. Thus, the ornament was reserved for the daughters of the well-to-do. It should not be confused with the hood which was worn by the adolescent girl, and which was also decorated with dentalia, beads, or porcupine quills, depending on the wealth of the family.

After the death of a relative or husband, a woman's hair was cut. While the Angoon Tlingit remembered that men cut or singed off their hair when mourning, my Yakutat informants made no mention of this tradition. The cutting of women's hair for mourning was abandoned some time early in the present century. However, the shaman and his wife never cut their hair.

THE SKIN: TATTOOING AND PAINTING

Upper class women were tattooed, and a few women at Yakutat still have simple designs tattooed on the back of the hand, on the fleshy part between the bones of the thumb and forefinger. The designs might represent a “copper” or the crest of the woman's sib. In one case, an Owl was noticed on the hands of a Kwacqwan woman.

Women prized a clear light complexion. For the young girl, this was achieved by her long puberty seclusion when she was shut up in a darkened room, and when finally allowed out, had to cover her head with a big hood that shielded her face. Women used to smear a dark paint on their faces when working in the sun at sealing camp or when picking berries, and such paint was also worn by men and children when exposed to the strong sunlight. Melted pitch or spruce gum (u) was mixed with an equal amount of mountain goat tallow (Aneí). This was mixed with charcoal made from powdered bark (ÁgwÀt) of the red cedar. The latter was obtained from the beach where it drifted ashore, and was prepared by grinding it on a rough stone. One woman thought that the bark was obtained from the interior. I was told that this dark application not only kept the skin from burning or tanning, but actually bleached it and made it smooth.

FIGURE 58.—Face stamps with Teqwedi crests carved by Sitka Ned about 1910. a, Killerwhale, enlarged from 4 inches, b, Wolf enlarged from 3 inches. (Portland Art Museum no. 2094 and 48.3.217.)

Men, however, were more likely to apply powdered charcoal (and grease?) than the powdered cedar bark as a protection when hunting on the water. Harrington's informant (Jack Ellis) said that this was made with spruce pitch (ú) and charcoal made from pitchwood. When going above Point Latouche to the head of Yakutat Bay, men would paint charcoal rings around their eyes. While undoubtedly useful against the glare on the water, it was believed to prevent rain.

On ceremonial occasions, men and women both painted their faces with red ochre (łéw). This was obtained from Metlakatla, or from between Turner and Hubbard Glaciers in Disenchantment Bay. It was ground up to make paint, and kept in a little tanned skin bag. According to Harrington's informant (GJ), such paint was very scarce in 1939, and no one at Yakutat had any. When he was a boy he used to see such paint used for dancing. “It was a powder, and a very little water was dropped on it and then one with one's finger painted one's face. Then you were ready to go to the dance.” Women might apply it with wooden stamps, carved to represent the totemic crest of their sib. Two such stamps, both carved by Sitka Ned, and used at Situk “thirty years ago” (i.e., 1910), were obtained from Billy Jackson, who, I think had them from Situk Jim or some other Teqwedi man. One is carved to represent the Wolf, the other the Killerwhale (fig. 58). Such stamps were dipped in the paint and then pressed against the cheek. Some of the women at the Sitka potlatch in 1904 (pls. 210–212), probably all Tł’UknaAdi, have a “copper” stamped on each cheek, from the edge of the nostril to the ear, with three vertical stripes on the chin, or with a heart-shaped figure on the forehead. Teqwedi men at the same potlatch had large oval patches on the cheeks and a dot at the root of the nose. At potlatch in 1916 (pl. 214), the male Teqwedi guests wore various patterns of face paint, one of which consists of a canoe on each cheek (cf. Swanton, 1908, pl. LI, i); another is simply a broad horizontal band across the eyes and nose, and another across the mouth and jaws. At a performance in the ANB Hall, the performers, dressed in Athabaskan costume, had horizontal lines through the eyes, from the nose across the cheek, and from the mouth along the jaws (pl. 216). Other patterns were mentioned, but not described. Special patterns in red paint were used for peace hostages (see p. 600).

Black paint was smeared on the face in time of war, or when facing any dangerous undertaking.

CLEANLINESS

Urine was used in the old days, for washing the hair, skins, and probably other things also, since it will cut grease. However, this practice was given up as soon as soap became available. Black hair, without a trace of gray, was desired by the old people, and some of the rites performed at a girl's adolescence and at a woman's widowhood were to prevent her hair from turning gray. On the other hand, snow white hair has also been cited as evidence of White ancestry. Fresh seal oil, put up with cottonwood buds, was not only good for waterproofing boots, but if rubbed on the hair before washing it, is said to make the hair soft and silky.

No doubt head lice were bothersome, and the combs may have been employed primarily to remove them and their eggs.

Frequent bathing seems to have been stressed, in cold water early in the morning for boys and men, and hot steam baths for women and older people.

The new clothing acquired from White people had to be washed, and methods suitable for caring for the old skins and furs may not have been effective in dealing with woolen goods.

“I watch my mother how she wash blankets one time. She got blankets way down in the salt water and stamp on it. Get soap and water ready and pound it in. Rinse it with fresh water.”

“They wash the red blanket in salmon eggs, mashed. It looks just like it just come out of the trunk, the way it looks—so new.”

Washing blankets in salt water was said to prevent them from fading. “Wash them in the juice of any fish eggs that ferments. This keeps the wool fluffy. Then rinse them out two, three times in fresh water.”

BEING ADORNED

Cutting the labret hole, piercing the ears and nose, tattooing the hands, and applying face paint for ceremonies was supposedly done by members of the opposite moiety, who were paid for these services. Thus, a slave was said to have been the proper fee for cutting the labret hole in a chief's daughter. “My grandfather's sister cut my mother [the operator's brother's daughter]. He [the grandfather] paid her a slave right there.” The labret was inserted at “a party” (MJ). The labret hole was normally made for a girl when she emerged from her puberty seclusion. It was cut with a mussel shell knife. A board, shaped to fit the chin, was held against the lower lip, and the cut was made into this. Every day the wound was dressed with seal fat to prevent infection.

On the other hand, the brother CW said that his own mother had pierced his nose and ears with a needle when he was a little boy. While this should have been done by a paternal aunt, perhaps some member of his father‘s sib inserted the ornaments when he first wore them. A small ring would be put in the septum of the nose to keep the hole open.

Holes were made in the nose and in the lobe of the ear a few days after birth in former times, but holes in the rim of the ear were made later, at potlatches (cf. Emmons’ notes). This rule was evidently changing during the period remembered by my informants. Thus, one woman told me that she was 21 years old when her ears were first pierced, and this was only in the lobes. It was done at a special potlatch by a woman of her father's sib, to whom her mother paid $85. Other women of the opposite moiety pinned gold brooches in her sib crest design on her dress. Her sister was similarly treated on the same occasion, and the total cost to her mother was $1,000. Threads were tied in the ear holes to keep them from closing.

Although I learned of recent instances in which girls had their ears pierced by a girl friend in the opposite moiety, no mention was made of payment for this service.

Naturally in the old days before there were mirrors, persons had to rely on others to put on their face paint and arrange their hair. Often this was done by slaves, who were then freed. Thus, when atgawet had his slaves comb the snarls from the hair of his sister-in-law, he freed them or her people set them free. Since the freeing of a slave is equivalent to giving one away, or killing one, combing out the hair of Du's sister was being treated as a ceremonial service of adornment (see p. 246).

The Social World

SIBS AND CRESTS

Sib and Moiety

The Yakutat people, like all other Tlingit and like their relatives the Eyak, are grouped into two matrilineal moieties. Because these divisions are exogamous, their members stand toward each other in the relationship of husband and wife, father and child, spouse's siblings and siblings’ spouses, between whom are reciprocal ceremonial obligations. Thus, at all the life crises of members of one moiety, services were rendered by their “opposites”—who, in turn, had to be repaid. Such repayments were generally made at potlatches, when the debtors as hosts entertained the others as guests, each side honoring and sustaining the other. Within the moiety, individuals are related to each other as brother and sister, and as father's father and son's child. Whereas wars might be fought between any sibs regardless of moiety affiliation, in Yakutat (but not universally among other Tlingit) peace could be formally made only between moiety opposites; that is, only sibs in different moieties could be parties to a legal settlement.

It should, however, be emphasized that the moiety as such was not a social group. It had no organization of its own, but was simply an arrangement for regulating the relationships between persons, because it ranged the sibs to which they belonged on one side or the other. The sib organization remained primary. In any given situation involving intermoiety reciprocity, a particular sib or even a lineage or small group of relatives within that sib were the persons who functioned as opposites (unEtkAnai) to a particular individual or group in the other moiety. In Tlingit thought the moiety division was something to be accepted or taken for granted, perhaps similar to the fact that human beings, like most living things, are divided into two sexes.

I do not know of any abstract term for “moiety” as such. The two divisions among the Tlingit are named TłaInedi (for the Ravens) and CAnkuqedi (for the Wolves or Eagles), the latter being the same as the name for one of the sibs. Swanton (1908, p. 407) gives CAnkuke’dÎ for the sib, and CêngoqedÎna for the moiety. The literal meaning or origin of these terms could not be explained by Yakutat informants. The feminine form, TłaI-ca, was freely translated as “sitting down ladies,” but from the context it seemed that the informant was referring to some occasion on which the Raven women were actually sitting down. The use of the sib name, CAnkuqedi, for the moiety implies that all the sibs of this division at one time formed one group for which this was the original designation. It should be remembered that the particular sib called the CAnkuqedi is also known as the DAqestina.

These two moieties are each represented by their respective crest or crests, and may be designated in Tlingit, as in English, by the names of these crests: Raven, and Wolf or Eagle.

Except for the despised and hated “Aleuts” (Chugach), all the native neighbors of the Tlingit had matrilineal sibs. One reason why the Chugach were such anathema to the Eyak, Tlingit, and Atna was because they mated promiscuously like animals, without regard to sib affiliations. They also reversed the proper appearance of the sexes, since Chugach men wore the labrets which the Tlingit reserved for their women (cf. Colnett, quoted p. 130).

The Tlingit could assume that the moiety organization of sibs was ancient and fundamental because matrilineal moieties are found among many of their neighbors: Eyak, Atna, Southern Tutchone, Tahltan, and Haida. Although the Tsimshian matrilineal sibs form four phratries, in Tlingit thought these were grouped into two. (The more remote Athabaskans of the upper Copper, Tanana, and Yukon Rivers have matrilineal sibs, not moieties, but the Yakutat and Chilkat Tlingit knew little about such backward Unana.) Intertribal marriages and trading relationships (which were often accompanied by marital alliances) were all based upon moiety affiliations, and the Tlingit were able to equate foreign sibs with their own and to assign them to one division or the other for marital arrangements. In making these assignments, sib crests were of overriding importance, in contrast to those of the moiety as a whole, providing the foreign group had crests (Swanton, 1908, p. 423).

So important is the sib as the fundamental unit in the social system that the Tlingit tend to conceptualize any foreign group, regardless of its internal structure, as a sib, and as such accord it a place in the Tlingit social universe.

Thus, the American Eagle, first made known to the Tlingit through naval insignia, could be interpreted as a crest, permitting the fiction that Americans belong to the Eagle moiety. This explains why the Sitka Kagwantan could “adopt the Navy as brothers,” which they did at a potlatch, and perhaps also why the Teqwedi chief at Yakutat, Yen-aht-setl or Daqusetc, could so easily appropriate Captain Merriman's name (“Minaman”) as his own. This process of assimilation of foreigners has evidently been much more thoroughly carried out on immigrant groups from the interior who have joined the Tlingit. To judge from the historical traditions, there have been many such groups who have become Tlingit sibs. This is undoubtedly the case with the NēxA‘dÎ of Sanya among the southern Tlingit who are still somewhat uncertain about their moiety affiliation, since they themselves use Eagle names, yet intermarry with both Ravens and Wolves (Swanton, 1908, p. 409). According to tradition, the Kwacqwan were already Ravens before they left the Copper River, yet the incident of how “brothers” and “sisters” married each other (or were saved from sib incest in the nick of time), suggests that the immigrants were actually a mixed or incompletely structured group at that time. What is significant here is not the historical accuracy of the tradition so much as the way it illustrates the overriding tendency for the Tlingit and the foreigners they have assimilated to read all history in terms of sibs.

Sib Individuality

Each sib jealously prizes its own individuality. Each is composed of a group of people who consider themselves brothers and sisters, or, if differences in generation are stressed, as mothers, mothers’ brothers, grandmothers, and great uncles, and the descendants of these persons in the maternal line. All are bound together by the possession of important prerogatives: a common name, a body of historical and mythological traditions, possession of territories for hunting, fishing, and berrying, house sites and houses in the villages, and by a treasure of nonmaterial rights, together with their material or symbolic representations.

The oldest living member, their ‘head’ (na-càdÉ-hàní) or ‘elder’ (cuqadéqà), is the most revered member of the line; their ‘big man’ (łÌngít-tłén), or chief, is the custodian and trustee of the common inheritance. His is the responsibility of “taking care of” the group's territories, allocating their resources fairly among his people, and preserving them against trespass by outsiders; he often exercises the privilege of gathering the first fruits with which to feast his own people or entertain their “opposites.” He is responsible above all for the potlatches and ceremonies that establish and maintain the status of his sib in the eyes of the world, just as he has the right to enjoy or display in his own person the sib‘s most precious ceremonial prerogatives.

In all these characteristics, the lineage is like a sib in miniature, enjoying its own particular share of sib possessions and prerogatives, as well as those to which it makes its own exclusive claim. Its headman, ‘house owner’ (hit ati), stands as councilor to the chief of his sib.

The most precious rights of sib (or lineage) are those that give it its own character and that express its place in the world of men and of living begins. These include the personal names of its members, both those given at birth and the honorific titles that may be assumed later. In addition, as we have already seen, important material possessions (houses, canoes, weapons, ceremonial paraphernalia, and costumes) may also have proper names belonging to the line. Songs, dramatic dances, potlatch calls and war cries, even the spirits that come to shamans, are felt to distinguish one sib from another. Some if, not all, sibs are felt to have their own particular characteristic ways of behaving.

These distinctions and prerogatives are for the most part, and in the most important instances, felt to be associated with the totemic crest or crests of the sib. Indeed, these crests are, from the native point of view, the most important feature of the matrilineal sib or lineage, acquired in the remote past by the ancestors and determining the nature and destiny of their descendants. One might almost say that the members of the sib (or lineage) are the human embodiments of the totemic entities.

Crest objects are the manifestations in material form of these same entities, and therefore represent the sib, its ancestors, and their descendants. The fundamental principles of the Tlingit social system may be understood in terms of these objects and the significance of their emblems, the ways in which they are used, and the purposes for which they are employed. Crests and crest objects represent a symbolic dimension of Tlingit social life, an understanding of which can shed light on the fundamental structuring of kin relationships (see pp. 475–476), and social class or rank (see pp. 461–469). The history of the fundamental units of Yakutat society can be read in the history of their emblems.

Sib and lineage houses of the Yakutat people have already been discussed, their crest decorations described, and their fates traced (pp. 288–291, 315–327). Particular crest hats, headdresses, blankets, and shirts are described on pp. 439–444; song leader's batons and drums on pp. 618–632; the peculiar crests associated with peace ceremonies on pp. 599–600; and such names as could be translated are given on pp. 785–790). If a complete listing of all crest objects could be made for each sib and major lineage, and their histories could be traced, we should be better able to understand the importance of these objects from the native point of view as well as the nature of the social units that claim them.

Yakutat Crests

The crests claimed by the various sibs are given below. The ways in which these crests are represented are also indicated, as far as the latter are known. The list cannot be complete, for many crest objects disappeared long ago and probably have been forgotten.

RAVEN MOIETY

T’łUknaAdi:

Coho salmon (tł’Uk); sib name, hat, blanket, house screen, house in Sitka, personal names

Raven (yeł); house, hat, songs, personal names

Frog (xixt); house, screen, headdress, hat, songs, personal names

Whale (ya); house (in Sitka), hat

Sleep Bird (ta); house

Devilfish (naqw); song leader's pole

Crane (duł); canoe and song

Sea lion (tan);?

Mount Fairweather (Tsałan); house, boat(?), song

Ocean and Breakers(?) (see p. 461)

Kwacqwan:

Humpback Salmon (kwac); including the stream and rock at mouth; blanket, drum

Raven (yeł); house, hat, blanket, shirt, drum

Owl (tisw); house, drum, cry

Moon (dIs); house

Crane (duł); canoe and song

Mount Saint Elias (ate ta ca); house, blanket, shirt, personal names

Crow (tAxwéł); cry

Copper River (‘Iq hini); song leader's pole

Sea Gull (ketłAdi); canoe

TłukwaAdi:

Raven (yeł); personal names

Canoe Prow (cAka); house

Gateway Knob (mountain on Alsek) (K’ita);?

EAGLE-WOLF MOIETY

Teqwedi:

Bear House line

Bear (xuts); house, coat, feast dish, personal names

Killerwhale (kit); drum, song leader's pole, hat, names

Petrel (anuk); song

Mud shark (tu); house

Eagle (ta); on house post, headdress, mask

Murrelet (cit); song

Drum House line

Golden Eagle (gIdjuk); house, headdress, song

Wolf (utc); on blanket

Thunderbird (xetł); house

Ahrnklin River (‘Antłen); blanket

TłaayIk-Teqwedi:

Eagle (t’ca); fort

Bear (xuts); petroglyph

Kagwantan (Box House):

Eagle (ta)

Wolf (utc); house (in Sitka, reported in Dry Bay)

Halibut (tcatł); canoe—at least in Sitka

Killerwhale (kit); helmet

ałyI-Kagwantan:

Eagle (t’ca); house

Wolf (utc); house, personal names

Beaver (égédi); house, song

CAnkuqedi:

Thunderbird (xetł); house, blanket, song

Wolf (utc)

Killerwhale (kit); helmet

As we have seen, the KIksAdi of Sitka are recognized as possessing the Frog (pp. 288–291). The daughter of a akA’ayi man claimed for her father's people the Coho Salmon Hat (axw), Blanket (u), Screen (in), and House (hIt). They still have a Coho House in Sitka. “For everything, they got a song for all these.” The same sib was also credited with the Swan (Uqł), and a personal name derived from that bird was cited. The TcukAnedi of Hoonah have the Porpoise. The DAdentan of Hoonah are recognized as having a claim to the Whale Hat, Devilfish Pole, and Raven Hat, shared with the Tł‘UknaAdi.

As can be seen from the above list (see also Swanton, 1908, pp. 415–423), crests are derived from animals, birds, fish and natural objects such as the Moon, Big Dipper constellation, natural phenomena such as Thunder or Sleep (both birds), or a particular mountain or river. “Ownership” of a particular crest, such as Raven, Bear, or Wolf, implies the right to symbolize this in a variety of ways for public display. Such representations may range from a house and its decorative screen and posts, to a feast dish or a blanket. There are both traditional and specially composed songs to accompany the display of these objects at a potlatch, just as the participants on such occasons may acquire ancient or newly coined “potlatch names” referring to the crest. The crest is also symbolized by the designs painted on their faces or tattooed on their hands. This is what is implied when the Tlingit says that the Bear is ‘our crest’ (ha ’Àtúwú), or the Raven is ‘their crest’ (hAs-du ’Àtúwú) (cf. Boas, 1917, p. 157, ’Àt’ú, ’emblem’). One of our informants also translated ’Àtú as “totem,” and kutíyE, its embodiment in the form of a carving, as “totem pole,” specifically a decorated house post, grave post, or memorial pole. (Boas, 1917, p. 137, dut’ìyí, ’his imitation‘.) Harrington analizes the word “khuuthîyyaa” or “totem pole” as derived from “thîi—to whittle with an axe or an adze” and “yaa—an effigy, duplicate of an object, what it represents.”

The crest was represented in material form more or less realistically or conventionally, according to the cannons of Tlingit art and as the medium permitted. It might be carved and painted on wood, pecked into or sculptured in stone, carved in horn or bone, painted on hide, painted or beaded or woven on garments, and even occasionally woven as a basketry pattern. Such specific articles as the carved pole or post are crest objects. Some were heirlooms, associated with a long line of ancestors; others might be new. Just as we have seen old lineage houses replaced by modern structures that bore the same names, so old crest hats or blankets that wore out or were destroyed at a funeral were replaced by new items called by the same names, such as the Mount Saint Elias Blanket or the Thunderbird Blanket. The new object was not necessarily a duplicate of the old; it was only a symbolic equivalent. I do not know to what extent individual artists strove for originality in rendering crest designs, but the two sibs that might share the same crest, Raven for example, would attempt to display it in distinctive ways and on distinctive types of articles. As we have seen in the case of the anAtedi and their Raven Hat (pp. 274–275), they might be as jealous of their own way of rendering the crest as if the crest itself were their exclusive prerogative.

Ownership of Crests

Each moiety as a whole has its own crest or crests. Thus, among the Eyak, these are the Raven or Crow (the native word is the same for both species, tcila), and the Eagle. The Tlingit stress Raven and Wolf, although the northern Tlingit, including the Yakutat, also make a good deal of the white-headed Eagle. These crests may be used as names in English, as when a native may tell us that “Ravens always marry Eagles,” or “the Ravens and Eagles played against each other in games.” The term “Wolves” was rarely used in English, but in Tlingit songs “your Wolf” or “that Raven” are the poetic metaphors employed. Although all Wolf-Eagle sibs are said at Yakutat to possess the Killerwhale as a crest, the name of this animal is not used to designate either a particular sib or the moiety as a whole. The Teqwedi, however, are not infrequently called “Bears.”

Since the Crow is closely associated with the Raven, little crows being indeed designated as ‘his nephews’ in mythology, so the Raven women may be called ‘Crow Women’ (tAxwéł-ca). The term ‘Seagull Women’ (kew-ca or ew-ca) was also recorded, possibly applied to women of the opposite moiety (?), and carried the connotation of “pretty white ladies picking up things on the beach.” (The bird was either Bonaparte's gull, or the kittiwake; see p. 45.)

In the minds of the Tlingit, the moiety division dates “from the creation of the world,” or perhaps from its primeval ordering by Raven. Thus, the myths would indicate that all or most of the various animals, birds, and other beings that now serve as sib crests were already ranged in the two fundamental groups. This is usually expressed in the form of the relationship of these creatures to Raven. Human beings became separated into different groups or sibs after the Flood, each of which eventually acquired its individual crest in addition to retaining the moiety crest. Those sibs that now hold certain crests in common do so by virtue of their common origin.

Although moiety crests, and some others, are shared by several sibs, what is far more important for the Tlingit, as we shall see, is the distinctive emphasis which each sib tends to give to the common emblem. Of paramount importance is the particular totemic crest which each sib assumes as its chief emblem or as its own exclusive prerogative.

Most sib and lineage crests are believed to be very ancient, and their origins are usually recounted in the form of a myth. I have already given or cited examples of these explaining the origin of the ałyI-Kagwantan Beaver (p. 254), how the Kwacqwan acquired Mount Saint Elias and the Humpback Salmon Stream (pp. 232–237), explanations of the Frog claimed by the Tł’UknaAdi and the KIksAdi (p. 289), why the Tł’UknaAdi claim Mount Fairweather (p. 274), how the Drum House Teqwedi obtained the Arhnklin River and the Golden Eagle (p. 253), and why the CAnkuqedi own the Thunderbird (p. 249). These tales are sufficient to indicate the range of incidents leading to the acquisition of crests. These stories were included in the “history” of Yakutat, albeit with some misgivings, since in character they could as well have been considered “myths.” Other sib crests were believed to have been obtained so long ago that the incidents took place before the establishment of the sib on the Gulf of Alaska; these stories would seem clearly to belong to mythology. Such tales are found on pp. 844–894. For other sib crests, no explanatory tales were recorded.

A sib is believed to obtain the right to a crest because of some adventure or encounter of a remarkable nature with the animal or bird, etc., from which the crest is derived. This may involve finding the creature, killing it, marrying it, or living with it. Sometimes only a visit between man and the totemic animal is cited, or the animal is befriended. In other cases, the human being may be transformed into the animal. This supernatural adventure may entitle the sibmates of the man or woman involved not only to utilize the creature itself as an emblem, but to adopt as prerogatives other features associated with it.

If one asks how or why the TłaInedi sibs come to have the Raven, the answer will simply be “because Raven is the head of us.” There is no Wolf, or Eagle, or Killerwhale in mythology comparable to Raven, and I heard no stories at Yakutat about the origin of these as crests. This seems to be in contrast to the story of the Eagle crest of the NexA’dî, or that of the Killerwhale crest of the DAqł’awedi told at Wrangell (Swanton, 1909, Tales 70, 71). Even though the Yakutat people, I assume, are familiar with the last story (in which a DAqławedi—or Teqwedi?—man carves the first Killerwhale; see the figure on a Teqwedi song leader's staff, pl. 163), they themselves might think this episode irrelevant because the Killerwhale was already associated with the CAnkuqedi moiety, appearing in Raven tales as an “opposite” to Raven. Thus, the Killerwhale was Raven's “father,” and Raven's “husband” when Raven turned himself into a woman; Killerwhales were hosts at a potlatch to which Raven was invited as guest.

In addition to moiety crests, one or more sibs may possess the same particular crests, and this may be interpreted as proof of their common origin. This is the explanation given by the Tł’UknaAdi at Yakutat for the fact that the DAdentan and atkA’ai possess crests similar to their own: they say that the latter sibs were simply branches of the Tł’UknaAdi. The ałyIx-Kagwantan (Eagle-Wolf) were no doubt puzzled to explain why the Decitan (Raven) of Angoon also claimed the Beaver and sang a Beaver song with the same melody as theirs, although with different words. In this case, the little Beaver was felt to be “active,” and had evidently traveled widely. Since the ałyI-Kagwantan and Decitan live so far apart, they have probably never, or at any rate very rarely, appeared at the same potlatch, so no difficulties have arisen from the confusing fact that the same crest belongs to these two sibs in different moieties. There is evidently a similar situation with respect to the Golden Eagle (gIdjuk). At Yakutat this is a Wolf-Eagle emblem, but according to Swanton (1908, p. 422) the “hawk [sic] (kÎdjū’k)” is a common crest on the Raven side among the southern Tlingit.

Possession of the same crest, or attempts to claim it, may, in other cases, as we have seen, provoke bitter hostility. In the case of the Tł’UknaAdi and the KIksAdi, it made no difference that the Frog claimed by the former was “a different Frog” from that belonging to the latter, and that the two rival sibs told quite different stories to explain the acquisition of the Frog crest. In the eyes of the KIksAdi, the Frog belonged to them exclusively even though they themselves had two quite conflicting explanations of their Frog. (Or did they claim two frogs?—a question they probably never asked themselves.) I have already noted (p. 274) how the Tł’UknaAdi display of a Raven Hat led to a war with the anAtedi of Chilkat. In this instance, presumably both sibs had equally valid claims to the Raven moiety crest; it was the display of this as a hat (and the insulting remarks of the Tł’UknaAdi) that provoked anAtedi wrath.

A similar difficulty arose over the right to name a canoe for the Crane and to sing the associated song (duł yAkw dacíyí), claimed by both Tł’UknaAdi and Kwacqwan (p. 274). I was told that there had been a “war” over this, in which so many had died that the Kwacqwan did not like to hear mentioned either the Crane Canoe or the song. “Both tribes own it, and they tried to take it away from one another. There's no more peace between them when they mention it,” said an informant, citing an early-20th-century attempt to settle the dispute.

Since sibs in the same moiety are rivals, possession of a common crest is always a potential source of friction. Thus, two of our Tł’UknaAdi friends to whom we showed the pictures of crest objects and facial paintings in Swanton's book (1908) were outraged that the DAdentan should have claimed all these crests without explaining that they shared them with the Tł’UknaAdi. They admitted that the DAdentan, as a branch of the Tł’UknaAdi, were entitled to these emblems, but still felt that there must have been some of the real Tł’UknaAdi at Sitka or Hoonah at the time of Swanton's visit in 1904, who should have made clear their claims. It was concluded that these people were probably too shy or too obstinate to speak up. One of the informants therefore dictated a list of Tł’UknaAdi crest objects to keep the record straight. These were: Whale Hat (cf. Swanton, 1908, pl. XLIX, a), Raven Hat, Frog Screen, and Devilfish Cane or Pole. It was interesting that the embodiments of the crests were mentioned, not the crests as abstract emblems. When questioned 2 years later about the DAdentan, the same informant explained: “They claim Ya axw [Whale Hat], Devilfish Pole, Yeł axw [Raven Hat]—but they are ours. We can’t say they don’t belong to DAdentan, but we can say they belong to Tł’UknaAdi. If we say they don’t belong to them, they make trouble for us. Xixt cAki‘At [Frog Headdress]—we got it from Gue.”

There are also certain occasions when the crest of one sib is offered, on a temporary basis, to members of another who are spouses or children of the owners. Thus, one's sib crest may be proffered (symbolically, or as temporary loan) to persons or groups of the opposite moiety, as a gesture of high respect. As such, it is particularly appropriate when assuaging the grief of one's potlatch hosts. In a reciprocal manner, the hosts may honor their own children in a potlatch (see pp. 634–638). For example, the children may be asked to sing their fathers’ songs or dance in their regalia. The last custom explains why so often a man's children (or sib-children) are photographed with the heirlooms of which he is custodian (cf. pl. 143).

Sib crests are also employed by hosts to keep the peace between their guests at potlatches (p. 615). These crests, and other specially chosen sib symbols, play an important part in the ritual of peace ceremonies (pp. 599–600) when they are actually given to the hostage taken from the opposite moiety. They remain his or hers, although they do not become the property of the sib of the hostage.

Types of Crests

While there are evidently several orders of crests, those derived from the major totemic animals are of primary importance, since these offer the most varied types of representation; in graphic art, in masquerade and dramatic mimicry, in cries, and in personal names. Although it was the right to the crest, that is, to use the emblem, that was most valuable, rather than the possession of a particular heirloom or crest object, we must not assume that all representative decorations are crests. Thus, floral designs in beadwork are common on fine articles of dress, but have no significance. The paraphernalia used by shamans was often decorated with carvings depicting their spirits, but although many of these were in animal form (land otter, mountain goat, kingfisher, etc.), they were not necessarily the same as the totemic crest. Neither were the designs carved on halibut hooks or floats. I suspect that there were other carved objects that did not portray crests, even though they might represent animals. The geometric designs on baskets very rarely had crest significance, even though designs might have names suggesting crests, such as “teeth of the killerwhale” or “raven's tail” (cf. Emmons, 1903, pp. 263–277). These designs were free for any woman to use, just as a man might be free to carve or paint any animal that was not the crest of some sib.

Moreover, even if we analyzed the designs on crest objects we would find elements that were not themselves crests. Thus, on the screen in Wolf Bath House at the Old Village (pl. 85), the ałyI-Kagwantan Beaver chews a willow branch, but this is because willows are the food of beavers, not because the Willow “belongs to Kagwantan.” Similarly the Golden Eagle on the screen of Drum House (pl. 213) holds two groundhogs; and at Angoon, the Killerwhale may chase a seal (de Laguna, 1960, fig. 18, a), but the seal is not itself an emblem of the DAqł’awedi. On the Kwacqwan's Raven Screen in Moon House (p. 323), Raven was depicted using a green stone (nexIntE) to lure the king salmon ashore, but while the design illustrated an episode in the Raven cycle (p. 847), it is the Humpback Salmon, not the king salmon, that is a crest of the Kwacqwan. The green stone is, if anything, more closely associated with the Teqwedi, for this sib has a song about the dangers of fetching such a stone, and NexIntE is also a personal name (cf. Swanton, 1909, Tale 17, p. 46; song recorded 1954, 6–1–I).

I am less certain, however, about the status of the beaver dam on which the Beaver sits. Is this a crest, or is it a design that is coming to be one? The Teqwedi own the Bear as a crest and, because bears make their dens in valleys, both the Bear Den and the Valley have come to have a semi-independent status as house names. What about the Milky Way—that is, the snowshoe tracks made by the ałyIx-Kagwatan hero, Łayaw, which are depicted on the Beaver Screen? And are Łayaw and GosnA‘w, the CAnkuqedi boy who was rescued by the Thunderbird (pl. 91), used as crests or emblems? Or are they represented on house screens only to illustrate the sib stories? An examination of the symbolic representations alone will not answer these questions. Unfortunately, they were not ones that occurred to me in the field.

We should certainly distinguish between the crest object (Bear Post, or Golden Eagle Screen), the Bear or Golden Eagle as crest or emblem (‘Atu), and the totemic entities from which these emblems are derived. The totem, that is the Bear or Golden Eagle about whom the story is told and from whom the rights to use the crest were obtained is called ha cÀgún, which I have translated as “our origin and destiny.” One informant translated this as “totem,” another as “forefathers,” still others indicated that it was both like the past from which we are desended and the future which is coming but which we cannot change because it is already set in the past. I suspect that the concept is either not clearly defined, or at present no longer clearly understood (see p. 813). Raven, as creator of mankind, as “head” of all the Raven sibs, as authority for the Raven crest, is both “ancestor” and “totem.” The rules which he established (another meaning for CAgun) still hold today. Much the same is true of the she Bear that was married by the Teqwedi man, Kat. This is one of the episodes involving bears which the Teqwedi cite to justify their rights to the Bear crest (p. 879). The Golden Eagle is the CAgun of the Drum House Teqwedi, but as “totem,” not as “ancestor.” The relation of the living members of the totemic species (bears, ravens, eagles, wolves, and so forth) and the human members of the various sibs are discussed on pp. 825–826. We may anticipate by pointing out that there is, for example, a degree of identification of bears with Teqwedi, and that in some respects men and totem animals belong to the same social order.

In addition to crests derived from totemic animals, there are those which symbolize places. The most prominent of these are the two mountains, Saint Elias and Fairweather, of the Kwacqwan and Tł’UknaAdi respectively. The Humpback Salmon Stream is also a crest or, if not yet fully one, is on its way to so becoming. In addition, I believe that the Ahrnklin River and the mountains at its head can be considered as a crest (or crests) of the Drum House Teqwedi, since they form the major design on the Ahrnklin River Blanket (pl. 151), and the Ahrnklin valley between the mountains appears on the Golden Eagle Screen from Drum House (pl. 213). The Bear House Teqwedi, in a somewhat similar fashion, tend to identify themselves with both Lost River and Situk River, but I do not know if either stream, or the ‘Mountain at the Head of Situk’ (p. 70) was ever symbolized. The TłukwaAdi also felt a special proprietory interest in Gateway Knob (p. 87), a mountain on the Alsek River. Although Kulthieth Mountain was as important historically to the ałyIx-Kagwantan (p. 101) as Mount Saint Elias was to the Kwacqwan, we know too little about their crests to speculate on its possible symbolic significance.

With the exception of Mount Fairweather (Tsałan), of ‘Silver [Dollar] Mountain’ (DAna ca, a peak in Russell Fiord of no symbolic importance), and of Gateway Knob (ita or YAdagwAł), mountains in the Yakutat area have no proper names of their own, as was clearly noted by Harrington. Rather, mountains are designated as standing ‘at the head of’ some important body of water, such as the great fishing streams, Ahrnklin and Situk Rivers, or the rich sealing grounds of Icy Bay, guarded by Mount Saint Elias.

The use of specific geographical features as sib crests is related to the derivation of sib names from some locality connected with their history. It is also related to the legal claims made by sibs over the territories which may be symbolized by geographical crests. In such cases rights to use the crest involve, or are dependent upon, rights to control the territory. When the Drum House Teqwedi exhibit their Ahrnklin River Blanket at a potlatch, the story of how they acquired title to this area would be told, or alluded to in oratory and song, and the guests who accept their hospitality would be witnesses to the validity of their claims to both territory and crest. The same is true for the Mount Saint Elias Blanket or Shirt (pl. 144) and for the Raven Drum with the Humpback Salmon Stream symbolized on it (pl. 166). Perhaps the Beaver Dam on the screen in Wolf Bath House is not simply an appropriate setting for the ałyIx-Kagwantan Beaver, but may symbolize some particular area, perhaps Bering River. It should also be noted that the DAdentan of Hoonah, who now own Lituya Bay, symbolize this bay on a pipe (pl. 123) and also use Mount Fair-weather, the most prominent peak in the area, deriving their claims to the latter from the story of Qakewte (Swanton, 1908, p. 418, pl. LVII, a). The variety of geographical crests claimed by the DAdentan is well illustrated by their face paintings (ibid., pls. L and LI). The Kwacqwan have a song leader's baton symbolizing the Copper River (pl. 163), in memory of their ancient home, although in this case, of course, they no longer have territorial rights in the area.

The use of mountains (less often of a prominent rock or island) as crests by the southern as well as by the northern Tlingit may be a trait of Athabaskan origin. Among the Atna and Tanacross Athabaskans, for example, each community, often identified with a particular sib (or treated as such in inter-tribal potlatches), was associated with a striking hill or mountain in the vicinity. In potlatch oratory, this mountain was referred to as the “grandfather,” or ancestor, of the community whose hunting grounds included its flanks or summit (de Laguna and McClelan, 1960 field notes). In Yakutat songs, mountains also evoke thoughts of one's own ancestors or of one's father's people. Dry Bay Chief George, in a song composed for the dedicatory potlatch of Far Out or Frog House, gazes at his “grandfather‘s mountains” at the head of Dry Bay, for a moment imagining that the dead are still alive (1954, 2–1–G).

Attachment to the sib ancestral territory, symbolized by the geographical crest, is also more directly expressed. For example, a ałyI-Kagwantan woman, speaking about native claims to oil lands in Controller Bay: “If that case is lost, I don’t care about losing the money…. ‘Atxagudułu, ‘Make It Smaller,’ a big man, is buried some place there. My son is named for him. My sons are named after them [the ancestors]. It's like selling them, to sell the land.”

These geographical crests are obviously rather different in nature as well as in origin from those based on totemic animals, even though the Tlingit do regard mountains and glaciers as alive or as the abodes of their own indwelling spirits (p. 818).

A third type of crest is based on some unique natural feature which has no purely local significance. Such would be the Big Dipper constellation (yAte) of the Juneau Ł’enédi, and the Moon (dIs) of the Kwacqwan. Although there is only one Moon, for example, it may be symbolized in various ways or by various media, and is in every sense a true crest. It is also a character in mythology, for Raven‘s jealous uncle is the Moon, in the Yakutat version.

Of a different nature, however, is the unique object. Although this may be regarded as a great treasure, an heirloom that in itself symbolizes the sib, we can hardly speak of it as a crest. This would be the case of the cane called “nku carved like a man,” which the S!IknaXA’dÎ (Eagles of Wrangell) captured from the Tsimshian (Swanton, 1908, p. 417), or the sword cane captured by the Yakutat Teqwedi from the Russians (pl. 144). Other examples might be the “mother basket” of the Chilkat anAtedi (a very large basket) or any other unique manufacture or trophy (cf. the actual skin of a bear killed by an ax; ibid., fig. 105). In time perhaps, if hallowed by many potlatch displays and by the elaboration of traditions about them, such objects might come to be considered as crest objects, that is, as representations or copies of some architype of supernatural or extraordinary nature. For example, the Whale House of the Chilkat anAtedi contained a copy of the design, “Man Cooking Eels” (an anthropomophic figure with elongated arms and legs, painted on the front of the bench); this is said to be copied from the decorations of the house up in Heaven (kiwa’a) seen by a Chilkat visitor (p. 773). Compare this with the faces representing raindrops, hailstones, and black clouds on the Yakutat Thunderbird Screen, not only all appropriately associated with thunderstorms, but here supposed to be copied from the decorations in the Thunderbirds’ cave abode in the mountains (pl. 91).

Another trophy turned crest object may be the Teqwedi Killerwhale Hat. Thus, according to one account (p. 711), the first hat of this kind made at Yakutat was a copy of one “seen” by the shaman atgawet in Tsimshian country and “given” to him to imitate. According to the traditional history associated with the very old Killerwhale Hat now in the Portland Art Museum (pl. 145), this was the actual specimen found washed ashore from the canoes wrecked at Lituya Bay long before the Russians came. The Teqwedi also had a modern Killerwhale Hat (pl. 143).

In addition to the ordinary Raven, the Kwacqwan claim an albino (?) raven, or ‘White Raven’ (yeł tłed). (Possibly Steller's mysterious “white sea raven”? [Golden, 1925, vol. 2, p. 237].) This is said to have been found at Ahrnklin, flying upside down, drunk or dizzy. The skin was saved. This bird, not white but spotted with white, is represented on a dancing bib, flying upside down above the “Kwac Rock” at the mouth of Humpback Salmon Creek (pl. 1). Situk George (Teqwedi, a “cousin” of Situk Jim), was given the name ‘White Raven’ by the Kwacqwan when he was captured as a ‘deer’ for a peace ceremony. This particular white raven could be more readily transformed into a crest from a unique heirloom, because Raven already suggests the precedent. In fact, the design on the same bib was interpreted on another occasion by the same informant as Raven flying upside down when he was trying to fly south with the swans.

Validation of Crests

The right to the crest, that is to display it, and in some cases the right to the particular type of representation, requires validation in a potlatch. On every such occasion, the owners of the crest, whenever they are hosts, must pay their guests of the opposite moiety for their services in “listening” to them, and in witnessing the display of the crest in visible form. At the same time, members of the hosts’ own moiety, though in a different sib, also give tacit approval to the owners’ claim by assisting them in giving the potlatch. When both of the former host groups are guests in their turn, the peaceful toleration of each other's crest displays also serves as a quasi-legal acknowledgment of their rights. While it is the other sibs in one's own moiety that may dispute one's rights to use a crest (especially when the rival sibs live in different geographical areas), yet it is the opposite moiety that confers these rights.

This is because all crest objects were (in theory, at least) made by members of the opposite moiety, preferably by persons (UnEtkAnai) in the particular sib or lineage to which the new owner's father or spouse belongs. Ideally, therefore, the wife's brother paints his brother-in-law's house screen, while the wife and her sister make the costumes which the husband will wear. At the first potlatch in which these objects are displayed, these ceremonial services will be acknowledged and the craftsmen paid for their work. In the event that there is no artist available in the right group, the work might actually be performed by someone in one's own moiety or sib, but the fiction of commissioning “the opposite tribe” would be maintained by paying the craftsman's spouse. This was what was done when Daniel Benson (Teqwedi) painted the Beaver Screen for Yakategy John (ałyI-Kagwantan) (p. 323).

Without such public compensation, the objects themselves would be valueless. It is obviously in this way that rights to new crests were actually obtained, that is, through the purchase of new crest objects even though the purchase took the form of mutual giving between host and guest. Rights to a crest, together with the crest object, must always come from an opposite or even an alien group. Thus, the Tł’UknaAdi obtained the Sleep Bird as a crest because Qakewte, who had killed it, gave it to his wife and her people. Then they built Sleep House, in which the posts were carved to represent this bird (see p. 271; Swanton, 1909, p. 154). But the narrator does not have to explain that it was Qakewte and his sib who also were paid for working on the house and who were guests at its dedicatory potlatch.

The more often a sib crest was exhibited, or the more often a traditional sib song was sung in potlatches, the more valuable these became, because on each occasion the guests were paid as witnesses. “Hundreds of dollars spent on that song,” commented an informant, in telling the history of the Killerwhale Drum and its accompanying song (MJ; 1954, 5–1–D; p. 1167). Crest objects were inherited as heirlooms, doubly precious because of the wealth lavished on them and because of their associations with distinguished chiefs of the past. Such heirlooms were inherited in the same way as the lineage house or the honorable name of its head. Some objects, especially the crest hats and the crest blankets, were part of the sib property which “belonged” to the chief, since he would actually keep and wear them. Others, such as the wooden headdress called cAki’At (‘something on the head’), he might also wear, but such an object had to be displayed in the potlatch by a man vigorous enough to dance in it (pl. 62), a young relative of the chief if the latter were too old. The song leader's baton or paddle usually belonged to a junior relative of the sib chief, since it was used only by a young man.

Thus, while all the members of a sib (or lineage) presumably had a right to some use of the sib (or lineage) crest, in practice only the person who had inherited a crest object or could afford to commission the manufacture of a new one could make much use of the privilege. However, I was told that even the poor and lowly were always enabled (by charity if they could not afford it) to make some contribution to their chief's potlatch, so we assume that all probably had some appropriate ceremonial garments to put on, even though not the precious heirloom treasures. In contrast, we have seen the nouveau riche of the fur trade and the salmon industry climb to eminence as builders and heads of new houses. Doubtless their wealth not only permitted them to acquire and display new crest regalia, but justified the assumption of high status.

Occasions for display of the crest existed apart from the potlatch and perhaps served to confirm the right to the crest to a slight degree. Such an occasion might occur when decorated, named canoes competed in intersib races. Crests and crest objects were used in making peace, either to prevent quarrelers from coming to blows or to restore ordinary relations after the cessation of hostilities. Crest objects also were exhibited in war; in fact, anyone would don his finest ceremonial regalia and utter his sib animal cry when facing death or danger.

Alienation of Crests and Crest Objects

Sib property is alienable. Land may be sold, given away, or lost through defeat in war; so too, sib songs may be given away or appropriated by another group. Inherited personal names also may pass from one sib to another within the same moiety, and new names referring to the donor's sib crest may be bestowed (during a potlatch) on a “grandchild” in another sib within the moiety (cf. pp. 635–637).

Particular crest objects, or the right to display a crest, may also pass from one sib to another usually, but not necessarily, within the moiety. This may happen in time of war, as when the Hoonah Kagwantan captured a Wolf Post from the ł’uedi near Dry Bay, and shortly afterwards built a Wolf House of their own (Swanton, 1909, Tale 104). “Ankau Juné” proudly displayed to Malaspina the crest hat which he had taken from an enemy (p. 145). Dr. McClellan suggests that the violence associated with the Beaver of the Basket Bay Decitan (Swanton, 1909, Tale 68; Garfield, 1947, p. 440; de Laguna, 1960, pp. 136 f.) raises the suspicion that this Raven group may have captured their crest from some sib in the opposite moiety.

The crest object, name, or design[77] captured in war did not, I believe, require further validation. Thus, the Russian muskets taken by the TłaayIk-Teqwedi were given crest names. “In a war they name their guns according to their tribe, like xuts [Bear] gun, or kit [Killerwhale] gun” (p. 263). “It's got to be taken through a war, the things you’re going to talk about” (p. 266), that is, the trophies to be named and displayed. While war itself provided the original validation, display at subsequent potlatches would enhance the value.

Crest objects may become alienated through events other than war; for example, in payment of debts. It was in this way that the CAnkuqedi obtained four songs from the Aiyan chief on the Yukon after the drowning of their people (p. 248), for in Tlingit thought the chief was responsible for the loss of those who were coming at his invitation. Crest objects might also be used in payment of the bride price. These formed an especially appropriate type of marriage payment since the bride's father belonged to the same moiety as his son-in-law, and so might already possess the right to the crest. I do not know whether he ever included a similar object among his return presents to the son-in-law. However, the Kagwantan obtained a Tsimshian song in this fashion, called “’ełtin's Marriage Song” (1954, 3–1–B; Swanton, 1909, Song 47, p. 401), which was given by the girl's father to her husband.

One of my informants (MJ), when very young, narrowly escaped being married to an old CAnkuqedi house chief who offered her parents a considerable amount of money, many blankets, a bearskin, and a Bear Headdress (xuts cAki’At). Her father‘s people, who were Teqwedi, tried to force her to accept the old man, because “they wanted to get back some of this stuff,” which implied that the headdress, and perhaps the bearskin, had originally been Teqwedi property. I do not know how the CAnkuqedi had acquired the crest headdress.

My informant's cousin, osał, was actually given in marriage for the Killerwhale Drum. She was the Tł’UknaAdi daughter of the leading Teqwedi chief, Minaman or Daqusetc of Shark House, by his wife, Gayu-tła, our informant's mother's cousin. Perhaps this was the 15-year-old daughter of the chief who came to be painted by Seton-Karr in 1886 (1887, p. 126), “escorted by her husband and father-in-law, as well as by the chief and his wife.” The drum which was her bride price, the most important heirloom of the Bear House Teqwedi, had been lost previously in some way to the ałyI-Kagwantan. “That drum is captured for something, I don’t know how…. I couldn’t tell how come they captured it. They wouldn’t give it up until that fellow, Qata-’u, got stuck on my cousin, osał, and that's how come Daqusetc got it back. My cousin is married to Qata-’ux. They pay awful high price for high-class woman. So he paid for her so much, and then that drum is included. That drum belong to Teqwedi in the first place…. It's a great thing when they get that kit gau [Killerwhale Drum] back through my sister. They call her [a cousin] ‘sister.’ It was a great thing when they got it back.” (MJ)

This drum was later inherited by Chief Daqusetc's nephew, Jim Kardeetoo, who sold it. It is now part of the Rasmussen Collection in the Portland Art Museum (pl. 164; cf. also Davis, 1949, pl. 93). A note in the museum catalog based on information obtained from Jim Kardeetoo, suggests through how many hands the drum must have passed: “In the first place the drum belonged to Old Shakes (the [Nanya’ayi] chief at Wrangell). When he was buying slaves from one of the Taku chiefs he also gave the drum in exchange.” Our own informants trace the drum back to Diyaguna-’Et, and some believe that it was made there.

Since many fine crests at Yakutat had been made by the Tsimshian, it seems evident that these articles must have passed by gift or purchase from one owner to another. Probably some of these persons were traders who did not own the crest or attempt to display it, and one suspects that the purchase of a crest object, followed by a suitable exhibition in a potlatch, might actually be a mechanism for the transfer of rights in the crest itself. What Swanton (1908, p. 422) has said with respect to names may also be true of crest representations in general: “If any animal were not regularly used by some clan it could be employed [by another] without offense.”

Appropriation of the crest of another sib, by either the forcible seizure of a crest object or the manufacture of one, is an insulting act.[78] It may be done on purpose to shame a rival, perhaps to force payment of a debt. In such a case, it is equivalent to holding the crest object for ransom, and payment must be made to wipe out the insult and settle the claim, unless there is resort to violence. However, a powerful sib, as Swanton's informant put it, may be “so rich that they could use anything” (Swanton, 1908, p. 415). The history of the Tł’UknaAdi Frog House at Sitka has illustrated the appropriation of crests (p. 288). Not only did the KIksAdi react with violence to what they felt was an appropriation of their emblem by destroying the Tł’UknaAdi's Frog carving, but they further retaliated by appropriating a crest of their rivals when they had a post carved with the Tł’UknaAdi's Sleep Bird. When this was eventually given to the Tł’UknaAdi, the latter payed the KIksAdi for it. The use of such spite carvings or totem poles seems to have been rather common among the southern Tlingit (Garfield and Forrest, 1948, pp. 12, 50, 147), where the Tlingit even tried to employ them against the Whites, who were more often flattered at this attention than offended.

Due to the sale to Whites and resale by them to other Indians, it has sometimes happened that lineage houses at Yakutat, as at Angoon (de Laguna, 1960, p. 192), may, together with their crest decorations, come into the possession of someone of the wrong sib. This presents a most delicate and difficult problem, especially if financial considerations prevent redemption by the group owning rights to the crest. As one informant explained a case of this kind, involving a Kagwantan screen in a house now owned by a Kwacqwan: “Suppose in olden days, X [present house owner] took that in [screen] away, the war would never be ended, till they got it back—if Kwacqwan took it for no reason. If it's for a reason, Kagwantan pay for it. If X's brother or sister [were] killed by Kagwantan, if the Kagwantan don’t pay the life—[if] then X took it—that's a reason. There be no war; they’re going to pay it back. But if it's for no reason, like now [citing an instance], that's a war. That's how Indians used to have a war—things like that—until they win it, until they get it back.”

Such may have been the history of a Frog Helmet from Yakutat, now in the Portland Art Museum (pl. 158), which is said to have been lost in a battle and later retaken by the original owners (Tł’UknaAdi ?).

Peace cannot be made between two groups if one holds the crest objects captured from the other. So, after the war between the anAtedi and the Tł’UknaAdi, the crest emblems which each had taken from the other were returned during the peace ceremony (cf. p. 275).

Not only have different sibs (usually in the same moiety) been involved in transfers, legitimate or unlawful, of crest objects, but in recent years at Yakutat there have been instances of the appropriation or inheritance of crest objects or heirlooms belonging to one house by members of another house within the same sib. This has evidently resulted from the deaths of the lineage heads or elders who had been the custodians of these treasures. These deaths afforded opportunities for leaders in another house to take the treasures. Such an action may be bitterly resented by those who regard themselves as the rightful owners. In citing a case of this kind, an informant observed: “The same thing happened in the old story when we separated from our tribe at Copper River [referring to the Gineqwan dispute over the inheritance of the chief's feast dish]…. It's for the tribe that built the house. What belongs to this house, that house got no business to take it. That's Indian law.” But when the two houses are “brother-sister houses,” like Raven's Bones House and Fort House (also cited as “mother” and “daughter” houses), “what belongs to them is same thing”—they share. The Moon House line of the Kwacqwan is different, however.

One man who possesses a sib heirloom wants it to be buried with him when he dies “6 feet underground.” Then there will be no further quarrels among his sibmates over it.

Even more serious are the cases in recent years in which a man's wife or children have kept or attempted to keep his crest objects, for under the old matrilineal rules they had, of course, no title to any of his property at all, and certainly none to his crests. In such cases, the spouse or child has justified her or his retention of the object by claiming an unsatisfied debt (one recent example was compensation for an accidental homicide), or the excuse may be to prevent the rightful owner from selling the object in order to buy liquor. The latter may also be the alleged motive for a woman‘s keeping what her brother or sib brother, as a man, should have inherited.

The crest objects themselves have, in modern times, become more valuable than the rights to the crest, and such objects have come to be considered personal property and not part of the heritage of the lineage or sib. Formerly, many crest objects were destroyed at the death of their custodian or user. Thus, thousands of dollars worth of regalia are believed to be entombed with Situk Jim, Teqwedi head of Bear Den House, buried at Situk in 1912. “In the old days they used to bury what they like with people. Then they start that generation [i.e., inheritance from generation to generation], just to keep the things in the tribe.” Replacement of the crest objects or manufacture of new regalia was not difficult as long as there were skilled carvers, painters, and weavers. Moreover, there was definitely the feeling that just as the house should be torn down and rebuilt as a memorial to the lineage dead, so it was fitting for some fine new crest paraphernalia to be displayed at potlatches. The use of old objects was probably as costly to the owners as the public adoption of new regalia. Now, crest objects have been lost through sale to the White man.

It was not, I believe, simply the money offered by curio collectors that has drained away Tlingit sib treasures, nor the overpowering hunger for whiskey with which to anesthetize the sorrow for what has been lost. Rather, the whole pressure of White influence has been against the social and ceremonial institutions that gave significance and value to native art. Ordinary traders, prospectors, and fishermen have ridiculed the potlatches of the “Siwashes” as extravagant and futile, and belittled their art as grotesque; missionaries have condemned all Tlingit ceremonial display as heathen; teachers have discouraged feasts and potlatches because they disrupt school; administrators have united with ministers and educators in attempting to lessen the importance of the Tlingit sib as disruptive, especiaally since intersib rivalry has led to so many serious quarrels. There has been no legislation prohibiting potlatches, as in British Columbia, but the effects of White pressure and inducement have had similar results.

One of the most powerful agencies in undermining the sib structure and in suppressing all sib ceremonial functions has been the Tlingits’ own organization, the Alaska Native Brotherhood, founded in Sitka in 1912 (cf. Drucker, 1958). The vigorous campaign of the ANB against the display of crest symbols has reinforced the lure of the cash which could be obtained from native manufactures, so that many persons sold the sib and lineage heirlooms in their charge. There was some opposition at the time, and a deep regret now.

As one informant explained:

“When ANB was founded, they gave up tribal things. They didn’t have any more potlatches. [But later] they began to take an interest in them again…. The ANB used to be strong, but now it's weak, and the interest in tribal things is coming back….

“A lot of men sold their tribal relics that they were supposed to keep for their people. They were really not the owners, just trustees, and some poeple got very angry. To prevent the sale of some of the things, the custodians burned them up. [The destruction or attempted destruction of two song leader's poles was mentioned.]

“We had a beautiful board—Raven. The Kwacqwan put it in Dis hit [Moon House]…. Sticklew Hansen came down from Copper River [where he had been fishing? He was head of the house]. He heard people talking about selling their “pole” [i.e., the screen]…. He don’t want anybody to have it. He took it down from there and split it up and burned it. I think he done right. He don’t want any other tribe to have it.”

The indignation now expressed at those who have sold crest objects reflects both grief at the loss of irreplaceable heirlooms associated with their own ancestors or with their fathers, and also resentment because some other individual has profited from the sale. Yet some sales have been justified on the grounds that the lawful owners were all dying off and that the museums might as well act as custodians. (For new crest regalia, see pls. 217–218.)

Sib Characteristics

Sibs, in the minds of the Yakutat people, are felt to be distinguished in many cases by their customary modes of behavior or by what we might call “character,” for want of a better word. This may be related to their territory or in some cases to their crest animal (see pp. 833–834). Which traits are emphasized depends upon the affiliations of the individual, since he naturally favors his own sib and is equally pround of his father's. He is most apt to be antagonistic toward a sib in his own moiety that lives in another tribal district. These supposed sib characteristics are the source of jokes between sib-children (see pp. 485–488). My information on this topic is unfortunately very scanty, and only a few examples can be offered.

The child of a TłukwaAdi man, said of his sib: “They were really fast people, and nobody bothers them. Excuse me, ladies, but olden time, they take slave, you know, from some people, but them they do nothing to…. Nobody bothers them…. They are just like an arrow, those people. They go like that! They are unana. They are fast, those people, and quick. They are TłukwaAdi—that's unana…. Nobody come close to them, because they are scared of them. They are afraid of the TłuknaAdi. They just stay in Dry Bay—that's the place.”

The Tł‘UknaAdi, on the other hand, are especially connected with the sea, having the reputation of being intrepid voyagers and traders.

“Tł’UknaAdi, see, that's all they do, go around on those canoes—go around, come back, trade. They call the ocean and the breakers their ‘friend.’ They always talk to it. They say: ’TA Utqa tsa at nidjí—Don’t think I’m a different man’ [i.e., a stranger, an alien].” Such an appeal may be effective in time of danger.

The ałyI-Kagwantan have (or had) the reputation of being rich and generous. Thus atgawet and his modern namesake, Jim Kardeetoo, both became wealthy when they married Kagwantan-daughters, in both cases a Kwacqwan woman named Tłe‘an.

Teqwedi, like their crest animal, the Bear, are brave. This quality is inherited by their children.

The Killerwhale too was wild and fierce, perhaps accounting for the reputation of the Teqwedi and Kagwantan who use this aminal as a crest.

“The ałyI-Kagwantan and the Sitka Kagwantan are all alike…. All Kagwantan are mean and they want war all the time. anAts ’aya’U Kagwantan—’angry all the time Kagwantan’ is how they call them.” The informant said this to the son of a Sitka Kagwantan man when they were both in danger of shipwreck and she, daughter of a Teqwedi father, was challenging her companion's courage. “Let‘s see whether the Kagwantan-children or Teqwedi-children are braver!” she had said, and added indignantly, (”They always claim the Teqwedi-yAti [Teqwedi-children] are cowards.” (MJ)

SOCIAL POSITION

Aristocrats and Commoners

The people of Yakutat, like all Tlingit, were very conscious of rank, although it is difficult to determine to what extent this was conceptualised in terms of class, or whether classes actually existed. When comparisons were made, they seem to have been largely in terms of specific individuals, as between a chief and a man in his sib who could not aspire to his position, or between a man in one sib and a person in another who was of equal rank and so could be exchanged for him in a peace ceremony. In settling blood feuds, the value of each life lost had to be paid for by property or by another life, and some persons of high rank were estimated to be worth two or even four of lower status. I do not know, however, exactly how these equivalences were determined, probably through negotiations conducted by go-betweens. In speaking of persons of high social position, what my informants stressed was the respect felt for them: respect which depended upon birth, wealth, age, and conduct. It is only very loosely, I believe, that the Tlingit think of social classes.

There was, for example, a kind of aristocracy, composed of chiefs and their immediate families, in contrast to ordinary people. A chief or rich man was called ‘an qawu—’man of the town;’ a well-born person, such as his child or sister's child, was a “prince” or “princess,” ’an yAdi—’child of the town.’ Boas (1917, p. 123) renders the first as ’àn qáwu, and adds ’ànu—’infant of nobility.’ Harrington (MS. 1939–40) gives equivalent forms, as well as ’an łingidi (‘aan łíin-íttii)—’person of the town,’ or rich person. However, I was unable to learn any term used to designate an ordinary individual or commoner; one informant commented on the fact that Tlingit seemed to lack words for middle class people although “in English there are lots of names.” The ordinary person (if he did exist) was, in fact, the chief‘s junior or distant relative in a less distinguished line, and formerly lived in the same house with the chief and called him kinsman.

Persons of very low status could be designated by various expressions, derogatory or euphemistic. Thus, they were those ‘who lived at the front of the house’ (At’aq qu’u), the place of the poor and lowly. These persons included the lowest of all, the bastards (nItc kA yAdi—’child of the empty beach’), those whose laziness or bad luck had made them paupers (see below), freed slaves, or persons with slave ancestry. Slaves themselves were, in theory, outside Tlingit society.

From the chief of the whole sib down to the lowliest there was a series of graded ranks. It would be incorrect, I believe, to think of such a series as made up of definite classes or, on the contrary, as a heirarchy of evenly spaced positions. Nor should we assume that each individual was definitely assigned to a separate step on such an ascending stairway. Rather, there were marked gaps or discontinuities of rank between family lines even within the same lineage; conversely, for many purposes, members of the same family line or of closely related lines were considered as equivalents. This is indicated by the fact that birth names, while belonging to the sib or lineage, are actually inherited in family lines, passing from the deceased to his or her close maternal relative (and thereby implying reincarnation, see pp. 781 ff.). There is a similar passing on of honorable names or titles (without implying reincarnation) from older to younger brother, from maternal uncle to nephew, and from paternal grandfather to son's son in the same maternal line. In the old days, births presumably balanced deaths, so that inheritance of rank and of the name that indicated rank could be kept within the same family. “Relatives” of a chief in an inferior line of his lineage could not aspire to rise as long as there were potential heirs among his close relatives. It has been only in modern times when so many chiefly lines have become extinct that titles have been conferred upon persons of ordinary descent, that is, upon distant relatives. This is recognized by some men today who are acting as “chiefs,” that is, as leaders or spokesmen for their sibs. One man in such a position, when discussing the metaphorical oratory used by old-time chiefs, said: “A common man like me don’t understand it;” and again, when telling about how the scalps of great men were formerly kept: “Not small men like me. They wouldn’t bother me; they wouldn‘t cut my hair off.” Acquisition of wealth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from the fur trade and from commercial fishing, enabled a number of men in junior positions to build named houses and thus to establish themselves as petty chiefs (see pp. 321 ff.). They were still felt, however, to belong to the same lineages as their senior relatives who remained as chiefs of the older houses. Had wealth and population continued to increase, no doubt these new establishments would have eventually become new lineages.

Within each sib there are thus one or more houses or lineages, each of which has its own chief or ‘master of the house’ (hit ati), or ‘one who stands at the head’ (càdÉ hàní). These lesser chiefs formerly acted as council members for the head chief of the sib. While some lineages are felt to be very close to each other, presumably because increase in numbers rather than dissension within the original house caused them to separate, other lineages within the sib may be considered more distantly connected. Closely related “brother and sister houses” that own crests and regalia in common are friendly and feel themselves to be more nearly equal in rank and prestige; the more distant houses may be considered inferior. Between such groups there was often rivalry and jockeying for position. However, one lineage of the sib was usually outstanding, and its chief outranked all other house chiefs. The principal house of the Tł’UknaAdi was Whale House in Sitka, and the Yakutat branch of the sib acknowledged the distinction of its chief. Presumably the Far-Out House or Frog House of Dry Bay Chief George, and Boulder House at Johnson Slough and Yakutat (pp. 317, 318, 323) were the most important houses of these two localities. The Kwacqwan chiefs belonged to the line of Yaodaqet of Raven's Bones House. Closely allied to this was Fort House, and when the chiefly line of Raven‘s Bones House became extinct, the ranking man of the Fort House lineage became sib spokesman. On the other hand, Moon House with its daughter houses (Mountain [St. Elias] House, Play House, Foggy House, and Owl House) belonged to another Kwacqwan group.

The sib chief was the ‘big man’ (łingit tłen) or ‘head of the sib’ (na càdÉ hàní). The latter title might be held by a woman, if she were the person of highest rank. Thus, the mother of one of our informants became “head of the tribe” and so received custody of all the sib heirlooms. She was Jenny Kardeetoo (1872–1951), the Kwacqwan widow of Jim Kardeetoo, the last chief of the Bear House Teqwedi. Her son, Harry Bremner, acts as spokesman for the Kwacqwan.

The chief of the sib and his immediate family were the real aristocrats, called by some informants “royalty.” Such a person was ‘one who is heavier than others’ (kaqaAk duwudúnI). He or she was also a ‘crystal person’ (tł’éAkw qa)—“Like the sun. Nothing [no stain] in their body or their spirt—just pure.” This expression implies particularly the absence of any low-class or disgraced person in his ancestry. Harrington (MS 1939–40) gives the same term (tł’eetthμkwkhaa) to mean “a prince. E.g., if a stranger comes to town, they tell us: that man is tł’eetthμkwkhaa, so we know he belongs to high class people.” Tł’éAkw or tł’etAkw means ’pure.’

Formerly, aristocrats were careful to marry only those of equal social rank. “Royalties was married to royalties.” This rule of marrying one's equals also applied to lesser house chiefs and their families. In estimating the position of a person, consideration was given to his ancestry on both sides for several generations. This has probably led to or served to emphasize the desirability of seeking a spouse in a family with which one's own was already connected, so that a man would try to marry such close relatives as a father's sister, a brother's daughter, or a cross-cousin (see pp. 489–491). The higher one's rank, the more important it was to reaffirm such bonds between two related matrilineal lines, and the more careful one had to be of misalliances. It was not uncommon, therefore, for the chief of one house to be the father of another chief or house head in the opposite moiety. Thus, Yaodaqet (II) or Yakutat Chief of Raven's Bones House was the father of Ned Daknaqin of Drum House, and Cada of Fort House was father of Henry Shada, a later chief of Drum House, and of Jim Kardeetoo, chief of Shark House-Bear Paw House. A chief usually married the sister or daughter of a chief, even though to secure a proper spouse it was sometimes necessary, or advantageous, to turn to another Tlingit tribe: Chilkat, Hoonah, Sitka, etc.

Certain chiefly families in opposite moieties were thus equated in rank and linked through common ancestry and marriage connections. Each lineage as a whole was identified in the minds of its own members and of outsiders with the prestige of its chief. These chiefs were not equal in position, and their lineages differed in numbers, wealth, and reputation, so that the lineages within a sib could be ranked relative to one another. As one informant said about the lineages of her sib: “We are the highest. BC's bunch are the next, and DE's people are the last of all. You see—I don’t like to say this—but…. The [sib] are all one, but we have classes.” The informant explained that a euphemism for people of a lower lineage in one's own sib is to say that they “belong to the house next door.” This could be used to designate freed slaves that had been adopted into the sib or lineage, and their descendants.

Sibs, also, were felt to belong to different ranks. Thus: “The Tł’UknaAdi are the highest people around here. The Kagwantan and Teqwedi are, too. They wouldn‘t marry any other tribe less than they are. My father was Teqwedi.” Certain names for sibs, especially when used by a member of another sib within the same moiety, are resented as derogatory and as implying lower status. Those sibs that had come most recently from southeastern Alaska seem to have claimed superiority over sibs that had been more ancient residents, even when the latter belonged to their own moiety.

Equivalence in rank and social standing was more important as a principle that united Ravens with Wolves (Eagles), equating sib with sib, lineage with lineage, and individual with individual across moiety lines. It was really only between sibs in the same moiety that full-scale rivalry for position could develop. Yet, even here, although one of these sibs might be thought inferior as a whole to another, its leading members were certainly far more respected than the lower individuals in the superior sib.

Judgments of relative rank or social worth within the moiety or within the sib were not unanimous, of course, and did not go unchallenged. Indeed, while Ravens and Wolves-Eagles might openly compete, the bitterest rivalry was between groups or individuals in the same moiety, sib, or lineage. Such conflicts had to be carried on indirectly (by trying to outdo one another as guest dancers at a potlatch, for example) or covertly (through the use of “medicines” to make one favorably noticed, or through witchcraft to dispose of a personal rival). Such competition could become dangerously disruptive to groups who were supposed to be composed of “brothers” cooperating for common goals. There was no established legal way to settle such disputes, as there was for feuds or “wars” between groups in opposite moieties. It is probably significant that it was within the moiety that licensed joking was institutionalized, since this could drain off some of the irritation and bad feeling which could not be expressed openly.

Birth, that is, the rank and status of one's ancestry, determined one's social position by setting limits to what names or titles one might acquire. However, the acquisition of these depended upon the actions of the individual and his kinsmen, since all but the name or names given to the newborn child required validation before they could be assumed. Such validation, especially for the more honorific names and titles, took place at potlatches which, of course, meant the distribution of wealth to guests of the opposite moiety. It is no wonder that the words for aristocrat or “high class person” (‘anqawu, ’anyAdi) are also translated as “rich person.” A wealthy and ambitious man, with the backing of his relatives, could elevate his own position and that of his immediate family, and thus confer prestige on the lineage as a whole, by giving a series of house-building potlatches. At each he might assume another title for himself and bestow honorable names on his nephews and nieces and grandchildren. This last was not the exclusive privilege of a house chief, for all members of the host sib would make contributions to his potlatch, and all could honor junior relatives or grandchildren by giving them appropriate names. A wealthy man could also raise the status of his own children at a potlatch (see pp. 637–638). The young people so honored would display the visible signs in the form of tattooed hands, pierced ears and, in former times, pierced nasal septums and labret holes for the girls. If a child were deformed or lame a special effort might be made to prevent this handicap from becoming a subject for shame or ridicule. In such a case, a slave might be freed at a potlatch to honor the child (see pp. 473, 641). While wealth alone would not, in one generation, elevate the builder of a new house to the position of lineage chief, nor the lineage head to that of sib chief, there is probably no question but that it would eventually affect the relative positions of their heirs or heirs’ heirs. High birth could not long be maintained without potlatching which demanded the lavish distribution of wealth from one's own household and from the contributions of one's kin.

The value of a high born girl was clearly shown by the property given by the groom to her parents, and by their return gifts. These might include sib prerogatives or sib crest objects (pp. 458–459). Later, the brother of the woman would give handsome presents to her husband so that the latter would have greater respect for his wife. In fact, all affinal exchanges between persons of rank were supposed to be on as lavish a scale as possible, and such generosity was greatly to the credit of both giver and recipient.

The wealth possessed by chiefs and their immediate families permitted them to wear the most valued furs; sea otter and marten. “Mink was the cheapest skin. Common people wore it. It still is cheap to us yet. Royalties used marten. A cape of royalty would never fit a common person. No matter how you put it on, no matter how it was thrown on you, if you were common, it wouldn’t fit. If it fits, no matter how you look, you are royalty…. The cape was trimmed with sea otter and dentalium buttons.” According to the same informant, “princessess” wore golden hair ornaments. A more realistic statement was made by a man to whom we showed some of the copper ornaments excavated on Knight Island (de Laguna et al, 1964, fig. 19). Only the nobility, he said, wore copper ornaments. “Just high people use them things. A man like me can’t use it: ’anyAdi is the only one that use it.” When chiefs and wealthy people died, they were buried with many of their personal possessions (in former days, these would have been left at the tomb containing their ashes), so that some graves are said to contain several thousand dollars worth of costumes, presumably including jewelry, Chilkat blankets, button blankets, and so forth.

The chief, especially the head of his sib, was rich. He was not only custodian or trustee for the heirlooms and crest objects, but also of the hunting and fishing territories of his sib. After feasting his sibmates on the first catch, taken by his nephews, he gave permission for the hunting season to open. He not only determined when, where, and with what weapons his people and others might hunt or fish, but might specify how many animals each man might take. Such rules were not simply to insure a fair distribution to every man, but were also to protect the animals during their breeding season. The chief had the power of life and death in enforcing these regulations and in dealing with unauthorized trespassers. (For examples of the chief's powers and how these were exercised, see pp. 374, 379.) In addition to allocating rights to use the sib‘s territories and in determing how the natural resources should be utilized, the chief also had a claim upon the catch made by his own people. As explained by an informant:

The chief is rich, “because Indian law says—in olden days everything what I catch I give it to my uncle. Never keep it for myself. All the tribe [sib] is that way—give it to their uncle. If I don’t do it, everybody talks about it, ‘He keep it for himself.’ That's why a chief get rich.” Apparently there was no formal tribute to the chief and he did not seize what his sibmates had acquired. “Chief—’an qawu—rich. He's the uncle of everybody when he comes to be a leader. He's all the tribe's uncle. łingit tłen they call him, in English, just ‘big man.’ ”

The territory of the Kwacqwan, which extended from just west of Icy Bay to the middle of the Lost River area near the present airfield, included the sea otter grounds of Icy Bay, the sealing grounds of Disenchantment Bay, the goat and bear hunting areas on the mountains above, rich salmon streams, especially in the Ankau lagoon region, and numerous berrying patches, including the strawberries of Point Manby. No other sib along the Gulf Coast controlled such a wealth of natural resources, except possibly the Ałyi-Kagwantan of Kaliakh River and Controller Bay. For this reason, the chiefs of Yakutat, Yaodaqet of Raven‘s Bones House, had great economic power. Informants stressed however, the wisdom with which the chiefs of this name exercised their authority for the benefit of all the people in the Yakutat area.

The possession of wealth by a sib or house chief imposed obligations of generosity (see p. 467).

In addition to status at birth and to the wealth that validated or enhanced rank, age itself brought respect. The elder (qa cuqadéqa) by virtue of age or generation was honored by his junior. Sometimes pronounced differences in age prevented the free exchange of repartee which would otherwise be expected between joking relatives (see pp. 487–488). The oldest member of the sib, whether man or woman, was called ‘our elder’ (ha cuqadéqa). There would be only one to a sib, and when he or she died, the next oldest took his place. Thus, the elder of the Kagwantan was said to be Kałyan-’ic, ‘Katlian's father,’ in Sitka, and Uncle Sam was suggested as our “elder.”

“The oldest person in the tribe [sib]…always got a big respect. He just the head of it all the time. They always take him as next to the chief. They always respect the oldest one. The older he is, the more respect. Even if he's poor…ha cuqadéqa—’the head person.’ The tribe always get advice from him. ‘Adviser’—because he's the oldest. He know more than the young people. ‘The wisest.’ What I don’t know, I’m going to ask him. Then he tells me. He knows everything.”

Not only are the people of Yakutat courteous towards old people, but treat the aged with respect, almost with reverence, deferring to their judgment and opinions even when their elders are senile or ignorant. Conversely, we have also heard doubt cast upon the accuracy of a statement simply because the person who made it was young. The extreme respect due to seniority was undoubtedly important in making young people submit to the authority of their elders. In similar fashion, the ancestors of past generations were held up as models of conduct to be emulated by the living. Recent changes in the way of life have, of course, greatly weakened the importance of age in determining social standing.

The higher the rank of the individual and the greater the consequent responsibilities, the more stress was set upon wisdom, judgment, and education. This was especially true for the sib chief, who was responsible for his people‘s welfare. In making decisions, he often or usually consulted with the house chiefs, those “next to him,” who were like members of his council, and also with the sib elder. However, his word alone could command respect, not only because of the actual political power he wielded and because of his own high rank, but also because he was known to be well educated and therefore wise. But even the chief should not be too proud to take advice from an inferior. This was the lesson that Chief Shakes of Wrangell, one of the noblest and richest chiefs, and “next to Solomon, one of the smartest men that ever lived,” had to learn from experience (see “The Moral of Chief Shakes” pp. 894–895).

The children, nephews, and grandchildren of the sib chief apparently received a more thorough education than did ordinary young people. A large part of the formal instruction was carried out through the stories told at night by the chief, or by “the one next to him.”

“Just like school in those days. People go to school to learn. So everybody listens to them, every night. But when the chief, when he's training his grandchild on his tribe's side [son's son in his own sib], when a boy getting smart between 10 and 16 years old—[the chief would say to him] ‘Now you tell me a story about what I been telling you.’ They always had names for stories. ’Now this one you going to tell me.’

“So the boy start to tell the story to the grandfather, to the chief. If any place that boy make a mistake, the chief correct him. That's the way they training the grandchild, because he's going to be the next chief to him—till it's all correct, the story he tell. Then he begin to tell another story. He want his grandchild to memorize the whole thing. Not only Tlingit stories—Tsimshian, Haida, Aleut stories, and Tasnaqwan—that's Eskimo stories. Tasna [Yukon] is the biggest river up north.

“So they went clear down to the Tasna [see below, for visits to foreign tribes]. They used to do Tasna dances here at Yakutat, and the songs they used to have. And T’oyat stories—that's Flathead Indians of Washington—their stories. And all the Interior Indians.

“A person have to learn all the stories before he become to a chief, a tribe leader. No matter how rich he is, a person can’t be a chief if he don’t know all the stories from the different tribes, unless he knows all the stories from all the tribes in Alaska.” He could, however, become a house or lineage chief.

This same type of training was given to all children, but was of aless comprehensive nature (see pp. 512–514).

“In the evening the chief talks to all the people in the house. He watches the young men to see who is smart. It's like high school or college. Everyone graduates, but there are some stupid ones and some that are smarter than others. The chief notices who is not listening. He notices who is smart. The smart one, the chief sends him away, traveling all over—to southeast Alaska, or to Cordova [in Prince William Sound]—to learn the songs and stories of the other tribes. Then at potlatches, he tries to catch out the other side [by knowing their traditions, and by competing in erudition]. Even if he's not a chief's son, he may become a chief.”

This last statement would indicate that the noblest birth was not an essential requirement for chieftainship, but rather that the old chief might be able to choose his successor from among the group of eligible maternal nephews and paternal grandsons. Such promising youngsters were sent away at the age of about 10 years, each to a different foreign tribe. The boy lived with the foreign chief until he became a man, learning the language, history, songs, and traditions of his hosts. This was “just like getting a college education,” and when he returned home he could teach his own chief some words of the foreign language, or act as interpreter when foreign visitors were entertained. In this way the different tribes were able to get along together when they met, and could learn each other's songs and dances. This custom of sending away young men of rank to be educated must have facilitated the practice of the Russians of taking young native boys of good family to be hostages and servants. The Yakutat people believed that these children were going to school and were horrified to discover that they were being used as slaves. This was one of the grievances that led to the overthrow of the Russian colony (234, 260).

It is thus clear that persons of rank, especially the chiefs, were well trained in historical and ceremonial matters. This knowledge was required in making speeches at potlatches or peace ceremonies when the chief was “just like a well-educated lawyer” because of his command of esoteric language. For example, “When one łingit tłen comes in a canoe to visit another łingit tłen, he stands up in the canoe and talks to the one on shore, and that one talks to him, before he comes ashore. Ordinary people can’t understand them because they use hard words.” Or, when receiving potlatch guests in his house, the sib chief would be flanked by his brothers or nephews or uncles, who could act as prompters, and by the other lineage heads of his sib who also stood ready to advise him. Such advisors on matters of ceremonial protocol or oratory were called du et yuAtAngi (Boas, 1917, p. 136, “chief's speaker”). All persons, as a matter of fact, had their turn to speak at a potlatch, and those of higher breeding and better training thus had the opportunity to display their superior learning. The chief himself had to be acquainted with the full repertoire of sib songs, since he determined which ones were to be sung and might even lead the singing (see pp. 631–632).

There were other accomplishments which brought respect and which were therefore deemed appropriate to aristocrats, as well as to others. These included skill in hunting, and since chiefs either led or ordered major hunting expeditions, it was desirable that they should be experts in the habits of animals and in foretelling the weather. Chief Yaodaqet used a Russian peg calendar to predict the movements of migratory animals and birds. “The weather he tells—gankAnigi. He knows it. Yaodaqet [the first one] was an expert…. And then his nephew [was] just as good because he learn it from him…. And then his grandson—that's Olaf's grandfather—he's just as good. And his nephew, Chief George, is good. But after Chief George, we’re among the White people already, work in the cannery. He died just the year the cannery started [1902]. There‘s no more sea otter hunting, and nobody learn from him.”

A chief might have shamanistic powers, in fact some house chiefs were actually shamans, and certainly some close relatives of sib chiefs were famous doctors. Such persons commanded great respect, tinged with awe or even fear. Artistic ability was also admired and several house chiefs are mentioned as having carved house posts or painted screens, and Dry Bay Chief George was noted as a song composer. Women skilled at weaving baskets and blankets were respected, and presumably aristocratic girls were trained in fancy work. Industry was continually stressed as a virtue, although it was perhaps supposed to manifest itself in somewhat different occupations for the rich and high-born than for the poor and humble.

Not only wisdom, but moral virtue and decorous conduct were qualifications of the chief or aristocrat. “No matter where you are, from your actions they find out what family you came from.” However, childhood reminiscences (see pp. 508–514) indicate that the same types of virtuous conduct were enjoined on all the children in the great household, regardless of rank. No doubt the standards were higher for those who were either in a prominent social position or who claimed descent from nobility. Certainly, having a distinguished ancestor was stressed to the child as a reason for being good.

Self-restraint and mildness of temper were demanded of the highborn. “Royalty never quarrel. Common people may spit in their face, but they never quarrel. [A man of rank] thinks more of common people than of himself—never looks down on a common person. Just passes it [the insult] like nothing happens….”

Such behavior in a woman of noble birth might be publicly recognized in a potlatch. “My grandma on my father's side never quarreled. They gave a slave over that. It's called ł ’andé wUdiqÁn—no quarreling in the town. They announce that she never quarrels, so she has to live up to that.” Perhaps this was the same case as that described by another informant as follows: “One woman from Knight Island became a princess. Her uncle gave her a blessing, that she would never quarrel on the street. She would have to live up to that.” Apparently her mother's brother gave the feast and invited her father's sib. Two boys and two girls from her father's sib dressed her and were paid $500 to $600. Harrington (MS. 1939–40) reports that an ill-tempered, cranky and easily angered person was called ‘master of anger’ (âan aathí, i.e., an ati). However, the many occasions on which a rubbing amulet was applied to the lips to curb angry speech testify to the condemnation of hasty tempers (see pp. 521, 666).

The rich person, the master of the house or the sib chief, was generous. “Rich people used to support the poor people—give feasts and potlatches. That's how the poor got their grub and clothes. The rich treat them like a king. But among the Whites, the rich invite only the rich. Native peoples would starve before they ask a foreign tribe for food.” It is implied by this somewhat idealistic picture of a vanished golden age that the rich were supposed to be generous particularly to the poor in their own sib. If the latter had to beg from other, this would be a disgrace that might reflect upon the honor of all. However, this ideal did not protect the lazy from becoming a “dried-fish slave” (see p. 469). On another occasion, the same informant described how the house chief and his wife used to eat sparingly and would wait until all the young fellows in the household had been served before helping themselves. Another woman spoke of how concerned her father was that everyone in the multifamily household should have a share of the dainties prepared by his wife (pp. 309–310).

A person of noble birth was supposed not only to avoid participation in wrongdoing or loose conduct, but to ignore it on the part of others. As one woman explained: “I’m descended from that S’ełtin [a noble Tsimshian woman, see p. 459]. That's why, I guess, I don’t care for anything. That's the one—they don’t look at bad things like that drinking. She don’t care for that bad things. She just try to be good. ’It's heavy‘—yÀ-dÁł—respect for yourself.” Such a one may be called a “crystal person”—he is pure in body and in spirit.

Naturally, the aristocrat or person of consequence observed rules of etiquette in visiting or in entertaining visitors. “Royalties would send word, ‘I’m coming to visit in Yakutat.’ [When the foreign chief arrived], the people would go down to the beach to meet the canoe and ask who he's visiting. He wouldn’t go ashore until he tell them. People would carry his things to his host‘s house. He would visit all the houses in town.” This was the behavior observed when someone of high rank came to Yakutat to trade. According to another informant, however, such persons went only to the houses of the leading chiefs (see pp. 354–355). It has been noted how Chief Minaman or “Billy” of Shark House on Khantaak Island was accustomed to offer hospitality to visitors, especially White mountaineers. A noble hostess, when entertaining a distinguished visitor, served the guest herself and did not permit the slaves to wait on him. Then she sat down beside her husband. The place of honor, where the chief sat and where the guest was placed, was at the rear of the house.

It is difficult to judge whether aristocrats were normally arrogant in manner or condescending when dealing with persons of lesser rank. Such behavior was certainly not the ideal. “Kindness,” which includes generosity, sympathy, pity for the unfortunate, courtesy and gentle manners, was the virtue most often stressed by my informants as distinguishing the good person and the one nobly born. “They used to say, ‘Don’t brag about yourself!’…That's the way my mother and uncles is brought up…. ‘Be kind to everybody and not hurt somebody's feelings. Don’t brag. Let somebody find out how good you are!’ “ “ ‘Don’t run away with the idea you’re above other people. Be as low as you can.’ “ (MJ) These were the often repeated maxims of proper conduct. “’AnyAdi is kind,” said another informant, “because they give you the dirtiest name if you’re not acting to your grade. They call you nitc qa’a—like ‘bastard,’ but not really that. He's outcast, not really ’anyAdi. The lowest man, if he's kind and gently, they call him ’anyAdi. Give you a good name, no matter how low you are or how poor.”

There seems to be nothing in the speeches of chiefs at potlatches to suggest the arrogant boasting of the Kwakiutl.[79] As one informant explained: “Suppose I give a potlatch. I talk to the opposite chief, to all the gunEtkAnayi chiefs, and he answer me back by respect. It‘s always respect talk.” Courteous behavior, showing respect for oneself and for one's associates and opposites was the mark of a chief.

This does not mean that persons were not jealous of their honor and of the reputation of their sibs, or that insults were not bitterly resented. Rather, there was real need to be careful of word and manner because of the extreme touchiness of pride that was ready to read a deadly insult into a casual remark where nothing derogatory had been intended. A boasting or contemptuous word, or a deliberate insult publicly given, might once have led to war, and men today are likely to fight under such provocation if they have been drinking. Women are more likely to retaliate against real or fancied slights by spreading gossip that accuses each other of the most heinous offenses.

The Yakutat Tlingit have tremendous pride but it does not have to feed itself with arrogance. It was perhaps only those who felt a little unsure of their own social position who boasted to us of their high-class ancestry. When talking to other Tlingit, however, the same individuals, like those of acknowledged prestige, might joke how they and the person to whom they were speaking were poor miserable no-accounts, too unimportant even to be accused of witchcraft. Such exchanges had nothing to do with joking relationships (see pp. 486–488). It is perhaps significant that face-saving potlatches or property contests to wipe out insults were rare in Yakutat (see pp. 643–644). One informant, in fact, implied that boasting of one's ancestry was really the sign of the parvenue, who could easily be shamed when asked the crucial questions. “If anybody talks about royalty, they ask, ‘What's your grandparent's name? Where they come from before you?’ And then you [are] ended and you know you were wrong.” The story of the braggart gambler who boasted of his wealth seems to carry a similar moral (see p. 894).

While the wealthy aristocrat was supposed not to be arrogant or imperious or greedy, there is evidence that this was sometimes the case. Thus the term ’ánw or ’Anw was said by Harrington's informants (MS. 1939–40) to mean “high class baby when you want.” Boas (1917, p. 159) translates it as “infant of nobility.” The usual meaning seems, however, to be “a crybaby. Also anybody that is over-sensitive and cries easily…. A small kid that wants everything, e.g., as Raven did at Nass” when he cried for the stars and moon and box of daylight. “They say a big man feels like ’Anw. Everything he wants, they give it to him.” In addition, Harrington was told that the diminutive of ’anyAdi (‘aanyÁtu or ’aanyÁthuu) might mean high-class person, but that it was “a cuss word [when said] to a common person.” It may also be said about such a person who “is acting like high-caste people when he is not.” The same term can also be used as a compliment or “kind expression” when applied to a “good person.” No doubt the context or tone of voice indicates in what spirit these two terms are to be understood.

Besides “kindness,” other virtues that were prized and which must have been required of chiefs and their families were courage, industry, loyalty, honesty, and fortitude. To win and retain respect, one had to emulate the deeds and behavior of one's ancestors, remembering that one's own acts would be to the credit or discredit of one's descendants. “That's why the people, long time ago, they believed they don’t want to disgrace their tunA kugwAsti [’those who will emerge from inside’?, i.e., descendants]. They got to be good or else there will be a mark on their tunA kugwAsti—offspring. Their [your] offspring will be marked if you do anything wrong. Will have no respect. That‘s why you got to be brave and honest so [or] your tunA kugwAsti will be marked in the face. You have no respect for them.”

Morally wrong conduct disgraced not only the malefactor but his whole lineage. Lying, stealing, sexual relations between moiety or sib brother and sister, and other lewd conduct were thought to be signs of witchcraft. A person guilty of such serious offences might be killed by his relatives, or banished, and his kinsmen might then hold a potlatch to wipe out the disgrace to his name and to their own. Or, a self-confessed witch, if spared, might reform and live down his disgrace. To judge by the cases known to us, he would not lose his formal rank in his lineage. A person, however, who continually violated native law was abandoned by his kinsmen. “When a person's like that, they jump him so much he's down to nothing. If he breaks it [a law], like a killing, it costs his tribe's life. It leads to wars. [They] have to be very careful, preach [to] one another how to act. [He] might even become a slave. Those people who become slaves like that, they don’t labor—just called ‘slaves,’ no good for anything. Sometimes they call them ‘witchcraft.’ They have no respect for him—kick him out of the way.”

Almost more despised was the person who was lazy and improvident. He was also called a slave and the same epithet could be applied to his children. Thus, one informant said of a man whose father had been forced by economic distress to sell a sib heirloom, “In the old days we’d call him a guw” [slave]. This person did indeed occupy an inferior position in the community, doing odd jobs for others. In former times an impoverished man might literally become a slave if he had to appeal to someone other than a kinsman for support. “When you’re starving, and they give you something to eat, they hold you slave, unless your people pay for you.” Laziness was one of the worst sins in Tlingit eyes. “You see, when they pack food, they have to pack enough for two winters. They believe it's going to be two winters. Like now [end of March], they think there‘s going to be another winter. If somebody is lazy, just let him go, and somebody will make him a slave.”

Such a slave is called a ‘dried-fish slave’ (‘At écì yu gúw), because he had to sell himself for a piece of dried fish to keep from starving. “That's [an] old word. They never use it now, it's only in stories what I hear: qunA neł ’uwugut—’to them he came inside’…asking for food. And they never give him food unless he says: ’i guu At gusAti—’your slave I will be.’ ’I’m going to be your slave if you give me some food.’

“Those people, if they make good again, they pay themselves back [redeem themselves]. But if they don’t pay themselves back they become a slave. But they don’t work like the others, you know. They stay by themselves, and he [the “master”] just claim them. But if he [the “slave”] is a good man, and the tribe [his sib] likes him—maybe the food spoiled or something, just that one time—all his tribe gets together and pay for him, because whatever he does his tribe gets blamed for. If he's a good man they do it, but if he‘s always bumming around, then he becomes a slave for good.”

The famous Teqwedi shaman, atgawet, is said to have acquired slaves in this way, because he always had ample stores of food when others were starving. “Sometimes they get free when their family gets money and they pay it back. Sometimes when they have a big potlatch they are killed. Too bad, too bad.”

We do not know, of course, whether such ‘dried-fish slaves’ suffered all the disabilities of ordinary slaves, nor how often poor persons may have sunk to such a position, because normally anyone could claim food and shelter in any house of his lineage or sib. We also wonder whether poor dependents or their unwanted children were ever enslaved by their own wealthy relatives and perhaps sold to distant tribes.

Distinctions in rank have become blurred to a large extent at Yakutat, due to a number of factors. The extinction of old lines has permitted persons of undistinguished ancestry to acquire honored names. The shift from a subsistence economy based on hunting, fishing, and gathering, with luxuries gained largely through native trading ventures, to an economy in which both subsistence and prestige items are procured for cash derived almost entirely from commercial fishing, meant a great change in the relative wealth of different families, so that formerly poor people were able to potlatch. At the same time, the breaking up of the large households into single family units and the disregard for old sib territorial claims destroyed the power of the house chief and the sib chief. Still later, the depletion of the salmon runs brought poverty to almost everyone although the opening up of a few skilled jobs has favored the high school trained young person. What little wealth there is has often been in the hands of those who care nothing at all about potlatching or the acquisition of distinction according to the old system. Even before this, the mission was preaching against the intermarriage of close relatives which served to keep noble family lines uncontaminated. “The real high-class people are dying off,” lamented one woman. “Only a few of us ’anyAdi are left. In my line there were no slaves.” There are now too few persons of unblemished ancestry to matter. “We so few living now, that we can’t go by that.” As a corollary, “No one mentions who's common, but when we get mad we mention the people who are low class.”

As the old system of rank has been undermined, the basis for self-respect and honorable conduct has also suffered. “That's how we lost our pride. When the U.S. bought Alaska, they taught the native people to live common. That's the only mistake they made. But when we lived common, we lost our pride. We’re just like people without a country.”

Slaves

Wealthy families at Yakutat formerly owned slaves (guw). Most of these were foreigners obtained in trade from the south, especially “Flatheads” (T’oyat), who came from Victoria, the “West Coast” of Vancouver Island, or Washington, and who were presumably Nootka, Kwakiutl, Salish, or even Chinook. There were also Haida and Tsimshian slaves, and even some southern Tlingit, we believe. A few slaves were of local origin. For example, Chief Minaman of Shark House on Khantaak Island had a ł’uedi woman (ł’uedica) as a slave, a descendent of the original inhabitants of the Situk, p. 472). Despite semilegendary accounts that rich men such as atgawet or great chiefs like Yaodaqet had “many slaves,” the slave population of Yakutat was probably small; in the mid-19th century a man who owned five slaves was considered very wealthy. According to some informants (MJ and KDI), a particular Tł’UknaAdi man is of the noblest birth because when his father's father fell dead in Chilkat of a heart attack, 15 slaves were freed at his funeral. Chief Shakes, the famous Nanya‘ayi chief of Wrangell, who actually had had about 30 or 40 slaves, was pictured by one Yakutat informant as possessing 10 or 15, which is perhaps the picture of extreme affuence.

In 1861, Lieutenant Wehrman of the Russian Navy made a census of the Tlingit population for the Russian-American Company in which he reported 49 slaves out of a total population of 380 persons at Yakutat (Petroff, 1884, p. 38). There is no reason to trust these figures, since others in the census seem inaccurate, and the Russians were probably too timid to make careful investigations at Yakutat. The last slaves at Yakutat were freed about 1900.

With the possible exceptions of’dried-fish slaves,’ the slaves of the Tlingit were originally captives taken in war, or the children of captives. “That's why, olden time, they wants family, big family, you know. Then they can stand against war. Then they [the enemy] don’t have slave out of that people.” The capture of slaves was an acknowledged motive for war. Thus, the wives of the Tł’UknaAdi men who went to raid the Tłaayik-Teqwedi at Eagle Fort on the Situk urged their husbands to bring back not only Yakutat baskets, but boys, 5 to 6 years old, as slaves (see p. 262). Sometimes captives were taken for ransom, but would presumably be used as slaves if not redeemed by their relatives. Such would have been the fate of the sister of the Kwacqwan chief of Knight Island who was captured by the Tł’UknaAdi, if a friend (trade partner?), the nephew of the Dry Bay chief, had not helped her to escape (p. 246). Similarly, long ago a war party from the southern Tlingit community of Klawak, or from farther south, captured a Tł’UknaAdi woman of Hoonah. “They go around to get slaves—catch them like prisoners.” The woman, ‘Big Raven's Mother’ (Yeł-tłen-tła), offered her captors a copper belonging to her son in return for her freedom. Apparently she was not successful, for some Juneau people (‘Awqwan), sib not specified, claim to have bought and kept her. Only recently a Tł’UknaAdi man gave a lot of money to the ’Awqwan “to shut their mouths” and wipe out the shame.

Even though a slave might escape or be given his freedom, the stigma of slavery still clung to him, and his sib relatives and descendants shared the disgrace unless their good name were restored by a potlatch, as was evidently done in the case of the Hoonah woman. When the Kwacqwan chief's sister escaped to Knight Island, her brother evidently gave a potlatch, for he is said to have been so glad to see her that he had slaves wash her and clean her hair, and then set them free. This was commonly done at potlatches for the slaves who had dressed the host and his relatives. “Very few people can sacrifice slaves. They free them when they dress the prince, and send them to their own people.”

Slaves had no ordinary status in Tlingit society and no rights as human beings. They were property that could be bought and sold, or disposed of as the owner wished. A slave, like a sea otter pelt, seems almost to have served as a standard measure of value in reckoning the worth of a canoe or a copper. In counting slaves, one could use either the form of the numeral applicable to persons or that used for objects (Boas, 1917, p. 93 and note). Traffic in slaves was carried on at Yakutat as early as historical records are available. Thus, Ismailov and Bocharov in 1788 bought at Yakutat a Koniag and a Sitkan slave, both boys about 12 years old; Purtov and Kulikalov in 1794 learned that the Yakutat Indians had sold some Chugach captives to Tlingit in southeastern Alaska (pp. 134, 164).

Ordinary notions of sex morality and legitimacy of children did not apply to slaves. This was made clear by an informant who explained that in the old days an unwed mother and her baby would be killed by her uncles and brothers because of the disgrace she had brought upon them, adding—“Except slaves. They could have babies two or three times a day! Their owner would be proud of it. The slaves can meet when they go [out] to get grub. They come from outside, so they aren’t Wolf or Eagle [and Raven].” This last is not strictly true, as the informant herself recognized on another occasion (see p. 473), but the implication is that the possible moiety affiliations of slaves did not matter.

We do not know whether slaves were abused or how they may have been punished for disobedience. However, even the son of the owner had rights over his father's slave. “In Tlingit, it's that way: your father's slave, you can do anything to him. You’re the boss. If you want to kill it, you can kill it, because it's your father's slave.” This statement was made to explain why insulting contemptuous behavior toward someone is said to be treating him like one's father‘s slave (see p. 283).

Slaves might be killed at a potlatch. To be able to sacrifice a slave was once considered the mark of a wealthy man, a “good” man. One of my informants spoke about the legendary potlatch given by the Kagwantan at Grouse Fort (KA nuwu), on Icy Strait in Hoonah Territory, when hundreds of slaves are said to have been sacrificed to dedicate Wolf House (Swanton, 1909, Tale 104, pp. 343 ff.). Their bodies were thrown into a ravine (agAw), which thereby received the name ‘Slaves’ Valley’ (Guw agAwu; Swanton, 1909, p. 343, Gux-qlagA’k!a). Many of the slaves were pregnant women, and therefore very valuable. “They would hit them once and throw them down half dead…. and they would call to each other. It sounds funny…. They just kill those slaves when the Kagwantan have a party. That's why, you know, the Kagwantan and Tł’UknaAdi are good people. They had lots of slaves. And that Teqwedi that had a lot of slaves is good, too.” “Some big man die, that‘s why they kill all those guw that time.”

While some evidently take pride in such stories about the magnificent potlatches given by their forebears, we gather from the account of an actual slave sacrifice that real horror was felt by those present, and that most people at Yakutat today are equally shocked. Thus, one informant (MJ) related how her mother used to accuse her father (the informant's grandfather) of cruelty because when she was a little girl she had seen him order a slave killed at a potlatch. This was probably about 1855 when the Teqwedi Shark House (or Bear Paw House) was dedicated at Diyaguna’Et on Lost River (see p. 317). On this occasion, those of the host sib who could afford it “gave” slaves, and the grandfather who owned five slaves “gave” the little one. This was the baby daughter of his slave woman, Qułsín. Ever after that, when he was “preaching kindness” to his daughter, she used to retort: “Oh, you make me sick, Daddy! One time I see you appoint somebody to take that little guww [baby slave] out of its mother's hand, and order to kill it. And they put a pole across its neck and smother it. That's the most cruel [thing] you can do. And you expect me to be kind to people!” These accusations which she heard as a child evidently made a strong impression on her, for she repeated the story on at least four different occasions (1949, July 30, 1952, September 14, 1952, and April 7, 1954. One of these versions is quoted on p. 513). In still another version, her mother told her father: “I’ll never forgive you. I’ll never forget that.” It was the nakani (brothers-in-law of the host sib) who took the slave baby outside and strangled it. Then the gunEtkAnai got the body, because it passed to them when it went from the master's hands, our informant speculated. Although she usually said that her grandfather was too abashed to answer her mother, and perhaps this was most often this case, on one occasion he was evidently able to explain, for she reported: “’I don’t like to do that, but I have to do it. My people before me did like that, so I had to do it.’ He was doing it to raise himself. So my mother couldn’t answer him.” Apparently he had been competing with other Teqwedi. “They try to beat one another, you know, Teqwedi tribe.”

Perhaps we would have heard more stories of this sort if the people were now not so distressed at the thought of slavery in the old days. Evidently they prefer to forget those aspects of the past, and I know that some made a conscious effort to suppress references to such customs and warned others not to tell about wars and slave sacrifice. However, it was obvious that some others were not so concerned, witness the account of the Kagwantan potlatch given above. Taking into account reticences as well as what was reported, it is my impression that slave sacrifice was not very common at Yakutat, and may even have been introduced and practiced only by lineages from southeastern Alaska. Certainly there were many mentions of liberating slaves at potlatches, as if this were common, but the specific occasions mentioned were relatively recent (pp. 472–473).

We may also conclude from the story just summarized that kindness to slaves was a virtue. Like kindness to animals, such behavior towards a slave might be supernaturally rewarded. Thus, the Tł’UknaAdi youth, łkettitc, who became wealthy and married a chief‘s daughter, owed his good fortune to the magical teachings of the slave whom he had befriended (see pp. 243 and 244).

I was given little specific information about the duties of slaves, probably because there were no such special tasks. There is, furthermore, no indication that they worked much harder than freemen. Certain tiny green burs were called ‘slaves’ louse nests [snarls?]’ (guw cAísi), because: “Slaves can’t brush their hair [they don’t have time], so it's full of louse nests, all tangled up.” It may be significant that these same burs are also called “berry-pickers’ louse nests” and to come indoors with them in one's hair suggests that one has been having intercourse in the grass. In the story of the man who married Fair Weather's daughter, there is a male slave who chopped wood and wept for fear of his master's anger(?) when he broke the stone adze. At night he was supposed to fetch water and to take away the ladder that led to the sleeping place of his master's daughter (see p. 883). But this myth sheds little light on the details of a slave's actual life. Nor is the following statement more illuminating: “You know slaves always stay by them, work for them, just like a maid, you know. That‘s the way at is, they do all kinds of things for them.” Other brief mentions of slaves include such items as the statement that the stream connecting Aka and Summit Lakes was a canal dug by slaves (see p. 75), or that when Chief Yaodaqet, who had risen early to judge the weather, believed it would rain, he would call to his slave, Gicwexc, to put things in a dry place.

Aside from the inherent inferiority of slavery itself, and the uncertainty of life when the master gave a potlatch, one gathers that the life of the slave at Yakutat was not very different from that of the commoner or poor relative. Malaspina, however, paints a more gloomy picture, at least for the female slaves (see pp. 145, 475). Like dependent relatives, slaves had the less desirable sleeping rooms at the front corners of the house, and were probably included among the lower-class workers who ‘lived inside the door’ (p. 297). Although bringing in water seems to have been a nightly chore of slaves, it was not exclusively theirs. In fact, the really arduous and disagreeable work, such as the daily cutting of firewood, was undertaken by young men in training, by young nephews as a duty to their uncle, or by young husbands as the traditional bride service to their fathers-in-law. Nor were slaves obliged to be the first to rise in the morning and light the fire. According to one informant, it was her grandfather, the owner or former owner of five slaves, who was the early riser. Slaves ate their meals at the same times as the other members of the household. We are given no hint that their food was scanty or inferior to that of the others, although doubtless they had little chance to sample the delicacies served at feasts, and were the first to go hungry in time of scarcity. On the other hand, eating sparingly, abstaining from certain foods, or fasting were enjoined upon those who hoped to rise in the world or who had a position to maintain: the free children, young people, hunters, shamans, and persons undertaking supernaturally uncertain enterprises.

We are, in fact, given the impression that slaves were occupied with much the same tasks as their masters. They gathered and preserved their own food, but how great a contribution they made to the domestic economy of their owners is uncertain. Because of the magicoreligious value placed upon abstinence, hardihood, and the performance of arduous tasks “before the Raven calls at dawn,” it is doubtful if slaves could have relieved their masters of the most difficult features of life, unless the ascetic ideal was exaggerated in the pictures sketched by our informants. I do not know if slaves ever accompanied their masters on hunting expeditions; at least there is no mention of this and, in any case, hunting was almost an enjoyable occupation. Female slaves undoubtedly helped to prepare food and care for small children, but informants gave no indication that these occupations were considered tiresome. Rather, one has the impression that what we would consider “work” was for the Yakutat life itself—interesting, valuable, something in which one could take pride of accomplishment, as one could in the obviously aesthetic products of handicrafts. Industry was itself virtuous. The possession of slaves alone, rather than their services, may have been what mattered.

I heard only reference to a “poor little rich girl,” who had always been so waited on by slaves that she did not know how to perform ordinary housewifely duties. This was DagUnu-tła, the ałyI-Kagwantan granddaughter of the famous atgawet. Her father, Ctatł’ew, told her when he was dying: “ ‘I don’t want you to marry Tlingit after you grow to be a lady. I want you to marry White man. Because if you marry Tlingit, he's going to make you do this and that, and all the things you don’t know.’ She don’t know how to wash and sew and hold a needle or anything. They had slaves to do it. She‘s got such a tiny little hand—I see her. And tiny little feet. She never used to walk much or do anything—just sit down.” She married the White man, John Bremner, a pioneer on the Copper River. His diary of the winter of 1884–1885 on the Copper River (in Seton-Karr, 1887, pp. 220–221), makes no mention of a wife, nor does the report of Lieutenant Allen who met him at Taral in the spring of 1885 (Allen, 1887, p. 48). Bremner accompanied Allen to the middle Yukon valley, where, I was told, he was later killed by the Indians. The wife came to Yakutat and evidently lived until at least 1904 or 1905, for my informant who saw her was born in 1900.

In some families, perhaps in most, slaves were treated like members of the famliy. “My aunty's husband [father's “sister's” husband], Daqusetc [Chief Minaman of the Teqwedi Shark House], got one of the Situk L’uedi for a slave. Daqusetc come from Diaya-guna’Et [on Lost River]; he lived on Khantaak. We called the slave, ’aunty,’—’a ‘at [father's sister]. She went hunting, digging roots, putting up grub. We [children] go for her stuff. She got stuff in a box for us. Charley [my brother] used to ‘fight’ my mother, put his arms around her neck and say, ‘I’m strong. I’m going to choke you. I can lift my aunty's box!…’ I don’t know how Daqusetc got her. We really believe she was my aunty on my father's side. She was ł’uedica. Her name was ’Anisná. She was a little bit of a woman, fat. She would hug me and pack me on her back. She was an awfully kind woman. We always run to her when she come to town.” Our informant doubted that she had children of her own. “They let her go free and she went away. After my aunty's husband died in Sitka, that's when she went free.” (MJ) He died in 1890, according to his tombstone at Yakutat.

Other slaves belonging to Chief Minaman were freed at the potlatch for him, and one of these was a slave woman, “from the west coast,” named Qułsin. (Was this the same woman as the one whose baby was killed at the potlatch at Diyaguna’Et?—see p. 471.) Chief Minaman's slave had been previously owned by his wife's brother, a cousin of our informant's mother. Chief Minaman's wife had given so much to her brother that the latter gave the slave to her husband. Qułsín already had two sons, WÀkác and Yełqakw or YełkA-’ic. The woman was pregnant when given to Chief Minaman. The child, Teqwet (‘Little Teqwedi’?), was born at the time of the potlatch for Shark House, presumably that built by Chief Minaman on Khantaak Island (p. 319). When her owner died, Qułsín and her children were freed. “At the potlatch the slaves go free. They announce it and holler it outside. Then the Teqwedi take them over as a family. Generally they kill them when they are giving a potlatch, so as to get a great name…. After they get free, then they take them in their own tribe.” (MJ) That is, the freed slaves are adopted as sibmates by their former owners.

The same man who had given Qułsín to his brother-in-law was the informant's maternal “uncle.” “He had a lot of slaves. He died and that old ałyI-Kagwantan woman [his widow] didn’t want to bother with them. When Charley [my brother] built his house [Boulder House, at the Old Village, about 1901], she freed one for me, so people wouldn’t laugh at me. I was crippled.” My informant had a curvature of the spine (healed tuberculosis ?). One of the freed women subsequently had many children and grandchildren, and the latter called the informant “grandma.” “The other slaves were adopted as ałyI-Kagwantan when they got civilized.” The curious feature of this potlatch is that it was given by the Tł’UknaAdi, the sib of the widow's husband and of the girl she honored, so that in effect she was taking her dead husband's place when she freed a slave for her niece (see p. 641). A ałyI-Kagwantan informant confirmed the adoption of a Flathead slave girl. The oldest of her daughters or grandaughters still writes to this informant and they call each other “sister.”

This same woman reports that her parents owned a Haida slave man and his wife. “When my mother [born 1871] was little, they used to have a man that works for them. And after the big war came they adopted him, and he was her brother. Later on, the same day[?], they received word from Haidaberg. They want him down there because he's a big shot down there—’anyAdi. And they want him back, and they’re going to give so much property to my mother and her parents. My grandfather's already died. [He died in 1887.] And they sent him [the adopted slave] down there. He went on a canoe. I guess he went with somebody. He went to Douglas and he fell in love down there with somebody. He was so excited he got pneumonia and died in 2 days. They buried him on that small little island in front of Douglas [Juneau Isle]. And my mother never forget the property they supposed to send from Haidaberg. He never reach there. But they still have to pay…. Of course he was free—he was the brother of my mother…. [But they had to] clear his name up.

“He's got a wife, too. And his wife is just like a man. And I think my grandmother sent that woman to her brother…on Kayak Island.” The subsequent history of the woman is not known.

Another informant mentioned a potlatch given by the Kagwantan in Sitka, about 1904(?), when the Kagwantan adopted the U.S. Navy as brothers. (The original adoption was probably earlier.) On this occasion four women slaves were freed. My informant assumed that the freed slaves returned to their own people. When asked if they had been adopted by their former owners, or if she had ever heard of adopting a slave, she said, “No. That‘s the cheapest people, I guess—slaves.”

Another woman said: “There were slaves here [in Yakutat], but they all died single. None of the boys married. They were fine-looking and the girls were crazy for them. Lots of people here adopted the slaves as brothers.”

The former slave still remained in a lowly status and found it almost impossible to marry someone of free birth. That this did sometimes occur, however, is suggested by malicious gossip that may accuse a neighbor of blemished origin.

The most curious story concerning a slave is about Gucdutin, ‘Visible Fin,’ referring to the dorsal fin or ‘thumb’ (guc) of the Killerwhale. He was one of the slaves belonging to the Teqwedi grandfather of an informant. There were apparently five slaves at Khantaak or Diyaguna’Et who stole a canoe to escape. They had come from Victoria or the “West Coast.” When they got into the canoe, they asked each other, “Where shall we steer for?” A little slave women said, “Let's steer for AWAC [Siwash?].” And Gucdutin said, “Let's go to Victoria.” The escape must have been planned for a long time. Before he left, Gucdutin had composed a song, which he left with his master and his master's people, the Teqwedi. The song (1954, 5-2-A and 5-2-B) is the same as that recorded by Swanton in 1904 and ascribed to a Nanya’ayi man (a southern Tlingit of the Wolf-Eagle moiety; Swanton, 1909, p. 406, No. 68). The words are: “Poor Gucdutin will die before he reaches Victoria. It is not Raven's town for which I weep, but the town of my grandfathers” p. 1360. The song is now sung by the Teqwedi. Before he left, the slave also painted his face with a red spot on both cheeks. The design is associated with the Children of the Sun. These are powerful supernaturals who have been the familiars of a certain line of Teqwedi shamans. This shamanistic connection is evidently one that antedates the escape of Gucdutin, since atgawet is said to have been the shaman who first obtained the Sun's Children as his spirits (see “Shamanism,” pp. 710–711). However, our informant specified that the Teqwedi acquired the right to use the face paint pattern because the slave had gone away without being redeemed.[80]

In first telling the story of Gucdutin, my informant was afraid that he never did reach home, but probably got only as far as Dry Bay or Lituya Bay. The other slaves with him were recaptured, but he was a strong man and probably fought free. Later, when Swanton's text of the song was read to her, she accepted this as proof that the slave did reach the south.

The most curious feature of the whole story is the statement that “Gucdutin was kind of adopted as Teqwedi because they were dying off.” As my informant correctly observed, his name means that he must already have been a member of some lineage or sib that used the Killerwhale as a crest. The Killerwhale is a crest, not only of the Teqwedi and of a number of other Tlingit sibs in the Wolf-Eagle moiety, but is one found among the Tsimshian, Haida, Kwakiutl, and Nootka.

It is impossible to determine the accuracy of this story, for the events reportedly occurred before my informant was born and she learned of them only as a child. Conceivably she has confused her grandfather's slave with another person of the same name, the song composer. But the question of historical accuracy does not detract from the significance of the story, which indicates that it was possible for the captor or slaveowner to take over for himself and his lineage or sib the ceremonial prerogatives (song, face painting, possibly other rights), originally owned by his captive or slave.[81] Transfer in this case may have been easier because master and slave already shared the same Killerwhale crest. It should be noted that the Children of the Sun came to Yakutat shamans from Tsimshian country, and that Gucdutin also came from the south, so he may have known something about them. Perhaps a master's use or acquisition of intangible prerogatives was equivalent to holding them for ransom, as one might a slave. In this case, the Teqwedi are said to have taken these rights because they received nothing for the loss of the slave himself. We should note that one Tlingit sib may use the prerogatives of another if the latter fails to pay a debt.[82]

Since Tlingit slaves came largely from the south, it is possible that the slave trade, as well as intermarriage with southerners, was one mechanism by which the northern Tlingit and the Yakutat people acquired or learned southern ceremonial usages. In addition, the affectionate relationships which seem to have been usual between slaves and their master‘s children would have established excellent conditions for cultural transmission to the latter.

Chiefs and Slaves in the 18th Century

Native traditions and the reports of early travelers give many details of the behavior of chiefs and important people among the Yakutat natives, even though the Europeans often failed to understand the nature or limits of the chiefs’ powers. There is little said about slaves, however. It is probably very significant that none of the visitors to Yakutat in the late 19th century, not even the missionary Albin Johnson, seem to have been aware that there were slaves in the community. This would confirm our impression gained from the statements of informants that, when sacrifice was abandoned, there was little to distinguish the slave from the poor relation.

As usual, it is Malaspina who has given us the most detailed descriptions of class differences at Yakutat. His statements about the chief, “Ankau,” and about slaves are worth quoting.

THE CHIEF AND HIS FAMILY, YAKUTAT, 1791

Malaspina (1885, p. 346) had observed that the authority of the “Ankau” in time of peace, in daily gatherings and trading, was not equal to the power he displayed on two occasions of military significance.

“We had not yet cast anchor in port, and the two war canoes came out to meet us with the greater part of the able-bodied men of the tribe, the Ankau, in a covered canoe [kayak], directed all their movements in a decided tone of voice. And, having posted one of his sons in each canoe, on board the Atrevida, whither he had come, his orders were carried out. In the same way, at the time the suspicious canoes came from the east on the morning of July first, he immediately requested our aid, carefully examined their intentions, and did not omit among his people any precaution dictated by the apprehended danger of an attack. But in his domestic life it was not easy to observe any distinction proportionate to those seen on military occasions. His family worked like the rest for their subsistence and welfare; not a few times the Ankau paddled alone in a little canoe; in trading no least suggestion of a monopoly was noticeable, although greed surely prompted him to attempt as many tricks as possible; his orders against theft were not obeyed. [In a footnote, the author adds: “We had many suspicions, not unfounded, that the same Ankau fomented the disorders; but certainly his conduct was always very circumspect, consistent, and capable of deceiving anyone.”] And in the prelude to our troubles of the third and fifth [of July], neither his presence, nor his shouts, were sufficient to restrain the more audacious. Only his counsels on the first occasion and his [own] danger on the second were sufficiently strong checks to restrain them from their intended hostilities. Finally, in his person and dress, no distinction was observed other than his using the fur of a little “fox” [zorillo, probably marten], while the others wore either that of the otter [nutria], sea wolf [fur seal], or bear.

“This last distinction was an object of dispute among us for some time, but the issue finally seemed to be settled by the question of the Ankau as to whether Don Juan Vernaci was my brother because he saw him wearing a greatcoat furred with guanaco pelts, similar to the one I wore myself.”

SLAVES, YAKUTAT, 1791

On the very first day in Port Mulgrave, Malaspina (1885, p. 347) and his men had been offered women, but had refused what they feared would have been dangerous hospitality. They were curious as to the origin of this custom, for while it was clear that Captain Dixon's crew had used the women on their visit of 1786, the Spaniards doubted that a single visit would have been sufficient to establish a custom. Finally, it became evident that the offered women were slaves.

“The women offered were not more than three or four in number; they were together, and had all the appearance of oppression and ill-treatment; and nearly all the tribe were equally interested in offering them and in furnishing their use frankly and without the least decency. This immediately made us suspect that they might be slaves from another tribe. This suspicion was later confirmed not only by the actual presence among them of a male slave…. [Footnote: “The Ankau himself showed me this prisoner, indicating to me that he was of the same tribe whose canoes had approached on the first [of July] with hostile intentions.” More probably, they had been procured from these visitors]…as well as by the fact that these offers were not renewed in the different settlements we afterwards visited, particularly in the fairly large one at the entrance to Disenchantment Bay [of which the Ankau's son was the chief]. Those that were offered to us by the inhabitants of the slopes of Mount St. Elias [at Cape Yakataga] were doubtless also slaves, and probably it would be easy to find them among all these coastal tribes, as the fruit of destructive invasions which would multiply with this new incentive.”

KINSHIP

The Basic Terms

The Tlingit kinship system which prevails at Yakutat is of the type called “Crow,” or “avuncu-Crow” (Murdock, 1949, p. 247). The formal patterning of kin terms not only reflects the organization of the society into matrilineal moieties and sibs, but the ways in which these terms are actually manipulated cannot be understood unless the sib organization is kept in mind.

The basic kin terms, are fairly simple. It is their application which is complicated, since they are widely extended and intricately applied to strengthen the bonds of relationship. (See also Durlach, 1928.)

łíłw

grandparent

’ìc

father

sÁni

father's brother

’àt

father's sister

tła

mother

tław

mother's sister

kak

mother's brother

hÚn

older brother (man speaking)

cAt

older sister (woman speaking)

’i

brother (woman speaking)

tłá

sister (man speaking)

kík

younger sibling (same sex as speaker)

yIt

son

sí

daughter

yÁt

child

kéł

sister's child (man speaking)

káłw

brother‘s child (woman speaking)

tcÁn, datcÁn

grandchild

o (or U)

husband

cAt

wife

wu

father-in-law

tcan

mother-in-law

kani

sibling-in-law(same sex as speaker)

Kinship terms are used in reference and in direct address, except in cases where avoidance rules prohibit direct intercourse between certain relatives. Persons of the same generation and age are apt to use personal names when speaking to each other. Older relatives may address juniors by name, or may combine the name with the kin term. In use, kin terms are preceded by a possessive pronoun: my (‘a), your (singular—’i), his, her (du), our (ha), your (plural—i), their (duhAs), or someone's (qa). This usage is so automatic that even when speaking English interspersed with native words, many informants would say, “John'sdu kak”—’John's maternal uncle’ or “a girl's du ‘at”—’a girl's paternal aunt.’ The only exception is when the kin term follows the personal name in direct address, as in Ceq yIt—’Ceq, little son,’ or when kin terms are compounded. For example, one might say either du kak si, or du kak du si when referring to ’his maternal uncle's daughter.‘

The terms for husband (o) and for wife (cAt) are very often so compounded, as in such expressions as “my daughter-in-law” (‘a yIt cAt), literally ‘my son's wife.’ A woman would, however, refer to her younger sister's husband as ’ax kik du o. The term for father (‘ic) and for mother (tła) are also suffixed to personal names to produce teknonymous appellations, as for example, Ceq-’ic or ‘Father of Ceq,’ and Ceq-tła or ‘Mother of Ceq.’ Since such names may be given to babies they obviously do not mean the same thing as Ceq du ’ic, which could only be used to designate the actual father of Ceq. Kin terms do not take the ordinary ending denoting possession, but remain uninflected. The only exception is yAt—’child’ which becomes ’a yAdi—’my child,’ or ’a yAti—’my children.’ However, this is not, strictly speaking, a kin term, since it means ‘baby,’ and can be used for the offspring of any animal, such as xuts yAdi for ‘bear cub,’ or may even designate a small variety of some natural species.

Relationship terms are widely extended in use, often to cover all the sibmates of the individual to whom the term most closely applies. All parallel cousins are, of course, classed as siblings. Individuals who bear the same name are treated as if they were the same person, so that the kin terms that might be applicable to one man and his family would be used for his namesake and the latter‘s family. This would be natural in cases where the second bearer of the name is believed to be the reincarnation of the first, but the usage also extends to living contemporaries who may belong to different sibs and who are not known to be related in any way. Very often a given individual might be addressed by several different terms, but in such a case the term implying the closest consanguine relationship to the speaker is chosen unless there is bad feeling between them.

Grandparents and Grandchildren

The relationship between grandparents and grandchildren is warm and affectionate. The reciprocal terms ’a łíłw—’my grandparent’ and ’a datcAn—’my grandchild,’ both of which appear to be affectionate diminutives, are filled with emotion. Children traditionally, and often actually, love their grandparents more than their own parents, and there is no dearer relative that the child of a son or daughter. Grandparents are notoriously indulgent, and the story of how Raven stole the Daylight (pp. 853–855) not only illustrates but explains their behavior. Thus, Raven, who had contrived to be born to the daughter of the chief who owned the Daylight, had only to cry to be given the stars and moon. Finally he cried for the box of daylight. “It's the last thing this grandfather got. That's why up to this day a person thinks more of their grandchildren than of their own child—because Raven taught them how. That man gave his precious stuff to please his grandchild.” (MJ) The same love, of course, unites greatgrandparents and greatgrandchildren, who call each other ‘grandparent’ and ’grandchild.‘

In the second and third ascending generations all consanguine relatives are ‘grandparents.’ The term includes not only the paternal and maternal grandfather and grandmother, but their siblings and parallel cousins, and the term for ‘grandchild’ is extended in a similar way. If necessary, one can designate a specific individual more accurately, as ‘my father's father's older brother’ (‘a ’ic du ’ic du hUn), or ‘my daughter's son’ (‘a si du yIt).

The most important “grandfathers” are the father's father and the mother's mother's brother. The latter is, of course, the senior male member of one's own maternal line. Because preferred marriages continually link together two lineages in opposite moieties, the father's father may actually be a mother's mother's brother, or belong to the same lineage or sib and so be considered the latter‘s “brother.” In any case, these two men are members of one's own moiety.

Because the Tlingit extend kin terms as far as possible, all the men and women of the paternal grandfather's sib, if different from the sib of the speaker, will be addressed as ‘grandparent,’ unless some other relationship makes another term more appropriate. On ceremonial occasions the paternal grandfather's sib is addressed or designated as ‘my grandparents’ (‘a łíłw hAs), the collective form (hAs) implying all the dead as well as all the living members. When the father's father and his sibmates are hosts at a potlatch they may confer honorable names upon their “grandchildren” by calling them out before the guests and making special gifts to the opposite moiety as the names are announced. This honor may be conferred by any man or woman of the paternal grandfather's sib. In this way, for example, many Tł’UknaAdi individuals at Yakutat, whose paternal grandfathers were Kwacqwan, have received “big names” when the Kwacqwan gave potlatches. This ceremonial bond between ‘grandparents’ and ‘grandchildren’ not only reflects the actual love of the father's father for his son's child, but the special feelings of the father for his own son which can only be expressed in this indirect fashion because they belong to opposite moieties. This affectionate concern is supposed to be felt toward all persons whose father's fathers belong to one's own sib, no matter what the respective ages. Thus, the Kagwantan hero, hurrying to attack the CAtqwan, encountered an old man whose grandfather was Kagwantan, and the hero addressed him as ‘grandchild.’ “That man is grandson of Kagwantan. No matter how old [or young] you are, you call them ‘grandson.’ “ (See p. 283.)

It should not be overlooked that the Tlingit also refer to ancestors in their own sib as grandparents, so that only the context of the speech or song will indicate whether the expression refers to the forebears of one's own sib or to the members of the paternal father's sib. Often, the father's father and the maternal great-uncle, though belonging to different sibs, are equated, so that no distinction between their lines is implied. However, when the lonely slave sings: “It is not Raven‘s town for which I weep, but the town of my grandfathers,” this can only mean the town of his own sib ancestors. In this case, he might have referred to the home of his maternal uncles and meant exactly the same.

The mother's father and the father's mother belong, of course, to the opposite moiety from their grandchild, and therefore have quite different ceremonial functions toward him. The paternal grandmother may be the actual sister of the mother's father, or be his sib or lineage “sister.” If their sibs are different, I believe that all members of the maternal grandather's sib may be addressed and referred to as ‘grandparent.’ Certainly this is true of the close relatives of the maternal grandfather. Thus, “Chief John is my grandfather on my mother's side—my mother's father's nephew. So I call him ‘grandfather.’ “ However, the father's mother belongs, of course, to the father's sib and most of the members of that sib will be treated as the siblings of the father. Nevertheless, the term ‘grandparent’ will probably be used in addressing all members of the father's sib and of the mother's father‘s sib who are contemporaries in age or generation with the actual grandparents—provided that there is no other relationship to the speaker which would make a different kin term more appropriate.

From this it can easily be seen that practically all the old people in a community can be addressed as ‘grandparent’ by the young. The term is, in fact, employed as a gesture of courtesy and affection to any old person, regardless of real or fictitious relationship. So old Frank Italio was delighted when we greeted him in Tlingit as ‘grandparent,’ and said that when a man became as old as he was everybody called him that.

Since there are also other kin terms available for use in addressing ‘grandparents,’ which ones are actually employed will depend upon personal preference or sense of propriety. Chief John, although only the maternal grandmother's nephew, was called “grandfather,” because he had succeeded to his uncle's position, and was therefore like a grandfather to our informant. When Charley White was recording the spirit song of his father's brother, the shaman Te-’ic, he referred to the latter in the introduction as ‘my paternal uncle, my father's older brother’ (‘a SAni, ’a ’ic du hUn). In the concluding remarks, however, he stated that he had sung the words of ‘my grandfather's spirit’ (‘a łIłw du yegi), referring to the dead shaman as a grandfather because he belonged to his mother's father‘s sib and had inherited his powers from a long line of predecessors in that sib (1954, 1-1-C; p. 1281).

Another more complicated situation involves a now elderly man and elderly woman, between whom long long ago their parents had planned a marriage which did not take place. Although both have since been married several times, some feeling of strain still exists. The man could address her as ‘paternal aunt’ (because she belongs to his father's sib, see p. 482), but this is a term which also includes the father's sister's daughter, a woman most eligible for a wife. Instead, he equates her with his father's mother (who was also her own mother's mother), for whom she was named, and so calls her “grandmother.” This mode of address, although she is only 2 years his senior, serves delicately to place her in a category of relatives from which neither wife nor mistress is chosen.

Parents and Children, Father's Brother and Mother‘s Sister

In the first ascending generation, only the father is normally called ’a ‘ic—’my father,’ and the mother ’a tła—’my mother,’ although these terms also are used for parents by adoption. “Babies say ‘atłé for mamma, and táta for daddy,” and these terms are apt to be employed in address even when the child is grown. Both parents call their children ‘my son’ (‘a yIt), or ‘my daughter’ (‘a si), although the diminutives (yIt and si) will be used when they are small. The father will drop the diminutive when his son is grown, but a mother may continue it all her life. It was also said to be particularly appropriate for a man to address a son or daughter as ‘my child’ (‘a yAdi), although he would not do so on a formal occasion. A woman may also use this term, at least in reference, as for example in the phrase ’a yAdi sUkw—’my child to-be,’ meaning “the child I’m going to adopt.” Or, she may say ’a yAdi yéqAkwqAsti—’my baby's going to be born’ (see Boas, 1917, p. 74, yèq’UkuguAst’í,—’he will be born‘).

The father's brother is called SÁni, and he addresses the chlidren of his brother as if they were his own. The mother's sister is tław—’little mother,’ and she likewise calls her sister's children as if they were her own. Often in the old days, when sororal polygyny was practiced, two sisters might be cowives and bring up their children together. Because of the practice of the levirate and sororate, the father's brother is the potential stepfather and the mother's sister the potential stepmother, so that actual stepparents are called SAni and tław. A good deal of the warm affection linking parents and children is also felt by the children and their paternal uncles and maternal aunts. The mother's sister is really like a second mother, but the paternal uncle is something other than a second father, because he belongs to the father's sib, a group from which spouses are drawn. He is not only a potential stepfather but also a potential husband of his brother's daughter.

There does not seem to be any notion among the Yakutat people corresponding to the “wicked stepmother” of our fairy tales, probably because the stepmother is usually the real or fictitious “sister” of the real mother, or her maternal niece, and there seems to have been great solidarity among the women of a lineage and a common concern for their children. A widow or divorcee did not always marry a relative of her husband, although this was the ideal that was followed in most cases. However, there was, I believe, more jealousy between the men of a lineage or sib than between sib-sisters, and perhaps for that reason the stepfather was not always kind to his wife's children. As one woman told me: “Stepfathers always get mean, but mine treated me good, because he's on the same side as my father.” The stepfather in question was a “nephew” of the informant's dead father, a “sister's” son of her paternal uncle. Possibly stepfathers were more apt to be “mean” when the children had been fathered by a man of another sib.

The term for father's brother (SÁni) is extended to all the male parallel cousins of the father, in fact to all the men of his sib who are not “grandfathers” because of age and generation. Similarly, all female parallel cousins of the mother are tław, and the term may be applied to all the older women of the mother‘s (one's own) sib who are not “grandmothers” or “(older) sisters.”

In ceremonial oratory, the members of the father's sib may be collectively addressed as ‘my fathers’ (‘a ’ic hAs) or as ‘my paternal uncles’ (‘a SÁni hAs), or one may combine this latter phrase with ‘my father's older brothers, my father's younger brothers’ (‘a ’ic hUn hAs, ’a ‘ic ki hAs).

The term for ‘father’ may even be applied to an individual woman. Thus, one Kagwantan woman explained: “M. is Kagwantan-yAdi [child of a Kagwantan father]. She calls me and my sister “a ‘ic’ because she is proud to be Kagwantan-yAdi. We call her “a yAdi.’…This is a man's word for ’my child.‘…And then she always feel more proud.”

Not only does an older woman usually call the youngsters in her own sib ‘son’ and ‘daughter,’ but she may apply these terms to any individual, regardless of age or generation, who is the child of a man of her husband‘s sib. This usage is described as “calling them through the husband.” A man could do the same for any individual whose father belonged to his own sib.

While the man's words for ‘son’ or ‘daughter’ are the same as those employed by his wife, they carry very different connotations. A woman's ‘children,’ real or fictitious, always belong to her own moiety within which she cannot marry, but a man's ’daughter,’ unless she is actually his own daughter, is a potential wife. There are a number of recorded marriages between a man and his stepdaughter, when an “old woman gives her daughter [by a previous union] to her husband as wife.” And there are also marriages between a man and the daughter of his own brother. “Before marriage he called her ’a sik [’my little daughter‘].”

Parents did not necessarily address their own children as ‘son’ or ‘daughter.’ Thus, one woman regularly addresses her sons as ‘mother's brother’ (‘a kak), because they are all named for her uncles, and her older sister employs the same usage. One boy, at any rate, responds with “Mother,” but I believe he prefers to talk to her in English. I do not know what he calls his mother's sister, and I was not told what terms were used by his less acculturated brothers. The same two women address a little girl, the daughter's daughter of one, as ‘mother’ (‘a tła), because she is named for their mother, and the child calls both her grandmother and greataunt ‘my little daughter’ (’a si), as the dead woman used to do long before the child was born.

Another woman told me that her father sometimes called her ‘mother,’ because as a child she closely resembled his own mother. This use of the term is very unusual since the girl and her paternal grandmother belonged to different moieties and could not be namesakes. It reflects only the deep love that the man felt for his dead mother, whose favorite son he had been, and his equally deep love for his daughter who resembled her.

Maternal Uncles and Their Sister‘s Children

The maternal uncle (kak) was one of the most important relatives in the lives of his nephews and nieces whom he called keł. The term, kak, was applied to all the male parallel cousins of one's mother and also to all the older men of one's sib who were neither “grandfathers” nor ‘(older) brothers.’ Similarly a man called not only his own sister‘s children keł, but extended this term to the children of his female parallel cousins and, in fact, to all the children of his sib-sisters.

One may even have an ‘uncle’ (kak) in another sib from one's own. Thus, a Kagwantan woman called a CAnkuqedi man ‘uncle’ because his father was the brother of her mother‘s father.

The maternal uncle was the symbol of authority and of the prestige of one's lineage or sib. In oratory, ‘my maternal uncles’ (‘a kak hAs) was commonly used to denote all the elders of the sib who had died, just as was ‘my grandparents’ (‘a łIłw hAs). The dead uncle, like the dead grandfather, was a man whose achievements the living strove to emulate.

A woman's maternal uncle, like her older brother, was her guardian, responsible for her moral conduct and welfare. Although negotiations for her marriage were carried on with her mother, the uncle had a powerful voice in the matter because of his authority over his sister. If a woman disgraced her lineage by an illicit affair, her uncle would join with her brothers in compelling her lover to marry her, or in killing her and the illegitimate chlid. However, if his niece were widowed and not properly provided for by her husband‘s relatives, or if she were abused by her husband, the woman could count on her uncle for support and help.

The maternal uncle's relationship with his sister's son was much more direct. At a very early age the latter would be taken by his uncle on hunting trips, and the uncle would also begin to assume responsibility for the boy's training in other ways; for example, in the matter of daily plunges into icy water. Of course, as long as the boy remained at home he was primarily under the discipline of his father in such matters, and even the mother might see to these baths when he was small. A chief's nephews, however, among whom was his successor, were supposed to leave their father's house when they were still little boys and live with their uncle. I do not know how often this was the case with other boys, except that I was told of several grown but still unmarried youths who, even in the last century, were living in their fathers’ houses. If the father died, the uncle's responsibilities increased, of course, although the small boys continued to live with their mother and stepfather.

One woman explained the relationship between maternal uncle and nephew: “A man loves his nephew like his kid—but they sure punish. Olden days, weather like this, [it was a day in early March, with the snow falling heavily], they chase them outside, chopping wood without closes [clothes], just little pants on—so they don’t lazy, you know—get something, you know, like money. Olden times it's kind of hard to get money, not like today. Sometimes they chase them into the cold water, in the ice. That's why, olden time, native people never get sick. They used to it.”

The story of the woman shaman, Cakwe, and the chief who stabbed his nephews (pp. 714–715) shows how rigorous such training might be. The uncle used send the little boys into the water every day, early in the morning when it was cold, and beat them with alder branches, or else they would beat each other to the limit of their endurance. “The nephews, when they were small, the uncle always trained them to be brave, and all that…to be strong man, not to be lazy.” When I asked if the uncle's wife might ever try to stop her husband if the training were too severe, I was told: “Wife never interfere in man's business long ago.”

The uncle could also command the labor of his nephew. As Harrington's informant said (MS. 1939–40): “The maternal uncle used to take the boy to his home. The maternal uncle made them work. The boy could not talk back to him. Some other young people call them down if they don‘t obey their uncle.”

I was told how a Kagwantan man in Sitka, about 30 years ago(?), went to the Sheldon Jackson School to recruit “nephews” for help in building a house. “ ’ How many of you are Kagwantan? Stand up! ’ “ he said. But my informant reported, “My boys don’t know what they were—just sit still. When they are growing up, ANB [Alaska Native Brotherhood] is getting organized and we teach them to be like Whites. He point his finger at A and B [the informant's sons]. ‘You’re Kagwantan. Stand up, too! I want you folks to build my house. I’m your uncle, kak.’ They freed them from SJS [the school] to build the house, a nice little cottage, not a tribal house.” The boys were from Yakutat, and some time later when the mother was in Sitka she was told how her sons had helped to build the house. In this case, there was no actual relationship between the “uncle” and the “nephews,” since the man was Sitka Kagwantan and the boys were ałyI-Kagwantan. The system of working for the uncle has now broken down, for one man complained: “My sister's children won’t help me put a roof on my house. It wouldn’t be like that in the old days.”

It was the duty of the nephew to keep his uncle supplied with firewood. He was also expected to give him the pelts when he had been successful in hunting sea otter. On the other hand, “The nephew can get what he wants, if he asks: canoe, valuable skins, bow and arrow. And he [the maternal uncle] would have to give it to them [his nephews].” The nephew could even borrow his uncle's valuable things without permission, “but he has to tell him about it afterwards.” In the hypothetical case that the nephew borrowed a gas boat and wrecked it, the uncle “wouldn’t do anything to him. You see, if he's my nephew, everything he works for will be mine. If I pass away, that's his stuff there. I’m only managing.” The informant also explained that it would be wrong only if the nephew who borrowed the boat had failed to report the act to his uncle, letting the latter suppose that it was some other person who was responsible for wrecking the boat. (See p. 739.)

“Uncle and nephew had to be very respectful to each other.” This was presumably when the nephew was older. The respectful behavior consisted, in part, in covering their mouths with their hands when they conversed. I learned about this when one man was explaining how a chief was talking with his nephew about rebuilding a lineage house that had fallen down. “The uncle showed respect for his nephew long ago by talking like this,” and the informant spoke into the palm of his hand. This gesture of politeness and respect was not confined to uncle and nephew, however, for my Tlingit “namesake” covered her mouth when speaking to me and had to be dissuaded from so doing when she was talking for the tape recorder. This gesture is now all but obsolete, for only a few old ladies still practice it. When one middle-aged woman was asked to explain the incident described above, she erroneously supposed that the uncle had covered his mouth because he did not want anyone to overhear his plans for house building.

If the uncle were still vigorous when the nephew came of age, the ideal marriage for the latter would be with the uncle's daughter. As one woman explained: “I’d like my brother's daughter for my son. My brother's daughter would be the best [wife] for him.” “To marry du kak si [his mother's brother's daughter] would be very, very good. Just the same as du ’at si [his father's sister's daughter].” Another woman said: “If they married with that uncle's daughter, that's a big day. All that uncle's things, he's going to have it, if he's married to that girl. All the work, he's going to take care of it, his uncle's work. And that woman's going to respect her husband as long as he live. That's why this coming generation got lost” because they no longer follow the old customs. In this instance, the nephew as son-in-law is considered his uncle‘s heir.

When the uncle dies, one of his nephews (if there were no available younger brother) was supposed to marry the widow, whom he has called ‘my uncle's wife’ (‘a kak CAt), and who has addressed him as ‘my husband's nephew’ (‘a o keł). In this instance, also, the nephew in question would be his uncle's heir. Even during the uncle's lifetime, “the uncle's wife would be friendly to her husband's nephew…. She could go out camping with him and spend a few days out fishing, and things like that, in Southeast of Alaska. But I never heard of it around here. It's when the woman is rich, something like that. She don’t care how she treat her husband—I just think that.” Apparently in southeastern Alaska the nephew could sleep with his uncle's wife, a point confirmed by Angoon informants. I believe that this was also the custom at Yakutat long ago, but could find no direct evidence.

That the relationship between nephew and uncle's wife could result in jealousy between the two men is evident from the story of the Birth of Raven and the Flood (see pp. 844 f.). In this myth, the Controller of the Flood, Moon, was so jealous of his young wife, Flicker, that he kept her in a box suspended from the roof whenever he went out. He also killed all of his sister's children. “He's so confounded jealous he don’t want nobody around his wife. He don’t want no nephew to bother her.” (“To bother a woman” is a euphemism for intercourse.) “And when it's a girl, he order them to kill it anyhow. He's afraid the girl will be some messenger to his wife, he's so jealous.” When the woman finally, through the aid of the Killerwhale Chief, gave birth miraculously to Raven, the uncle tried in vain to kill his nephew. At last, when the uncle was away, the youth took the wife from her box and pulled out the feathers under her armpits or, according to another version, “killed the wife” by sending her away as a bird. None of the versions we were told, however, explicitly stated that Raven had intercourse with her, although this may have been implied. Certainly this was what the uncle feared.

MJ, who as a girl had escaped a marriage which had been arranged for her (p. 459), indicated that she would have been the young cowife of an old man, destined to become the wife of his nephew after the old man's death. However, she envisaged trouble before that. “I’ll be running around with this young fellow and first thing you know he‘ll kill him through jealousy.”

The evidence suggests that even though the uncle might not have permitted or wished his nephew to have access to his wife, this was in fact customary in former days. A story told by Angoon informants indicates that the uncle was not supposed to be jealous of such affairs, even though he would kill any other man suspected of adultery with his wife.

The uncle often designated his successor during his lifetime, usually a young nephew who was not yet married. Not only was it the duty of the latter to marry the widow when his uncle died, but to assume responsibility for his uncle's funeral. In this he was, of course, assisted by his brothers and parallel cousins—indeed to some extent by all the members of the lineage or of the whole sib. In one case, when the daughter of a dead man and her White husband had purchased a tombstone for the deceased, one of the nephews was deeply distressed. He protested: “’I’m the one that's supposed to fix up my uncle's grave. It's just like I haven’t got strength enough to do it [when] you get the tombstone!…My mother preached to me about my uncle: “You take care of your uncle's body. When you’re poor you can’t afford it.” My mother used to stand on the bank of Diyaguna’Et [on Lost River] and throw me in the water. She just want her son to be a strong man so he can take care of his own people's death expenses.’ So it's an awful insult if he can’t fix his uncle‘s grave.”

Although the mother's brother was never addresed or referred to as “brother,” his children were called by the terms applicable to a brother's children. Thus, a man called his maternal uncle's children ‘son’ and ‘daughter.’ As one man (CW) explained it, speaking in broken English but obviously thinking in Tlingit, “Oscar's father—that's my true uncle. That big boy, my son—Oscar, my uncle's son.” Similarly a woman called her maternal uncle's children ‘nephew’ and ’niece’ (kaw), a term she used for her own brother's children.

Paternal Aunts and Their Brother's Children

The father's sister (’at) was also an important relative, especially when her brother's children were small. The aunt assisted to the best of her ability at the birth of her brother's children and gave them gifts, which might include the baby carrier and the bag for the umbilical cord if these had not been provided by the child's maternal grandmother. “All the father's sisters give a shower to the nephew. It's a present to them [him]. And native people treat them [paternal aunts] just like their sister. Du ’at [his aunt] is very precious.” Such gifts were continued later in the life of the child. Thus, one girl was given a new red Hudson's Bay blanket, a kerchief, gold earrings, a big wax doll, and two hair ornaments by her father's sisters. “Any new thing they had, they give to me, to make my father feel good.” In return, “my father has to pay double price.” For the earrings, kerchief, and doll, he gave his sister one sea otter. (MJ) I do not know what gifts might be made by an aunt to a young nephew, but personal reminiscences indicate that the children could always come to her for good things to eat.

Later, when the niece became adolescent, her father's sister might be reponsible for the rites performed over her and for the training she received during her puberty seclusion. At Yakutat, however, there was not the same strict rule as among the Tlingit of the interior and of southeastern Alaska that only the paternal aunt could perform these services, unless a former rule has been relaxed, for in some known cases these duties were entirely assumed by the girl's mother, just as the grandmother might be the midwife and provide the baby‘s outfit.

The term ‘aunt’ was applied not only to the father's actual sisters and to his female parallel cousins, but to the daughters and daughters’ daughters of these women. Thus one of the ‘aunts’ who gave my informant gifts when the latter was a little girl was actually one of her father's nieces. Another young woman she described as a “distant cousin on my father's side, my father's niece's daughter,” and my informant addressed her as ‘my aunt,’ (‘a ‘at), just as her mother used to do. She also described her, however, as ‘my aunt's daughter’ (‘a ‘at si). In fact, all women belonging to the father's sib are ‘paternal aunts’ unless so senior as to be classed as “grandmothers.” “He always calls me ‘my little aunty’ because I belong to his father‘s tribe [sib].” (MJ)

This usage sometimes results in an apparent reversal of generations. Hetty, a middle-aged woman, is the daughter of a Tł’UknaAdi man and is herself married to a Kwacqwan man. Her son's wife, Elaine, is Tł’Uknaca [a Tł’UknaAdi woman], and is addressed by Hetty as ‘my father's sister’ (‘a ‘at). Elaine, in turn, calls her mother-in-law ‘my niece’ (‘a kAłw). [Since Elaine is the daughter of a White man there is no opportunity to utilize any other consanguine relationship.] Elaine is a young woman who has been away at high school and did not at first understand the intricacies of this play on kinship terminology, which serves to stress and honor the father's line. Once Annie, the actual father's sister of Hetty, came to the house and, not seeing Hetty, asked Elaine, “Where is your niece?” (gusu ’i kAłw). Elaine did not understand whom she meant, until Annie rephrased the question: “Where is your mother-in-law?” (gusu ‘i tcan). When Hetty was explaining this to us, she added that even Elaine's little daughter, her own granddaughter, was also her ‘aunt’ (‘at), because all Tł’Uknaca are her paternal aunts. She does make an exception, however, of a woman who is senior to her both in age and generation. “All my mother's ’at are my łIłw hAs—’grandmas.’ Like Minnie is my mother's ’at, so sometime I call her ’a łIłw because she‘s older than me.”

The term for paternal aunt might even be applied to a woman who does not belong to the father's sib, since he might have a female parallel cousin in another sib of the same moiety. Thus, one of the ‘aunts’ who gave presents to MJ was not a Teqwca [Teqwedi woman, our informant's father's sib]. “She is ałyI-Kagwantan cawAt. My father called her ‘sister,’ but she‘s not really a sister.” In this case, I unfortunately did not discover what was the actual relationship.

Just as all the daughters of a paternal aunt were ‘aunts,’ so all her sons were ‘paternal uncles’ (sÁni). It was from this group of paternal uncles and aunts that spouses were usually drawn, since marriage into the father's lineage and sib was preferred. The terms, sÁni and ‘at, therefore carried connotations of “sweetheart” and of potential brother-and sister-in-law. In addition, the ‘aunt’ was also the potential mother-in-law of her nephew and niece (or the potential daughter-in-law of the niece); the ‘uncle’ (sÁni) was the potential stepfather of his nephew and niece (or the potential son-in-law of the niece).

While the maternal uncle was the disciplinarian of his nephew, the father's sister, even for her niece, did not play a similar role. Rather, one woman told us that she would go to her father's sister (naming a true paternal aunt) if she were “in trouble, or downhearted. Your father's sister trains you and helps you when you’re in trouble.” The same woman also said that the father's brother is the confidant and helper of his sister's son. Another woman, however, reversed the relationship. “You tell your troubles to your ’at if you are a boy. I tell things to my sÁni.” Perhaps the choice of confidant really depended upon the personalities involved, the actual relatives of suitable age that were available, and the nature of the trouble. I think it very doubtful that a girl would confide in a paternal uncle in matters involving sex, unless she considered him a “sweetheart” and were turning to him for consolation in an unhappy marriage, and the same could be said of a youth and his paternal aunt.

Difficulties, of course, often arose within one's own lineage and sib. The parents, older brothers and older sisters, the mother's sister, and especially the mother's brother, were persons of authority. The child often learned how to play off one parent against the other to escape merited punishment, and sometimes an older sibling would shield the naughty child. But there was no escape from the supreme authority of the maternal uncle. One could hardly make a confidant of him if involved in a family or intralineage dispute, or worse still, if involved in an illicit love affair, for he was the guardian of the lineage's honor. It was within the lineage and sib that the worse quarrels and jealousies arose, as is indicated by the belief that in former times witchcraft was practiced only by lineage mates and sib mates, so that it was necessary to call in a shaman of another sib to detect the witch.

But the paternal uncle and aunt, unless the uncle were a stepfather, stood outside the immediate family troubles and intralineage quarrels. They were one's closest relatives in the opposite moiety, the group by which and to which honor, help, and love were given. The father's sib could never be paired with one's own as rivals at a potlatch. If serious troubles arose between these sibs it was classified as “war” and all the solemn ceremonial of peacemaking could be employed to settle it. The paternal aunt could be considered as the principal representative of the UnEtkAnai, the “opposites,” responsible for the spiritual welfare of her nephews and nieces until their marriage shifted these obligations to a sister-in-law. Paternal aunt and uncle must, therefore, have been very important as personal confidants upon whose affectionate and disnterested sympathy one could rely, and they were especially beloved because of their relationship to one's father. Moreover, since rules of avoidance separated grown sister from brother, it was only to the brother's children that a man's sister could openly display her love for him.

Brothers and Sisters

The terms for address and reference used for siblings vary with the sex of the speaker. Thus, any sister of a man, regardless of relative age, is tła (Boas, 1917, p. 130, à), and any brother of a woman is ’i. Between siblings of the same sex, however, a distinction is made on the basis of relative age, so that a man's older brother is hUn, a woman's older sister is cAt, while both designate junior siblings of their own sex as ki. These kin terms evidently reflect the gradient of dominance among siblings: all boys have authority over their sisters, and the elders of one sex over their juniors. Of course, an older sister was often the nursemaid for a baby brother and perhaps the sentiments aroused by such maternal care persisted later in life. Habits of masculine dominance evidently developed early, however, when brother and sister were more nearly of the same age, to judge from reminiscences of childhood escapades in which the boy was the instigator and leader and his slightly younger sister the docile follower. He would also order his sister around; sending her to fetch him a drink of water, for example. Knowing both these individuals now as they are in old age, I would judge that the woman was never the inferior of her brother in initiative, independence, and natural qualities of leadership. In later life, a brother would have considerable authority over his sister, especially where her conduct might affect lineage property and honor, and through her he had authority over her children. The oldest brother, of course, dominated all his siblings and might be admired, loved, or feared, according to his personality.

The baby of the family was naturally the darling of the older siblings, and the diminutive (ÁtÙx), used only for human beings, might be added after the usual kinship term to designate the smallest sibling (‘a ’i ÁtÚx, ’a tła Á tUx, or ‘a ki ÁtUx). In direct address, siblings may employ either the kinship term or a personal name.

Half-brothers and half-sisters, stepbrothers and stepsisters, and parallel cousins were classed as siblings, even though they might belong to different sibs within the same moiety. One might also have ficticious siblings outside one's own sib, since the children of two men (or of two women) who were namesakes were considered to be almost the same as children of the same individual. All lineage-mates and sib-mates of approximately the same age and generation classify themselves as siblings. The children of men of the same sib also address each other as siblings regardless of the sib affiliations of their mothers, although in this case such ‘sib-children’ are joking relatives (see pp. 485–488). The children of men of closely affiliated sibs in the same moiety may also be rated as siblings. In some contexts, all the men and women of a moiety are “siblings.”

Strict rules of avoidance used to separate grown brothers and sisters and also ah grown members of opposite sex in the same moiety. “Grown boy and girl, brother and sister, can’t speak or shake hands together. She talks to him through his wife. If they broke this rule, they would go crazy. They would get tied up for witchcraft. A girl, when they [she] mature and are not ashamed of anything—that shows she's a witchcraft. They can’t talk or look at their own brother's face…. Don’t do any funny [indecent] thing in front of your brother, else you get murdered. [As for parallel cousins]—it's the same thing. It's your [own] blood.” (MJ) “In the old days, and even when I’m a small boy,” explained a man born in 1893, “a boy never looked at his sister or talk to her. The women would hide their faces,” and he demonstrated by cupping his hands over his face so he could just look between them. “They would hide their faces if they found themselves alone with their brothers. They have the highest respect for their brother.”

Brother and sister were not supposed to be alone together. If they met out of doors, they would turn their faces aside, the women usually bowing their heads. Communication between them was achieved by the sister talking to her brother's wife so that her brother could overhear, and by the man talking to his sister‘s husband. On such occasions, brother and sister never faced each other. However, if it were necessary to communicate with each other directly, brother and sister could do so by speaking out of the corners of their mouths, behind cupped hands.

The same restrictions obtained between sib and moiety brothers and sisters. Such individuals could be designated by the terms for siblings or by special words. Thus, ‘my woman’ (‘a cawu; ’a cawuwAn, plural) would be used by a man in designating his moiety sister. A woman would refer to her moiety brother as ’a hwayi (‘a hwayiAn, plural). She could also use the collective term for ‘brothers’ (‘a ’i hAs) in designating her sib brothers. However, when addressing or referring to the women in her sib she had to specify ‘my younger sisters, and my older sisters, and my mother's sisters’ (‘a ki hAs, qa ’a cAti hAs, qa ’a tław hAs). Presumably a man would use corresponding terms for the men in his sib, although this was not specifically recorded.

Informants made it very clear that in former days it was shameful for a man to speak or joke with a moiety sister. Such conduct would be treated as an insult by the woman and her husband. This rule obtained even though the man and woman were children of fathers in the same sib, a relationship which involved joking between persons of the same sex (see pp. 486–488). Thus, when a Kwacqwan man was asked if he would joke with a certain Tł’Uknaca, since both were children of Teqwedi fathers, he answered: “I don’t talk to her. We don’t joke with a woman. It's sisters. Olden days they never talk to their own tribe [sib] women, or Raven women—their own sister. Different now, just like the White people. But in olden days they never talk to their sister.”

After the mission was established, these strict avoidance patterns began to weaken, although a few elderly people still observe them. One woman (MJ) recalls how her “cousin-brother,” that is, a parallel cousin in her own sib, thought that the way the girls bowed their heads when they met their “brothers” was foolish, and to show his disapproval once fired a shot over his “sister's” heads. When this woman was first married, about 1901, her White husband could not understand why she never spoke to her brothers when they came to the house and why they never looked at her. Of course, they never came when her husband was absent. She added that she was then unable to explain this behavior to her husband. Even today, when she and her brother (CW) are both elderly, he never comes into her house if she is alone; he just pokes his head in the door to see if his widowed sister is all right, but withdraws unless he finds someone else with her. The first time they ever spoke directly to each other since they were children was, she said, in 1952 when I hired him as informant and her as interpreter. Because this was a business occasion involving, in effect, speaking to a third person, it was apparently proper. Usually, however, the woman addresses her sister-in-law when she wants her brother to hear, and I have seen the two women chatting together, the brother sitting nearby, but turned away from them.

A Kagwantan woman said of a CAnkuqedi man: “I don’t talk to him. I sure proud of him. He's just like a brother. His father's father is brother to my [paternal] grandfather, so he is first cousin to me. He‘s just like a brother to me.”

Younger people, of course, pay no attention to these old-fashioned niceties, although there is still unfavorable comment by the middle-aged if moiety brother and sister are seen walking together, behavior which would never have been tolerated in former days. Marriage between members of the same moiety would have been considered incestuous. It occasionally takes place, usually but not exclusively, between young people who have been away at school and who therefore either failed to learn the moiety affiliations of their companions or came to consider these irrelevant. Despite the statements of many that such marriages were “all right” or could be excused, provided the couple were not too closely related, it may be significant that only one such couple has remained in Yakutat. A letter received after my last visit to Alaska reported with concern that an elderly couple had married within the same sib. All these marriages at Yakutat have been within the Raven moiety, probably because of its disproportionate size in comparison to the opposite moiety.

Although brother and sister were once separated by formal restrictions, affectionate ties between them were close and were expressed in terms of special obligations. “You feed your own brother…. In the springtime, you put away things [food] for your brother. And when food gets scarce, when things get severe, you have to feed him precious stuff.” When asked if the woman's husband might be jealous, one informant replied: “Well, she got a right to do that, and he can’t interfere…. Even if her brother is married, a girl gets it ready, too [i.e. puts up food for him]. My mother taught me, too, [when I was a little gril]: ‘Don’t eat or gobble down precious stuff first without giving your brother a piece, too. Don’t gobble it right down without chewing it.’ “ (MJ)

Of course, if the sister is widowed or married to a poor provider, her brother will give her presents of food. For example, MJ recalled how her mother's brothers used to send food to her mother when the latter had been widowed and was remarried to a young man. “They think my mother is out of grub and they go to Beasley's store and get a sack of flour for the kids.” One of the uncles had a big family of his own to support and sometimes would send over only a little cup of flour. “My mother just make fun of him…. She’d just hint—brothers and sisters don’t talk straight to each other—A little cup of flour for all the kids!’ She’d talk to his wife so Uncle B. could hear. ‘Ckman [another uncle] knows what to give!’ she would say.”

To some extent the same pattern of assistance may prevail between fictitious “brothers” and “sisters.” Thus, one young man is considered to be the “brother” of an elderly woman because his father is believed to have been the reincarnation of the woman's father. As the older woman explained, “His father is named after my father. That's why C. calls me ‘sister.’ We are both children of adane. That's why sometimes he gives me a dollar or two.” The young man may drop into his “sister's” house for a cup of coffee, and bring her game or fish he has caught, or give her money to buy coal.

I have already mentioned the presents given by a sister to her brother's children and the handsome return gifts he would make to her. We should also remember that her sons would have to work for him and in return could use his property. Ties between brother and sister are thus reflected in the relationships between the maternal uncle or paternal aunt and their cross-nephews and nieces. We shall also see them reflected in the relationships between siblings-in-law.

Siblings of the same sex are so close that they are almost interchangeable maritally, as is shown by the customs of levirate and sororate. Not only was it customary for a man to marry his wife's younger sister after his wife's death (formerly, during her lifetime), but a man was supposed to marry the widow of his older brother, unless she had been assigned to her husband's nephew. An older brother could even force a younger brother to exchange wives, if he desired, or at least could make his younger brother marry his castoff wife. In one such case, the older “brother” (actually a parallel cousin) at first had the younger share one of his wives so that she might have a child. Later he made the younger “brother” take her altogether, because bad feeling had developed between the woman and her young cowife (although the latter was her maternal niece). In another case, the older brother gave his old wife to his younger brother so that he could marry a young woman. In a third instance, a man who was simultaneously married to two parallel cousins gave the older to his younger brother so that he could marry a third woman, his uncle‘s young widow. In the first case, one gathers that the young man was reluctant to marry the older wife, although he apparently lived happily with her until his death. I do not know what were the feelings of the two younger brothers in the last two cases nor the sentiments of the women concerned. How often jealousy between co-wives or missionary condemnation of polygyny was responsible for such transfers of wives to younger brothers, can only be surmised.

The pattern of sibling equivalence, of sharing and reciprocity, also colors the relationships which may develop between sib sisters and sib brothers. Such persons may be designated by the terms used for actual siblings, but if this seems inappropriate, they may be referred to as a ’í ná—’the one with me(?),’ usually translated as “my relative.” It is probably used only with reference to a sibmate of the speaker‘s sex, although my information is not specific. Sometimes the term is the equivalent of our expression “my partner,” when two sib brothers hunt together, or may share fishing gear or cooperate in other economic enterprises. Two such men, for example, continually refer to each other in English as “my partner.” A woman who has such a sib sister, or “relative,” in Juneau, may visit her freely, taking as her contribution to the larder preserved native foods of Yakutat, or such women may exchange local produce. These “relatives” within the sib are, however, to be distinguished from trade partners or “friends” (yAqawu) who belong to different sibs within the same moiety (see pp. 355–356). Exchanges between the latter are conducted on a more ceremonial basis and involve luxury items.

The solidarity of the group of sibmates or moiety-mates in general may be indicated by the term of reference ’a t’aki, which seems to mean ‘those behind me(?),’ and which can be employed by a speaker of either sex. The form for the singular was not obtained. The terms ‘my sib’ or ‘our sib’ (‘a nayI, ha nayI) would also imply all the members.

I was told that a person could address a moiety-mate as ‘my friend’ or ‘my little friend’ (‘a oni, ’a oni). However, I suspect that this expression is the one used in addressing a stranger, whose affiliations are unknown, for in addressing a known individual it would always be possible to employ a term denoting a consanguineal relationship. Boas (1917, p. 157) translates òn as ‘equal (of one).’ Harrington gives the form ’a-uunní, as ‘my friend’ and also as ’my relative.‘

Sib-Children

Because the child of any man of a sib is the “child” of his sib brothers, the warm feelings of fathers towards their sons are extended to all such ‘sib-children’ (nayAti). The children of Teqwedi fathers are, for example, called Teqwedi-yAti (singular, Teqwedi-yAdi), and these children are supposed to have inherited their father's traits (p. 461). The Teqwedi themselves resemble the Brown Bear, their totem, in courage. “I’m a bear,” they used to say, and the Teqwedi-yAti are also supposed to be brave. A dying mother could thus say to her grieving children, “Be brave. You’re Teqwedi-yAti. Don’t take it too hard if I’m gone.” And also like the Brown Bear, Teqwedi-yAti have a mean temper when aroused.

In a moment of common danger, one person encouraged another by exclaiming: “I’m Teqwedi-yAdi and you’re Kagwantan-yAdi. Who's going to be the coward?” But this would be risky, since a reflection on the other's inherited courage is really a deadly insult and in the old days would provoke a fight. Another insult is to tell a Kagwantan-yAdi that “the Kagwantan are mean and want war all the time.” This might be used in retaliation if the Kagwantan-yAti accuse the Teqwedi-yAti of cowardice. (cf. p. 461).

While two sibs of the same moiety are definitely rivals, especially when both are guests at a potlatch, they are especially friendly to each other's sib-children. The latter, like their own sub-children, belong to the opposite moiety and are thus their sweethearts. For this reason “They think a lot of each other. The other tribe always has respect and love for them. Compose a song for them. Compose love song for other tribe's na-yAti.” Songs of this type are “peace songs,” used in peace ceremonies between sibs of opposite moieties, since the peace hostage on each side is the sib-child of his captor hosts. Similar peace songs, addressed to each other's sib-children, are used as dancing songs by the two rival guest sibs at a potlatch. Love songs, in fact almost all songs composed by private individuals, follow the same pattern, for though known to refer to a particular individual, they are always addressed to the group of sib-children to which he or she belongs. These are either the composer's own sib-children or those of another sib in his moiety (see pp. 572–574). To address a person or group as the children of their father‘s sib is to flatter them and arouse warm feelings, and the singer should be rewarded by a gift. At the same time, such a song is especially appropriate as a peace song at a potlatch since the fathers naturally feel friendly toward those who honor or love their children.

Persons whose fathers belong to the same sib are considered siblings, and may use the terms for “brother” and “sister” in address and reference. Such persons are obviously different from sib brothers and sib sisters, for while they are members of the same moiety they may belong to the same sib or to different sibs. The men and women formerly avoided each other, just as did all moiety brothers and sisters, but within each sex group there was and is licensed joking. A person refers to his joking relative as ’a ’ínà na-yAdi—’my relative's sib-child(?).’ “He is just like a brother, joking brother,” a man explained. Another informant described him as “a cousin on your father‘s side,” in contrast to a maternal parallel cousin or “cousin-brother.” The sib-child relationship, and the subsequent joking relationship, can also be established through a stepfather or adopted father, as well as through the actual father.

A joking relationship also obtained between the children of linked sibs. Thus, the ałyI-Kagwantan are equated with the Eyak TcIcqedi, since the latter are considered to be an offshoot of the former, and these again are equated with the Kagwantan of Sitka and Chilkat. Their members address each other by kin terms appropriate to relatives in the same sib and their children are joking relatives. These sibs are linked because all are felt to be branches of one original sib. The Teqwedi and DAqł’awedi (an Eagle-Wolf sib of southeastern Alaska) are felt to be “nearly the same” because both share the Killerwhale as totem, and my informants hazarded that their children would joke together and would stand together in quarrels with rival groups of sib-children. I was also told that Tł’UknaAdi, Kosedi, DAdentan, and akA’ai are “all the same” because they formerly lived together at Gue on the Akwe River, but since there are no representatives of these last three sibs at Yakutat, we do not know what behavior might hold between their sib-children. Common residence in former times on the Akwe River should link Tł’ukwaAdi and Tł’UknaAdi, and it apparently does in some situations although they are rivals or trade partners in others. One informant did indicate a joking relationship between their sib-children, but apparently of a one-sided nature (see p. 488). She also specifically linked the TłukwaAdi and the Kwacqwan, however, because both were of interior origin and therefore shared the same ‘origin and destiny’ (cAgun). Members of these two sibs called each other brother and sister, “just like they‘re one family,” and their children were joking relatives. “We sure joke with each other when we see each other.”

Of joking relatives one man said: “Sometimes they say things they could get mad about, but they can’t. They always say [about these jokes]: Tłe ’i’ayA ’awutc-hAs-yA-gEsqétc—’Just bad like-that to-each-other-they-say-continually.’ But they can’t get mad.” It was difficult to secure examples of such jokes “because the way men joke ain‘t fit for a woman to hear.” (MJ) However, we were told that a group of TeqwediyAti men used to call each other “big bombers,” thereby accusing each other of flying around as witches. “The jokes they tell to each other are mean things, funny things.”

One of these men, George, was visiting in Sitka, his wife told us, and went to a dance with Sam, his joking relative. At the dance Sam introduced a local girl to George as “our wife—you can dance with her,” although Sam actually did not know who she was. “They just call her from that floor and introduce her. And George, every dance he rush to that girl to dance with her. Sam says afterwards, ‘George, we don’t know her. She's not our wife.’ George just got embarrassed. They did a dirty joke on him. They always tease one another.”

The informant went on to tell about her own experiences as Tł’UknaAdi-yAdi. “I get teased sometimes when I go to Juneau. In Juneau they just tease the life out of me, and in Sitka, too. There's lots of Tł’UknaAdi-yAti down there. Around here they don’t. [Apparently there is not much joking between women at Yakutat.]…Men do more teasing than women.”

Another woman, MJ, however, likes to joke, and reports that women “joke about lying and stealing, and stealing each other's husbands.” When she asked B, another Teqwedi-daughter, where the latter's husband was because she wanted him to drive her and a party of women to the beach to collect seaweed, B said that she wouldn’t tell, because her husband would want to go alone with MJ. The latter apparently arranged for the trip in some other way, and “got even” with her joking friend a few days later when B dropped in for a visit and exclaimed, “Gee, you got a lot of seaweed! Where did you get it?” “Oh, your husband took me out to the Ocean Beach and I got it there,” MJ retorted. I do not know who drove her.

There is reason to believe that men's jokes are often about love affairs, especially with each other's wives. Possibly sex play was once permitted between a man and the wife of his joking relative. Furthermore, if the husbands were joking relatives, their wives would tease each other regardless of the relationship between their own fathers. This last was mentioned in connection with a song which one man composed about the wife of his joking relative. His own wife did not know of this, or presumably she would have tried to tease her rival in some way. The two women, Kwacca and Tł’Uknaca, were Kagwantan-yAdi and Teqwedi-yAdi, respectively.

The jokes or taunts of fellow sib-children might also serve to correct disapproved behavior. Thus, if a man were too greedy in taking advantage of the traditional generosity of his sister's husband (see p. 495) his joking relatives (‘ina na-yAti) could scold him, but they were the only persons who could speak about his conduct. Members of the large multifamily household could utilize their license as joking relatives to discipline naughty children by means of practical jokes and teasing threats, and thereby minimize domestic friction. “There were lots of Teqwedi-yAti in the house. The house was just full of them. They’re supposed to be jolly,” a woman explained in reporting such an episode (see p. 510). On this occasion the roughhousing that developed and which might have caused offense was “just in fun, because they were all Teqwedi-yAti.” However, if older joking relatives went too far in teasing their juniors with practical jokes, the children might threaten to retaliate.

Sometimes the jokes between the children of a sib turn on the characteristic failings of their fathers, which are attributed to their sons. In such cases, the humorist is in effect making fun of himself. The lay preacher at Yakutat, a Teqwedi-yAdi, convulsed the congregation with such a joke. As explained to us, he had said: “Every one of Teqwedi-yAti has a quick temper, and there was one of them that was Simon Peter.” This was because when the soldiers came to take Jesus, “he got mean and cut off a man's ear.” The Teqwedi-daughters who reported this remarked how embarrassed they had been in church—“I nearly went under the chair!”—although they were actually laughing heartily.

“Pet songs” for children may refer in humorous fashion to some foible or fault attributed to the child's joking relatives. In the song some specific individual is named, usually (always?) an adult, and the child's joking relative, but the child's own name is not mentioned. This is because it is “just a hinting song” and the person or persons named are “supposed to be teasable” by the baby. Such songs are not owned and may be adapted for any child. A song for a girl, for example, is: “Who is breaking all the berry bushes ahead of me? It's So-and-so! She did that for her little husband.” The singer pretends to be angry because the other woman has taken all the berries, and because she has also violated a taboo(?). “They dare not break the berry bushes to feed the husband.” Another song for a girl, freely translated, is: “I thought I saw white elderberry blossoms on the hill, but it was only So-and-so's gray hair” (1954, 3–2–I and J). This song may also be sung to adults. “They try to tease one another, all tribal daughters. It‘s a teasing song.” (See p. 571.)

Children were sometimes incited to dance competitively with their joking relatives at potlatches to amuse their elders. One Kagwantan woman related her experiences at a potlatch given by the Teqwedi when she was a little girl. “I know one time I was pretty small when they make me dance on that kit gau song [the Teqwedi's Killerwhale Drum Song, 1954, 5–1–D and 6–1–F]. My ’a ’ínà na-yAdi was dancing right in back of me, and my mother said, ‘Hurry up, they’re going to beat you!’ And I work so hard to beat her, and everybody clapping their hands and yelling. I was just sweating. You know that song is pretty fast. That potlatch was at Tu hIt [Shark House, Old Village #13]. That's James’ mother [Teqwca], she was a dancer. She was the one dancing in back of me. Just two of us. They told me, ‘If they beat you, everybody's going to laugh at you.’ When I’m dancing, I look back at her. I worked hard and I danced. Some of them…my ’ínà na-yAti…pulling my little blanket. They just forcing me to dance…They don’t dance; they just sit down…. They just want me to dance some more…I feel that I beat her. I don’t know that I beat her—that's what they told me. She's the bestest dancer, I heard that.”

In southeastern Alaska I gather that the joking pattern was and is still more highly developed, and that at the feasts following potlatches the guests are often seated so that joking relatives will be together and can enliven the festivities with their wit. Of recent years men and women have joked together, although this would formerly have been impossible. Only one Yakutat informant mentioned these practices: “The Teqwedi-yAti get together around a table at a party and tell jokes. They also joke with the ladies, and the ladies answer back.” Another informant, however, indicated that while joking between the children of linked sibs was permitted at Yakutat, as in southeastern Alaska, this had to be circumspect and there were scruples against joking at potlatches, at least with some persons. Thus, a leading Kwacqwan man, Kagwantan-yAdi and adopted son of a Teqwedi man, said: “I always talking to Charlie, [a Tł’UknaAdi leader and Teqwedi-yAdi], and I can say anything to him I want. Make everybody laugh, tell a story about me…. I can joke with Kagwantan-sons, too. CAnkuqedi [-sons]–same thing, but not like [Teqwedi-sons?]…. You can joke, but not too rough-like. Kagwantan[-sons], not too rough either.” However, “not in a party, just outside. I wouldn’t joke with Charlie in a party. He's too old. I respect him…. I think it's just me.”

It was virtually impossible to determine under what conditions there would or would not be joking between persons of widely different ages, or whether this was purely a matter of personal preference. One man, J, explained that although two other men, S and W, were his joking relatives (’ínà na-yAti) they were also his ‘elders’ (cuqadéqa). “They can joke with me, but I can’t joke back with them. I have to take everything they say, and I can’t get mad. That's because they were born before me. But then somebody might come around, like my uncles, and they’re going to say everything to me about them. And they’re going to tell me to say that to them, but I can’t [i.e., I can’t repeat the remarks of my uncles to my joking relatives]. Any time they come around they can say anything—jokes, like, about them [about my joking relatives]. They want me to say it, but I can’t. I don’t say it…. They all in Eagle tribe, but born before I did.”

In this case it does not seem to be the difference in actual age that is important, but the difference in generation. Thus, while J and S are both Tł’UknaAdi-yAti, J's father was the true nephew of S's father. As J's mother explained, her son had stopped joking with S when he was small. “They have respect for each other, you know. They call it ’they have respect for themselves’—ciyAk ’awUdine—Quiet gentlemans, [they] respect each other. Even S, he can‘t joke with J.” How J and W were actually related I do not know, for their fathers were not sibmates and I discovered no genealogical connection.

In other cases, some persons evidently enjoyed joking. “Ben, he used to be silly man. He likes to joke!…All those Teqwedi-yAti he jokes.” Ben was older than the particular joking relatives mentioned, and nothing was said about their behavior toward Ben, although our informant indicated that Ben himself joked with older men also. “He used to be silly, you know. He wants to talk.”

In speaking of herself, the same informant insisted: “I don’t joke. My ‘sisters’ used to joke me—that JW's mother and that SG's mother. Gee, sometimes I got scared of them! They always talking to me, joke with me…. I can’t [joke back] because they’re qacudeqa [should be qacuqadeqa(?), ’elder’].” The specific women mentioned were both CAnkuqedi women, long since deceased, while the informant was Kagwantan and apparently belonged to a younger generation. We do not know on what basis these women were reckoned as ‘sisters,’ for the Dry Bay Raven sibs of their fathers seem to have become confused. The same informant was not adverse to joking in general, for she mentioned a woman of her own age with whom she joked. The latter woman was Teqwedi, daughter of a Kwacqwan father, whereas our informant's father was TłukwaAdi. These two sibs were linked because they were both of interior origin, “descended from same place.” In addition, the fathers were said to have been “first cousins,” an expression which can only be interpreted in this case as indicating distant parallel cousins.

When another informant was asked whether one could joke with older ’ina na-yAti, she maintained: “It doesn’t matter [about their age]. They can just joke back and forth. Look at Minnie, how old she is [70 years old]. But there's so many joked with her, no matter who.” She went on to say that her little granddaughters could joke with me, since I was the namesake of the old lady (KDI) who was their joking relative. However, it was clear from the grandmother's remarks about the children's attitudes toward their Tlingit joking relatives that the little girls did feel at a disadvantage when teased by adults. Some unpleasant experiences of this kind might well make a shy or slow child anxious to avoid the sharp tongue of an older relative by taking the difference in age or generation as an excuse for treating the elder with respect.

While this account has attempted to outline the relationships between children of the same sib, or between closely linked sibs, it should not be taken to mean that that there were not jokes or fun between sib brothers and between sib sisters. Rather, the group of sib-children were supposed to follow in a more formal and spirited fasion the friendlier aspects of intercourse with sib-mates. As one informant put it: “Different tribes [sibs] had to be careful what they said to each other, or they would have a fight. You can joke with your own tribe and they won‘t get mad.” (VS for KDI)

Husbands and Wives

A man addresses or refers to his wife as ‘my wife’ (‘a cAt) or ‘my baby woman’ (‘a cawAdi). His sweetheart is ‘my little wife’ (‘a cAti). Similarly a woman would say ‘my husband’ (‘a o), ‘my man’ meaning “my he man” (‘a qáwu), or ‘one near me’ (a Àn ‘a). All of these terms can be used for direct address and for reference.

Formerly a man might address his wife as ‘mother of my daughter’ (‘a si du tła) or ‘mother of my son’ (‘a yIt du tła) after the first child was born. “A woman can call her husband ’a yIt du ’ic [’father of my little son’]. They used to say that here. But I don’t. I just say his name, that's all,” explained one woman. This old-fashioned usage corresponds to teknonymy in personal names, whereby a man or woman may be called ‘Father of Ceq’ or ‘Mother of Ceq’ (Ceq-‘ic, Ceq-tła), for example, when Ceq is their first or favorite child. As already indicated, such names may be inherited and so do not necessarily designate the parents of an actual child.

The terms ‘husband’ (o) and ‘wife’ (cAt) may be compounded with other kin terms in referring to various affinal relatives, except those who are designated by special terms (father-in-law, mother-in-law, sibling-in-law of the speaker's sex) or who are actually consanguine relatives. These compound terms are used in direct address, except where intercourse is forbidden by avoidance rules. In such compounds as ‘my husband's nephew or niece’ (‘a o keł) or ‘my husband's older brother’ (‘a o hUn), the woman employs the same kin terms for the sister's child or for the older brother that her husband would use. (Presumably this would be true of a man referring to his wife's sister or his wife's brother's child.) Some of these compounded affinal terms are of especial importance in designating potential or preferred spouses: a man's ‘older brother's wife’ (hUn CAt), ‘uncle's wife’ (kak cAt); a woman's ‘husband's younger brother’ (o ki) and ‘husband's nephew’ (o keł). By some oversight, the term specifying the wife‘s sister was not recorded although I would assume it would be cAt (du) cAt or cAt (du) ki, depending on the relative ages of the women. (See also p. 490.)

Curiously enough, I was told that the same expression was used to designate both the widow and the widower (ł ati cawAt)—literally, ‘no master woman.’ A similar expression was used to designate the personal property of a dead person (ł ati ’At), here translated freely as “there is no owner for that thing” or ‘masterless thing.’ This suggests that the first phrase applies only to the widow. In any case, it serves to indicate something of the relationship between husband and wife.

In former times there were polygynous marriages. “A chief always had one young wife” in addition to any older ones (Jack E). Cowives addressed each other as ’a kAcayi, and were referred to as wuckAcayi. “Sisters call each other that if they are married to the same man. They’re always ‘sisters’—not different tribe [sib.].” If the cowives were from different sibs they would quarrel. Being sisters, however, did not necessarily mean that they would live together without friction.

A man was jealous of his rights in the younger sister of his wife. “They marry the older sister first, waiting for the younger sister to be old enough to marry. They’re jealous of that young girl.”

There is some uncertainty about polyandry. While one informant denied the possibility, another maintained that a woman might have two husbands at the same time: a man and his nephew, but I do not know whether he was speaking of a former practice at Yakutat or at Controller Bay, or whether there was any difference. I was also told of a specific case in which a man made his younger brother “marry” his wife, so that she could have a child (p. 485). For a while the woman was said to have been married to the two brothers simultaneously. We should also note that sibmates may refer to the wife of one of them as “our wife” (see p. 486). The evidence suggests, not so much formal polyandry, as sanctioned sex relations with the wife of an uncle or an older brother. Thus, what sounds like polyandry may be only an arrangement of this kind. For example, the Dry Bay CAnkuqedi married a woman of the mixed Tlingit-Tutchone Nuqwaqwan of the upper Alsek. “They married this interior woman. She was called Duhán…. I don’t know how many of them marry her. They brought her down [from Nuqwa’ik]. But she ran away from them, her husbands. And she ran back to the interior, I think.” (HB for FI) This was told in explaining how the CAnkuqedi had obtained rights to two “sitting down songs” from the Southern Tutchone (1954, 3–2–E and 3–2–F).

An instance of brothers sharing wives occured in Dry Bay in 1879. A woman had previously been married to the older brother, and was than married to the younger. However, she was still “just fooling around” or “just running around” with the older brother. The younger brother was also married to the woman's sister, which made it almost impossible to disentangle the parentage of the various children. The informant said that it was all right in the old days for a woman to “run around” with her husband's brother. However, some 30 years later a young Dry Bay girl was warned against walking around with her husband's brother. Even more interesting was the confusion or evasion that baffled attempts to discover the occupancy of sleeping rooms and the actual parentage of children in a household of the 1880's. This included several brothers or male parallel cousins, at least two of whom are reported to have had two wives at the same time. It would appear that in this household the younger brother, though married, had access to his older brother's wife. In still another case that occurred at Yakutat at the turn of the century the younger unmarried brother appears to have had sexual rights in his older brother's wife. “He just stay around,” the implication being that the youth could sleep with his older brother's wife even during the husband's lifetime. The story of the war between the Sitka Kagwantan and the Wrangell people (see p. 281) would indicate that even paternal parallel cousins in different sibs, living in different districts, had the same rights as actual brothers. “His father's brother's son…took his wife away, because that's the Indian custom. They always take the oldest brother's wife away. It's fine and dandy with him.” The husband “called that man his brother, so he don‘t care” until the remarks of his sib-mates made him angry.

Through an oversight I neglected to obtain the kin terms used by a man to address his brother's wife. One informant gave the form waca which I understood was the man's term for older brother's wife, but which is really the word for ‘I married.’ In other words, the younger brother speaks as if he also had married the older brother's wife. “waca is what they call [say about] the older brother's wife, if they marry her or not.” Swanton (1908, p. 425) makes clear, moreover, that a man calls his brother's wife and a woman her sister‘s husband by the same terms that each would use for his or her own spouse (cAt, o).

Marriage was evidently considered as involving activity on the part of the man and passivity on the part of the woman, as is indicated by the employment of active and passive verbal forms for the two sexes. Thus, a man will say ‘I married’ (waca), or one may say of him ‘he married (her)’ (’áwÙca). A woman, however, will say ‘he (or someone) married me’ (At duduwaca, or At wÙdùwàca), and one will say of her ‘she was married’ (‘uwaca; see Boas 1917, p. 45), to mean “she is a married woman.” Similarly a man will say ‘I will marry’ (kUqwAca), while a woman will say ‘I will be married’ (At gUgwAca, ’me he will marry’).

These usages suggest the slightly greater freedom that a man had in the choice of a spouse. While most first marriages of boys and girls were arranged by their elders, the girl had rarely even the power to refuse an unwelcome suitor, while the boy could take the initiative of asking his relatives to request for him the wife he desired. The grown man also seems to have enjoyed much more freedom than the grown woman in arranging a second marriage.

Marriage was not considered to be exclusively or even primarily the concern of the two spouses, but was rather an alliance between their two lineages. If highranking lines were involved, a marriage between them linked their respective sibs in much the same fashion as a union between royal families might ally two sovereign states. For this reason, a young person often had little to say in the matter, for the marriage was arranged by the parents, older brothers, and maternal uncles, sometimes gathered in a family council, and they considered how family fortunes and prestige might be affected by the projected alliance rather than the preferences of the young man or young woman involved. Family considerations were especially important if those to be betrothed were of high rank and if a substantial exchange of property were involved (pp. 458–459).

Marriages took place, of course, between members of opposite moieties, for in the old days a union within the moiety would have been considered incestuous. Furthermore, it was considered especially appropriate for the spouse to be a member of the father's lineage or sib. That is, a paternal aunt or her daughter (‘at) was preferred as a wife, and a paternal uncle or a paternal aunt's son (sAni) as a husband.

Equally or perhaps even more desirable when chiefly lines were involved was the marriage between a man and his mother's brother‘s daughter (du kak si), especially since previous unions in the parental generation are likely to have made the girl the daughter of a paternal aunt. (It will be remembered that parallel cousins are classed as siblings.)

Even little children absorbed the idea of who were the relatives most desirable as their future spouses. One woman in speaking of her husband's two little nephews, reported: “Even when they were small, P and J says, ‘I’m going to marry H. Have lots of toys when my uncle dies.’ J says, ‘I’m older.’ They have it just in their mind, I guess. They were just born with it, all these things [ideas].”

Most first marriages were with the widowed spouse of a maternal relative, often with someone older than the young person's own father or mother. Substitutes for the decreased wife were her younger sister or parallel cousin, her daughter by a previous marriage, or the daughter of her sister or of her female parallel cousin. Those who took a dead husband's place were his younger brother or male parallel cousin, or his maternal “nephew” (the son of his sister or of his female parallel cousin, or even of his sister's daughter). There was no known rule against marriage of a man with the widow of his younger brother, yet while one informant hazarded that this might occur if there were no junior male to marry the widow, she knew of no case in which this had actually happened.

What was stressed was the necessity or propriety for perpetuating the previously established marriage arrangements. “A man has to marry his older brother's widow. If the younger brother dies first, his older brother marries the widow. As long as they keep that woman in the tribe [sib]. It's a disgrace if they don’t. It hurts for her to go to any other tribe…. If there's a younger one in the tribe, that's the one she has to marry. If there's none, the older brother just have to marry her.” “A widow is supposed to marry her dead husband‘s brother, either the younger or the older one. If there was no brother, the widow goes free to marry someone else.” “[They] never let the widow marry another tribe. Pick the youngest man in the family to take care of her and keep one girl as his second wife when the old lady dies.”

Very frequently the husband of a woman designated the young man, traditionally one of his “nephews,” who was to marry his wife in the event of his death, just as the girl in the above instance was chosen. Such a young man is called a “reserved husband,” ‘husband intended-for’ (o sUkw) or ‘her near-one's stand-in (?)’ (du Àn du ’áÌ). The young man was presumably his uncle's heir.

In one sense, all “correct” marriages renewed the previous alliances that had linked two lineages, since they were contracted with a paternal kinsman (or kinswoman) and so duplicated the earlier ties between the parents, or they involved taking the place of a deceased relative and so preserved the ties with affinal kinfolk. There was a strong feeling that when a successful marriage had been contracted it should not be allowed to lapse because of the death of one of the principals. The surviving spouse had not only the right to claim a substitute spouse from the lineage (or sib) of the deceased, but was also under obligation to take another mate from it. To turn elsewhere implied that the first alliance had been unsatisfactory. Thus a widow was entitled to receive support in the form of a new husband, and the lineage or sib of her dead husband had to provide him. Conversely, she was still the “wife” of that sib, and was not at liberty to marry outside it except at the risk of making trouble between the relatives of the old husband and those of the new one. It would be a “big shame” to the sib of the deceased, and they might fight.

A widower also had the right to claim a replacement for his dead wife, but was not under such strict obligation to contract a second union with his dead wife's kinswoman. From personal reminiscences we gather that a girl had more chance to refuse a suitor when there were no close prior ties uniting the two lines than if she were chosen to take the place of a dead relative or if she herself were widowed and a new husband had been appointed for her. Similarly, a youth could rarely escape the obligation of marrying the widow of his uncle or older brother, but as he himself grew older he had far more freedom of choice. A fully established man did not have to accept the substitute wife proffered him if he were widowed, but was often in the position of being able to arrange a shift with a younger brother in order to get the woman he desired. The degree of freedom to choose or to reject a proposed spouse must have depended to some extent upon the determination and strength of character of the personalities involved.

One of my older informants in speaking of the past often had occasion to make such comments as the following: “They make him marry Bess, his uncle's widow. That's customary a long time ago. No matter how old a woman [is], you got to take your uncle's place.” “They make him marry after Kate, so he had to marry that woman with all those kids.” “My oldest brother, ł, they made him marry an old lady. Oh, I was just crying myself…. She had been married to Y, my grandma's brother [mother's mother's brother] and had children. He died, and a close relation's got to take his place. So ł married her.” “She was married to Q [an old man]. They make her take her aunty's place. She was just a young girl. It's a dirty shame!” (MJ)

As already mentioned, sometimes a nephew was named in advance as the “reserved husband,” but such arrangements might fall through. In one such case, the older brother of our informant had been appointed. “His uncle promise his wife his nephew is going to take his place. She wouldn’t allow my brother to marry anybody he wish to. She made him stay single.” However, the youth died long before his uncle, and the latter did not designate a successor because the most eligible remaining nephew “wouldn’t stand for it.”

Of a similar case involving another brother and another uncle, my informant said: “The nephew's got to take their uncle's place. He's supposed to take my uncle's place. Uncle is supposed to make his nephew marry his wife. A few days afterwards [after the uncle's death], my brother refused to take his uncle's wife…. That woman takes it for granted [that he would marry her]. She won’t allow [him] to talk to anybody [any other woman]. He went out to escape that trouble,” and met with a fatal accident.

Another case involved a more serious rebellion on the part of the nephew of a lineage chief who died in 1890. Everything had been arranged for the nephew's marriage with the widow, when he ran off with another woman who was already married and had two children. “They felt so bad about it,” remarked our informant. (MJ)

In later days, when young nephews refused to assume their expected obligations, the widow might keep or try to keep her husband's house and property in order to force the nephew to marry her. There are still some in Yakutat today who feel that the young man is under an obligation to care for his uncle's widow, even though he does not actually marry her. There have been recent cases of bitter disappointment when this did not happen.

Not all young men, however, were reluctant to marry an older woman. Thus one informant explained that her father, when only 16 became “stuck on” her mother, then a middle-aged woman, because “she's neat and clean and sews good, and when he's married he‘ll not lose money.” The woman at first said that she was too old to remarry, but finally accepted him.

It is difficult to judge how much freedom a widow might have in remarrying. I was told: “The widow remarries as soon as her husband's things are divided [among his relatives]. She can say which one she wants for her next husband, even if he is already married. Then he has to give his former wife to his brother and he takes the new one. The widow would never invite him to bring his old wife, too.” This statement may reflect more modern Christian ethic, for it is apparent from genealogies that the widow did sometimes accept a cowife, and often had no choice in the selection of her next husband. The same informant went on to tell how her own mother wept when forced to marry the young nephew allotted to her. “You have to do what your family says.” Another woman said: “When your husband died, that's the time they take out your husband's things [to distribute. Then they say:] ‘This man over here, he's going to marry this woman over here.’ That woman, even if they [she] don’t want it, they [she] can’t do anything.” A third woman, however, affirmed: “The widow chooses her own husband, and if he's already married he gets a better man to take his place. But if she marries someone outside the tribe, that means war.”

Marriages with the deceased uncle's widow often resulted in such disparity of age that the young man who “took his uncle's place” was given or promised a young girl to be his wife in addition to the old woman. This girl might be her younger sister, younger parallel cousin, or even the woman's daughter. This last case, of course, results in marriage with the mother's brother's daughter. Sometimes it was the mother herself who gave her daughter to her young husband when she became old. We were also told about a somewhat different arrangement whereby the uncle married a young girl and gave her older sister to his nephew. Eventually when the older spouses died the young people would marry each other. This was felt to make up to them for having had to marry their elders. Quite possibly the uncle had been originally married to the older sister, but “shifted the fat and old one” to his nephew, as he might have to a younger brother, in order to get the younger sister. Furthermore, as already indicated, the nephew in former times had access to his uncle's wife.

About one marriage between a widow and her husband's nephew it was said: “She raised him since he was 6 years old. In old days they would marry an old woman and marry her young cousin [also] to take care of the old woman. But in old days, even if I use cane, he [my husband's nephew] is supposed to marry me to take care of me. That's the way olden time is. [The old woman] just like a mother to him. That's the way [So-and-so] is—takes that young girl besides [the old widow].”

I was also told of a number of cases of marriage between a man and his stepdaughter (maternal uncle's daughter or brother's daughter).

While relations between individual husband and wife obviously varied according to their respective personalities and were often characterized by deep affection, traditionally there was always the feeling that the wife was the foreigner in her husband's house. In time of trouble between their respective sibs the husband's people could not count on the loyalty of the wife, for her allegiance was usually to her own brothers. There are also stories of wars provoked by faithless wives. If a relative of one spouse were injured or killed by accident and a relative of the other were held responsible, a situation which was likely to occur if the victim were the child of the couple, then the father and mother, no matter what their private grief, were perforce alined on opposing sides until a formal peace ceremony had been held and damages paid to settle the case. Always at potlatches the husband and wife were separated, affiliated alternately with the hosts and with the guests, as one moiety or the other gave the ceremony. Although husband and wife did actually cooperate as an economic team and in fact helped each other informally when one had to make a contribution to a potlatch, in theory they were completely distinct legal and economic personalities, and could not hold joint property nor could one inherit from the other. Only in matters of magic and religion where the strict observance of taboos might be necessary to insure success in dangerous or uncertain undertakings, was the wife closely linked to her husband, for her behavior, as much as his own, had a direct effect upon his luck. All of these considerations undoubtedly gave the marriage relationship a distinct cast.

Mothers-in-Law and Fathers-in-Law

Most Tlingit marriages were not conceived as adding new relatives so much as changing the relationships between already existing ones. For the new husband, a formerly beloved paternal aunt (‘at), uncle's wife (kak cAt), or older brother's wife (hun cAt), or some woman of the opposite moiety with whom he had once flirted, now might become his mother-in-law (tcan), a woman whom he had to avoid. “It's worse to talk to her than to ’a cawu [’my moiety sister’],” one man explained. “The son-in-law can’t talk to his mother-in-law. She has to hide her face when she meets him.” “She is ashamed to be near him. She's ashamed to talk to her son-in-law, du si o, or to her own brothers.” Since the young couple usually lived, at least at first, in the house of the wife's father and mother, the latter and her son-in-law must have had to develop techniques of mutual avoidance. Presumably when a man married a stepdaughter during the mother‘s lifetime, her mother retired as wife and assumed the status of mother-in-law, but I obtained no information on this point.

The son-in-law (si o) and the father-in-law (wu) also observed almost as strict avoidance, even though the father-in-law might be the brother or mother's brother. “The son-in-law never spoke to the girl's father or mother—too much respect…. [The father-in-law] don’t talk straight to his face—just talks to his own daughter. If he wants something to be done, he has to ask his daughter.” “In the old days a man wouldn’t take a look at his wife's mother. Also a man would never talk to his son-in-law. He would talk to him by way of his daughter, saying, ‘Daughter, fetch the wood,’ or ‘Daughter, I want you to get that canoe,’ for example…But the mother-in-law don’t say a word.” [83] “Respect—they sure respect each other. Your wife's mother and father you’re going to respect. You’re not going to talk to them. Sure got respect.”

It has been noted that the son-in-law owed bride-service to his parents-in-law and often lived with his father-in-law until he had rendered it. Of course, if he were no longer a young man but an established man of some wealth, he would give gifts instead. These would be reciprocated. For example, “precious” sib songs have been mentioned as included in the property given by the bride's sib to the son-in-law of rank. In this manner the Chilkat Kagwantan gave a mourning song to Cada, the Yakutat Kwacqwan chief, when he married a Kagwantan girl. The son-in-law in a number of instances established himself in a house near that of his father-in-law. If the men belonged to different sibs, the son-in-law was, of course, permitted to hunt on the sib territory of his father-in-law, whether he were settled permanently with or near the latter or simply staying temporarily with him. I was told of one man who became rich because his “fathers-in-law—du wu hAs—gave him the best trap lines.”

The relationship between daughter-in-law (yIt cAt) and mother-in-law (tcan) seems not to have been formalized. One woman, when pressed for details, said: “A woman is respectful to her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law teaches her.” She herself treats her daughter-in-law just as she would her own daughter, she said. Perhaps it would be safe to say that a woman's mother-in-law carries on the role played by her paternal aunt, especially since they are likely to be in fact the same person. Nevertheless there were evidently naughty young wives who resented the teachings and supervision of their mothers-in-law (see p. 893), so this ideal relationship did not always obtain in actual practice.

The daughter-in-law and her father-in-law (wu) are, however, on terms of the greatest intimacy, and this is the more surprising since they are members of the same moiety and, by preference, of the same sib or even lineage. “A daughter-in-law is like your own wife. You can be friendly, walk around together. The husband lets his wife go with his father, nobody else. [This did not imply sexual relations.] She could go to the sweat-house with her father-in-law. He showed her off in all kinds of public places. At the potlatch the daughter-in-law sits alongside of her father-in-law. That's why they got to marry different tribe [sib in the opposite moiety]. It's a shameful thing to be father-in-law to your own son's relation. But now it's different.”

The relationship also involved joking in public, and the license extended to all sib daughters-in-law; that is, a man could joke with any woman married to his son's sib brother, or to the sib brother of his adopted son. Reciprocally, a woman could joke with any man of her husband's father's sib, but she was apparently less likely to avail herself of this freedom.

As one woman explained it: “Father-in-law and daughter-in-law are the best jokers. They called me tław [mother's sister] because I was bashful. All [my husband's paternal uncles] called me that.” That is, her “fathers-in-law” teased her because she was too shy to joke back, yet classified her as a maternal aunt because this was one of the few women in one's own moiety with whom a man could talk. On another occasion she said: “They always joke with daughter-in-law. All Teqwedi call me tław They adopt me as a mother [in fun] because I‘m married to their adopted son. Old and young, all the men joke with me. They tease me about myself, not about my children. When I was young, I was bashful. Just the men joke.” This woman is Kagwantan, and therefore her husband said that he could joke with any woman who was married to a Kagwantan man because they would be just like the wife of his Kagwantan son.

A man whom I was questioning about moiety sisters went on to comment: “I can’t talk to them, or josh with them. I can’t joke with any woman in the Eagle tribe [his moiety], until one of them marries to my son. That's the only one.” The speaker, who is Kagwantan like the woman HK, mentioned that the latter's husband is the son of a Kagwantan father. “HK is ’a yIt CAt [my son's wife] because her husband is Kagwantan-yAdi. I can joke with her.” However, he could not joke with her sister because the latter's husband is not the son of a Kagwantan man. My informant was not sure of the kind of jokes that were formerly used because “that was way before my time. They joke with their son's wives only in potlatches, and things like that—not every day.” Apparently to joke with a sib daughter-in-law when the occasion was not a formal or public one, such as a potlatch, was like an insult or like a challenge which automatically put the husband into a potlatch situation. “It costs them money, if they do it any day. Like if I go down there and joke, or say something to her like ‘Let's go to the dance,’ [HK's husband] has to spend lots of money to my tribe. Even if he had a big boat he might have to give up that boat, just give it away. That's the way they are. They just give up everything that's valuable to them, to Kagwantan [the sib of the wife and of the speaker].” When asked for further clarification, he added: “If you joke with a woman you’re not supposed to, it's an insult”—in this case presumably to the husband.

No other informant, however, restricted the joking to potlatches. One older woman said, “Yes, it used to be you have some kind of fun with that son's wife in the olden times. Like that—they give them lots of nicknames, just like friends give each other nicknames. Yes, my husband's father and I would joke if I see him and if his father was Tlingit [her husband's father had been White], I call him ’a wu [’my father-in-law’]. The man calls his daughter-in-law ’a yIt CAt [’my son's wife‘].”

HK's nickname of “mother's sister” is a joke of this type. A more striking example is the name atgawet, by which the famous Teqwedi shaman and rich aristocrat is usually known. He is said to have acquired it when his daughter-in-law broke wind in public and he asked “At gawE?”—’maybe it's me?’ or ‘is it I?’ So he was called atgawet, the nickname being formed by adding a final t to the question. One of my informants believed that he said this to save his daughter-in-law from embarassment, but it is more likely that he was teasing her. Mention of this nickname still provokes amusement, even though it has been assumed as a honorable title by the Bear House Teqwedi.

The only other example which I heard of joking between a father-in-law and daughter-in-law occurred during a funeral potlatch in 1945. The “father-in-law”, Peter L., was a Kagwantan man “who had so many wives he couldn’t keep track of his family connections. He would always flirt with the girls no matter how old he was.” My informant and a friend, who were both his “daughters-in-law” because they were married to Kagwantan-sons, used to “have fun with him.” He had been singing some traditional mourning songs at the potlatch given for the dead mother of our informant, when the latter suggested to her friend, “Let‘s have some fun!” Perhaps she said this to prevent the man from monopolizing the affair, or because the time had come to turn from sorrow to comedy. The women therefore fetched some pictures of bathing beauties and of naked girls, and when the time came to distribute presents to their Raven guests, they announced that these pictures were being given away in honor of their “father-in-law.” The latter, however, evidently did not get the point of the joke, or realize that the pinup girls were to twit him about his many matrimonial ventures, for when the pictures were displayed before the distribution, he remarked seriously that they were “pretty good pictures.”

Despite the great differences in connotation and in behavior, the same terms for father-in-law (wu), mother-in-law (tcan), son-in-law (si o) and daughter-in-law (yIt CAt), are used by both sexes.

Brothers-in-Law and Sisters-in-Law

Siblings-in-law of the same sex called each other ’a kani in address and reference, and were designated by a third person as wutc-kani-yAn (collective plural). The husband of a man's sister's daughter and, reciprocally, the brother of a wife's mother are also considered as kani. The term may be extended still further by a male speaker to apply to any man married to a sib sister or by a female speaker to any wife of a sib brother. Thus, any Kwacqwan woman may greet HK as sister-in-law (kani), because HK is married to a Kwacqwan man and is a “Kwacqwan wife.” (However, if the speaker's father were Kagwantan, then she should address HK as ‘my paternal aunt’ (‘a ’at), since HK is Kagwantan cawAt, and a consanguineal term is preferred to an affinal one.) Conversely, the Kwacqwan husband of HK is said to have “married into Kagwantan,” and is called ‘brother-in-law of Kagwantan’ (kani of Kagwantan).

At such intersib ceremonies as potlatches or peace dances, the married-in brothers-in-law of a sib play an important role as go-betweens, messengers and masters-of-ceremony. They are called ‘sib brothers-in-law’ (na-kani). Thus, the hosts send men who have married their sib sisters as nakani to escort the guests, that is, the sibmates of these brothers-in-law, when they come to the hosts’ village. The sib brothers-in-law distribute the hosts’ gifts to their own people, the guests. In their turn, the guests have their own nakani as their spokesmen, members of the hosts’ sib who have married their sib sisters. In time of war such nakani acted as negotiators between the two sibs. On some occasions by preference, and on others in default of a man, a sister-in-law acted as nakani.

When a woman was asked how women behaved toward their sisters-in-law (kani), she maintained: “We don’t joke and we have no special way of respect.” “Kani can’t insult each other. They are respectful to each other.” A man was more explicit about the behavior of brothers-in-law. “He [my wife's brother] has to give me lots of things, so I can have a lot of respect for his sister. But if I wanted something, I’m going to give him something, and then there will be a time when I’m going to need something, and then they’re going to go up and give me all I need.” He explained that while kani was a reciprocal term of address, the gift-giving was all in favor of the sister's husband. Of the wife's brother:—“If there's anything he really like, [if] he’d rather give his life than give that thing—if I come over and talk about how I like it, he has to give it to me. That way I have all the respect to his sister, my wife. Myself, if I give him anything, there will be a time when I need something, in a potlatch mostly—sometimes they will tell a person to sing and that costs money. And they [my wife's brothers] going to gather up and bring everything they can, everything they got.” That is, the brothers-in-law, although among the guests, will help to defray the contribution which the sister‘s husband must make if he sings.

It was also appropriate for a man to perform a ceremonial service for his sister's husband. For example, I was told that the Tł’UknaAdi man who carved the Bear Post for the Teqwedi Bear House on Khantaak Island (pp. 319–320) refused pay for it at the housebuilding potlatch because he was the ‘brother-in-law’ of the house chief, his sister's daughter's husband. Obviously the Teqwedi were under obligation to make a particularly generous payment in return if the house post were to be valued.

Traditional gifts given by a man to his sister's husband were furs and, more recently, clothing. The Tlingit of southeastern Alaska either introduced or took advantage of this custom in developing trade relations with the Gulf of Alaska natives. It should be noted that under normal circumstances there was a strong feeling of reciprocity. We thus find the woman giving her best preserved foods to her brother (that is, contributing in effect to the larder of her sister-in-law), and acting as the most important relative in all ceremonies attending the life crises of her brother's wife and children. For these services, as well as for the gifts to her nephews and nieces, she was handsomely repaid by her brother.

However, we get the impression that the major economic flow went originally from the man to his wife's father and the latter's sib, and that subsequently the return came back to the husband from his wife's sib. Despite the gifts given by him to his brother-in-law, it seems to have been the sister's husband who profited in the long run. As between sisters-in-law, it was the brother's wife who received most, either for herself or for her children and her household.

Those persons who had married siblings were known by a special term (‘Atica). This is used only in reference, not in address. (No special relationship, however, linked the siblings of a pair of spouses.) Helen and Esther are each other's du ’Atica because they have married half brothers. As one man explained it, James and William are wutc-’Atica (reflexive) because they have married two sisters. They are “like brothers-in-law, I guess…. If I marry a woman, whoever her brother is married to—his wife would be my ’a ’Atica.” In other words, this relationship was recognized between persons of opposite sex, as well as of the same sex, provided they were married to a pair of siblings. A woman expressed this in similar fashion: “See, I’m married to Mrs. D's brother, and that Mr. D is my ’Atica. That's the way.” When asked how she addressed Mr. D, “I don’t say anything to him, just say ’hellow.’…I just like him because he's married to my husband's sister.” It is doubtful whether wutc-‘Atica of opposite sex ever addressed each other directly in former times, for they would have been sib-mates or moiety-mates. Rather, it was the relationship between those of the same sex that was important.

Between wutc-’Atica of the same sex there was supposed to be rivalry; sometimes real, sometimes on a purely friendly and joking basis. One man said: “Wuc-hAs łI-tcic—’they got to beat each other.’ I got to beat him. I got to do everything I can to make a better living than him, and satisfy my wife's parents. Man-to-man, same way—got to be best hunters, good at everything. He's going to try to do the same way, too.” The rivals do not boast, but “people on the outside, I guess,” would compare their respective merits. If the men who were rivals lived in the same house, “that makes it worse then. You have to work real hard.” The informant believed that wutc-‘Atica of opposite sex were also rivals, although he did not know how they would compete.

A woman in speaking of the relationship stressed the friendly joking, perhaps because she herself was on such good terms with the wife of her husband's half brother. “The women kid each other. Sometimes they deny the relationship, try to be higher than the other…. (They may say), ’I’m not your ’Atica. You don’t have to criticise me like that!’…Some people just hate one another…. But we share…. If I have something new, I have to share it with her…. But some people don’t get along together. Men and women du ’Atica kid each other,” and she mentioned that she jokes with her husband's sister's husband (both members of the same moiety). When asked how she and her husband's brother's wife addressed each other, she exclaimed: “We never say anything to each other [use kin terms]. We just insult each other when we meet. We never get mad. We like each other. I can’t get along without her.” The two women belong respectively to the ałyI-Kagwantan and DAdentan sibs, and would joke about their own or each other's poverty. They would “always say that Tł’Uknaca are rich and proud; ałyI-Kagwantan are poor, in rags. When we have lots of skins, then we say we look like Kwacca [their husbands’ sib sisters].”

The Life Cycle

BIRTH

Introduction

The Yakutat think of the life of an individual as similar to a journey around the curving shore of a bay (p. 530), during which be grows old and finally becomes childlike, when he dies and returns as a baby once more. Thus, there is no real beginning of the life cycle in the native mind, since every baby born is believed to be the reincarnation of some maternal relative who has died, and each individual nearing death is consoled by the prospect of a future incarnation, while the relatives anticipate his return to them again as a baby. Therefore, as a beginning, I can only select arbitrarily the time when a woman conceives, and follow her child through his life on earth, reserving for later pages a discussion of the great ceremonies that honor his memory, and the nature and fate of his soul in the afterworld.

I did not attempt to secure information about sexual practices, respecting the obvious reserve of friends in such matters. There is certainly nothing to suggest that the Tlingit were ever ignorant of physiological paternity, although I do not know how knowledge of physical procreation was fitted into beliefs about the return of the soul. While two episodes of the Raven myths (the Birth of Raven, p. 844; and the Theft of Daylight, p. 853) deal with miraculous conception caused by swallowing something, these events owe their dramatic quality to the knowledge that they were miraculous. In other myths, as in biographical sketches of real persons, physical resemblances to the father or to his relatives may be pointed out, even though it is resemblance to a deceased maternal relative that often gives the clue to the identity of the reincarnated soul. When tracing genealogies, informants were just as anxious as the ethnographer to indicate who were the true parents of an individual, even though this was difficult in cases where there had been polygynous families or ones in which the spouses had been married several times. Despite the matrilineal structure of society, the father's line is as clearly defined and emphasized as that of the mother, although in a different way. When children were born into a polygynous family, they often did not seem to know who were their full brothers and sisters. Minnie Johnson, who referred to both her true mother and the latter's older sister and cowife as “my mother,” seems actually to have become confused as to which was her true parent.

It was difficult to ascertain whether boys or girls were more desired. One woman (MJ) thought that boys were believed to be better because: “I guess they think the boy can take care of family…because a man strong enough to support. But a woman can’t do it.” Then she added: “A man can’t get along without a woman, that I know.” Another woman countered, however: “That girl, you know, that family counted to ten. There's going to be ten people out of that woman. More than anything they think about it.” This provoked the first to comment: “More particular about a girl than the boy. Boy's only boy, and girl increase the family.” The second woman explained: “White people count with the father. Tlingit people, that's their mother's side. That's why.” She also believed that girls were punished more than boys, because wars were provoked by bad women.

On another occasion, MJ stated: “A long time ago girls were more valuable than boys. [When] a tribe getting low down [few in numbers], a girl will always raise more kids to increase the family…. [If an indemnity is paid for a killing], they don’t pay much for boys, but they pay double for girls, because a girl more valuable than a man. Man is husky enough to take care of himself, but they value a woman more than a man.” (However, see p. 604, where a woman is reckoned less valuable than a man.)

At present, large families of both boys and girls are desired, and a baby of either sex seems to be welcomed and loved, no matter how poor the family. If the parents drink, however, their interest, even in a young baby, may soon be lost and the older children suffer extreme neglect. In these cases, there is usually some older relative to welcome and care for the children. Very few children have been sent to asylums, for orphans are usually adopted by grandparents, or by an uncle or aunt. Sometimes the child of living parents may be given to a widowed grandmother for adoption, especially if she needs the child's help and the parents have many children. In this respect, I believe that old women are generally more fortunate than old men, although there are perhaps too few cases on which to base a generalization. In the old days, the multi-family household offered a secure home not only for the aged but for the baby. Only the bastard was without status, except for one close to that of the slave. Now even the fatherless child is a beloved member of the family, at least as long as the unwed mother remains at home.

In former days, even a woman who had children of her own could ask for and receive a baby from her sister. Thus, one man born in 1893 was given at birth to his mother‘s sister for adoption, to console her for the loss of her baby son. He did not learn who his actual parents were until he was 16 years old, when his true father died. As a boy, he lived in both families, and mourned both real and adopted parents with equal grief.

Personal Characteristics Believed Determined at Birth

Many physical characteristics, such as birthmarks, are believed to be scars received in a previous incarnation. Stuttering was explained by some as due to careless construction of the baby carrier, while others said it was because the child had drowned in his previous incarnation; the water had gone into his mouth when he was trying to call for help, so he could not talk properly.

If a child were a deaf-mute, the explanation was: “Raven make believe he can’t talk. He puts pitch around his mouth. People is talking about it. He start to explain to them, but he goes ‘hmm hmm.’ [There is a saying:] ‘Even Raven pitched his mouth together and is starting to talk. He just mumble.’ That explains why some people can’t talk…. [Raven had done this because] Raven don’t want to get into trouble with the people.” The informant cited two examples of deaf and dumb children in the Kwacqwan sib, one of whom had been born in that condition, and the other who had lost his hearing through illness in infancy. “They would say about [the latter], it's because he's Raven's tribe.”

No explanation of left-handedness (yAtat) was known, although I was told that parents might try to correct this. “They wrap up his [left] hand so he won’t do it [use it]…. It works, but the minute you take the rag off, they grab with the left hand. It's the natural, I think.” However, “left-handed people seem to be more handy. I don’t understand why,” and a number of left-handed persons who were skilled carpenters or hunters were mentioned.

While it is evident that in former times abnormal babies were destroyed at birth, I heard nothing to indicate that twins fell in that category. They are known to run in certain families, and a number of examples were cited by my friends. Contrary to the belief of other Tlingit groups that the birth of twins presages disaster (de Laguna, 1954, p. 182), the Yakutat people say: “Twins are really precious…. Twins is a pleasure to us. No, we don’t have much luck with twins in Yakutat,” and a woman enumerated all the twins that had died.

Another woman confirmed the belief that twins were desired. “It's good. That's a lucky people got the twins, they says.” And the twins themselves, if they survive, are also lucky. This attitude seems to be particularly close to that of the Chugach Eskimo (Birket-Smith, 1953, p. 4).

Since infant mortality has always been high, it is natural that twins should have less chance of survival than children born singly.

Sex might or might not be determined before birth, according to native belief, and it was uncertain whether there was any way to determine or control it. At any rate, it was believed that certain babies had been boys, but turned into girls at the time of birth (see p. 778).

TRANSVESTITES

There were apparently sexually abnormal persons, who grew up to be transvestites or berdaches, although it is believed that the nature of such individuals was determined at birth. “It's a man mostly acts like a woman; that‘s the one they call gÀtán.” This word is usually translated as “coward.”

“They claim the one that got 13 children, the last one becomes gAtan.” The number in this case seems to reflect European fairytale influence.

In one version of the story of the woman who married the Sun, the woman had eight children: seven boys, and the eighth, half-girl and half-boy, a gAtan. This woman was CAnkuqedi, the narrator explained: “That ‘coward,’ half-girl and half-boy, always comes back in this tribe,” meaning that the transvestite‘s soul was reincarnated so that the condition was hereditary in this sib.

According to another version (p. 875), there were four sons, and it was the fifth who was a ‘coward.’ These were Teqwedi, which is why the Teqwedi shamans have the Children of the Sun as familiar spirits, and why the Teqwedi have a title to Coward House (gAtan hIt). There was no suggestion, however, that this sib had actual transvestites.

There were apparently a series of stories about a particular transvestite, who was unusually strong and very stupid (p. 895). “That story is always funny. And the way he talks, too, he's always funny.” This person always made mistakes because he was too stupid to understand what people said, taking metaphorical or magical expressions in their literal meaning, or confusing two words that sound alike. As the narrator explained:

“It's more funny when they tell it in Tlingit.” He believed that the transvestite wore woman's clothes, although “all they say is he acts like a woman.” He would attach himself to another man, “the one he claims is his husband…. Maybe he might use the opposite tribe for his husband…. He laugh at it, too, the way the story goes.” There was, however, no institution of “marriage” or of permanent liaison between men. “They don’t marry them. He always goes around with it [the berdache] though, just can’t get away. Maybe he's the one try to kill him…. Here in Alaska they never like it. They always try to kill them; make it look like accident.”

The berdache was not supposed to be magically gifted, or lucky, or skilled. When the informant was asked if he knew of any, he recalled a young man who had died about 1942 in a sanitarium. “He acts like a woman, even uses women's clothes sometimes. I forget his name. They said he may be that gAtan [i.e., the reincarnation of the berdache of the stories. This young man was a Raven]. Funny though, he's not real strong. They’re always strong [in traditions]…. No matter what they do, they won’t die. Stronger than a number of men. The funny part of it though, this kid, he's not the 13th child. But he acts like a woman and he always goes among women.”

There was apparently no recognition of female homosexuals, although Dr. Grace de Laguna, when passing through Yakutat in 1933, saw a woman who appeared to be such from her physical appearance, bearing, and clothing. One informant, who apparently recognized the individual from this description, claimed that “she was not a real one. It was just a girl who liked to dress like a boy and had her hair cut short.” The man from whom most of this information is quoted, denied that he had ever heard of a woman who acted like a man, though some women work as hard as men do. Such big husky women, as well as women who can take a man's role at a potlatch (p. 642), are admired. One such woman, even though she affected a man's big hat was described as a “big, respectable woman.” She was married, although she never had any children.

Pregnancy

Conception is known to follow intercourse, and pregnancy is said to last “10 months.” This expression may refer to lunations, not our calendar months, although to judge by the number of instances in which this and similar expressions were used, I believe it means that pregnancy lasts through 9 months and that birth occurs during the 10th. However, when an experienced midwife said: “[They] count the months they carry a child. First baby is 10 months,” I believe that she was using the expression as we would, to mean that the birth of the first child is usually delayed.

During pregnancy the baby is supposed to occupy a different position in the womb each month, and this is symbolized in the stories about the fate of the soul after death and before rebirth (see p. 769).

The experiences of the mother during pregnancy were supposed to affect the child, in illustration of which a number of monstrous births were described. Thus, one woman was delivered of a baby that looked like a devilfish.[84] “The face of it is human, and the rest was just hanging down…and they had to kill it…. I was told afterward, when you are carrying, before you go 3 months, anything that frightens you—that's what cause it. You mustn‘t let anything frighten you, or the child will look like that.”

Similarly, there was a poor Eyak woman at Cordova who had lost all her children by drowning. She became pregnant soon after that, to her joy and that of her husband. But one day when she was sitting and roasting some salmon over a bonfire, “a little mouse crawl just over her legs. When her baby is born, its face is just like a mouse. It's just terrible!” As a relative explained, “ ‘My uncle's wife got a baby, but it had a mouse face. The mouse that crawls over her legs just come back to her.’ ”

Still another woman gave birth to a child covered with hair. “They had to kill it. I don’t know what caused it.”

The same informant (MJ) also gave an extreme example of prenatal conditioning. Long before she herself was born or even conceived, a family of five brown grizzlies had come out of the bushes toward her mother, who was carrying a baby son in her arms. All the terrified woman could do was to lie down quietly while one of the bears stood over her. Finally it went away, and her husband killed the bears. “I used to be cranky and fight with my brothers. I was the only girl [in the family]. My mother blamed my disposition on her experience.”

There were rules in former days governing the behavior of the husband when his wife was pregnant, but these are now largely forgotten. Thus, informants disagreed as to whether he should chop wood and do similar masculine work if he wanted a son, or should be quiet, lest the “boy turn into a girl.”

A woman who desired an easy delivery might drop a doll (or something) and make a wish, but the Chugach practice of dropping stones through her dress as she walked along was denied (Birket-Smith, 1953, p. 84).

Childbirth

Almost all of the information on childbirth was obtained from a professional native midwife. She delivered her first child when she was only 13 years old, following the instructions of her mother, and by 1954 (age 60) had successfully delivered over 40 babies. In the old days, the midwife and her assistants were supposed to be UnEtkAnai—members of the opposite moiety, women either of the patient's father's sib or of her husband's sib. Actually, any woman or girl would be expected to help in an emergency, and the most skilled would naturally be called. However, the women who were close relatives in the opposite moiety were supposed to do what they could to help the mother and the new baby.

One of the first things the midwife does when consulted is to ascertain the position of the baby by feeling the mother's body. Native women are often very skilled in diagnosis through this external manipulation, especially in predicting the date of birth. Sometimes, if the afterbirth has slipped or the child is in a wrong position, the midwife endeavors through massage and pressure to push the child “right up in the right place,” so that the head will be down. This may be done several days before delivery, and the mother's body may be wound with a tight sash or belt to hold the child in position (as she did for a patient in 1954).

“If the baby is born feet first, get the one foot and then the other; put them together. Then you get one hand down by its side, and the other over its head. The second arm must be sure to be up, otherwise the baby will choke to death. This is handy to know in case you get stuck.”

Birth always took place outside the house in former times, for the blood of parturition was contaminating to men and offensive to the spirits of the animals and fish they hunted. At a summer camp, the woman might be confined in a tent or temporary shelter. “They had a tent up for her. They were pretty strict then, and the woman who is going to have a baby has to stay outside until she is well. She lays on her back 9 days, but if it's necessary they can take her in. But they are putting up grub then and don’t want no sick woman in the house.” (MJ) In one recent instance an objection was raised by fishermen when one woman planned to have her child in a hut which they felt was too near a fish stream.

At the village, the birth house (’ayun ’awuca hidi) was a permanent structure to which every woman in the large household went when she had a child or when she was menstruating. It was just large enough to accommodate the parturient and the three women who attended her. The hut was made of branches (or boards?), and had thick walls. There was a fireplace in it, and the hut could be heated like a bathhouse by means of steam produced by pouring water over hot rocks.

In the hut was a pit, dug as deep as the distance from the fingertips to the elbow; it was filled with soft moss almost to the top—to allow a space into which the baby could slide yet not fall far enough to be injured.

“Funny—I saw my grandmother fix it up for my mother lots of times! They dig a square hole about a foot deep, and they fill it with moss all around, spongy soft moss. There are two boards on each side of the moss, on the sides [to kneel on?]. They put a cloth of any soft kind over the moss.”

According to the myth about the Theft of Daylight, babies are born on moss because Old Raven “sets the style. You see, they dig a hole and get all kinds of marten and mink [furs] for him, anything real expensive on that place where he's going to born. But he keep his mother suffering so long. He doesn’t want to be born on expensive things; he helps the poor people. And after that babies begin to be born on moss.” (MJ) And on another occasion, referring to the myth which Frank Italio had recorded that afternoon (p. 854): “At first her father [Raven's mother's father] give orders [to his slaves] to line that place with marten skins. That makes Frank laugh! Suppose we all have to be born like that! We wouldn’t be grow up! Poor people—Raven looks after the poor ones. That's why the babies [are] not born on precious skins like that girl‘s father had.” As soon as moss was substituted, Raven was born at once.

The woman in labor squatted over this moss-lined pit and grasped a vertical pole in front of her. The midwife crouched behind her, supporting the buttocks of the parturient on her knees and holding her by the shoulders. An assistant in front held her by the waist, and braced her knees against hers. The third woman was at the side to balance the mother “in case anything come up,” and was ready to receive the child. When the pains came, the mother pulled against the pole, and was instructed: “ ‘Just swallow your breath down,’ because everytime you got your breath back, the baby comes up.” As the pain subsided, the woman would lie back and rest on the midwife's knees. “Some womans, they having a hard time; some womans, it's easy…. If the baby comes on the back, they just push it in,” that is, the midwife behind would press her hand against the small of the mother's back.

When a woman begins labor, the membrane around the child (dudakA xàsi or ai?) breaks, and the water comes out. Just before the baby is to be born, the “water bag” (du cAt ’ék hini), on which the baby's head is said to rest, also breaks. “When it bursts, you know, the baby's coming now. You’ve got about 10 minutes—three or four pains,” the midwife told me. Another woman added: “That's why that baby's born easy. It wets itself down, you know…. If [a pregnant woman goes outside [and] don’t use warm clothes, you know, it [the “water bag”] don’t open, you know.”

When the baby was delivered, said the midwife, “then they make you lay down for a while for the afterbirth…. After the baby was born, they put you in steam…. They put rocks right in the bonfire, and as soon as the rock's warm enough, they put it under where you’re laying, and then just sprinkle a little water on it, and it keeps you warm like that.”

Another woman, explaining how she had delivered a baby in an emergency, said that she tied the umbilical cord “so she won’t bleed to death,” and after cutting it, wrapped the end around the mother's toe, “so the cord won’t go in.” The midwife reported, however, that in former times the cord was tied only on the baby's side, and after it was cut, the other end was put between the mother's toes, “just so the blood won’t run off from it.” Now the cord is tied on both sides of where it is cut.

To assist the woman to eject the afterbirth, the midwife “get hold of her around her waist when she get her pains, and she pull out little by little” on the cord.

“One woman's afterbirth stuck…. My hands is small then. I feel it around [from outside?]. I moved it. I put my hands in hot water and I cut my fingernails…. I followed the cord with my hands. I keep moving with my fingertips, very slow. Finally I reached where it was stuck, and I got it. It come into my hands, real easy. I took it out very slow.” This was one of the informant's first cases.

No man, of course, may enter the hut where the woman is confined, and apparently a shaman is not called upon to assist in any way at the birth hut, although he might be paid to use his powers at a distance (p. 708). However, the woman's brother might be told to walk sunrise around the hut and give a good kick to the wall when the baby's head appeared. This would hasten delivery.

If the baby does not cry at birth, it may be turned upside down and slapped on the back. Sometimes it is necessary to put the baby into a basin of warm water and stick a finger into its mouth to induce the first breath.

If the child is born in the cowl (dudakA xásì qútsitì), and if the cowl is dried and saved, the child will be lucky (wealthy), and long-lived.

The mother should not drink cold water during her confinement. As a medicine for the afterpains, the midwife said that the mother was given broth made from a seal stomach in which oil had been stored for 9 months. Presumably this would have been prepared when she first became pregnant. “When the baby is born, they cut [the seal's stomach] in small pieces and put it to boil…. It's thick, like rich gravy, like white sauce—thinner, but rich. Then they make you drink it for 1 day…. After that, they took hemlock limbs and they boil it. That's for the afterpains. And they make you drink it. It makes you flow easy, stops too hard hemorrhage.” “Tea” or infusions were also given to produce abundant milk.

The afterbirth (du kigi) “and everything bloody” was burned. “It dare not get near the men who do the hunting. It makes their lives short, they claim.”

It is difficult to ascertain just how long the woman was confined to the birth hut. I have already quoted the opinion that she should remain there, lying down, for 9 days, and this seems reasonable in view of the 8-day period usually enjoined for all life crises, especially if we are to think of this time as 8 days after the day of the birth, or 8 days plus the day on which she leaves. However, I was told by the midwife: “They keep you there 5 days until they know you’re all right. Oh, they get so excited when they bring the baby into the community house ! Everybody wants to see the little one—some wishing for a girl, some wishing for a boy.”

While the mother was confined, the father could not visit her or the baby. “First-born baby, man doesn’t take it for four, five days. Then the blood's going away, they say.”

At present, the midwife prefers to keep her patients in bed for 2 weeks, and all the older women were critical of modern hospital practice which has the mother up and walking within a day or two after childbirth. In the old days, a woman wore a bark belt for 6 or 7 months after delivery, and even a young mother of 16 was supposed to use a cane when she first got up.

INFANCY

Care of the Baby

At present, the practice is to wash the newborn baby in warm water and place it wrapped in clean blankets in a big basket. If the child is premature or delicate, hot water bottles may be added. I do not know how babies were cleaned in former times, or whether they were ever warmed by anything, for example, by a hot rock.

FIGURE 59.—The baby carrier (uk) from paper models made by Maggie Harry, a, Pattern for cover, b, Frame of uk. c, Cover of uk. d, Baby in uk carried in blanket fold on the back.

In the old days, indeed as recently as 1912, the little baby was put into a baby carrier or pouch (uk, uq, or ukw; Boas, 1917, p. 125, u), and for the first 10 days was kept in the dark, so that he would not get sore eyes. This was accomplished by putting a circular frame of arched withes, like an inverted basket, over the baby's head and covering this with a cloth. The frame and cover were removed only when feeding and cleaning the baby.

The newborn baby was always wrapped up at once, even though the carrier might not be ready. “You know a cloth called ’Capital’?—a tough white cloth, they call it. It's a thick white cloth. They make a long string [band] of it. My mother used to make two or three yards of it. They arrange the whole body with the hands down. They fill it with moss all around. They put a blanket [on] then. If you haven’t an outside cover ready, use that long strips temporary, until you make a fancy uk—until that navel [cord] comes off the baby. It's easy to get at him. By that time the uk will be ready. And Yeł [Raven] was tied up like that [referring to the Theft of Daylight], They straighten out the arms and legs after the bath and then wrap it up. And when the uk is ready, by that time the navel will come off.”

The baby carrier (uk; fig. 59) was made from a basket about 2 feet deep, cut in half on a slant, so that the sides were cut away at the head or top of the basket, and about half of the bottom was left, about as deep (wide) as the hand. The basket was strengthened around the edge by a piece of flexible young hemlock branch (u; Boas, 1917, p. 126, ù, withe), “so when they pick it up, it don’t get out of shape…u is the round rim. Ends of it got to meet just right [i.e., squarely]…. If that thing don’t meet the right way, that cause the baby to stutter” (see p. 499). Down the middle of the basket, on the outside, was a thin board about 3 inches wide “to keep the body of the baby straight, and so it won’t get disfigured.” Across the lower part of the basket, attached to the two edges, was a strap of twisted (braided?) spruce roots. “You put the little feet [legs] over it…. You can’t make your baby's feet straight all the time. He rest his little knees on this.” The lower part of the basket was filled with soft moss, covered with a cloth, and the head of the baby rested on a feather pillow (cAyet). Over the entire basket was a skin cover that laced down the front, so that only the baby's head was exposed. In more recent times, this cover was of cloth which buttoned down the front and could be removed for washing. Often the cover was beaded. The baby was thus rigidly confined within the basketry cradle. “It keeps them straight so they don’t get broken bones. The body don’t get out of shape, and there's also something to keep their ears flat to the head…some kind of cap. Some people's ears stick out of their head.” (MJ; also other women.)

The basketry baby carrier was sketched and described by Suría at Port Mulgrave in 1791. He also gives us a little information about infants:

“When the Indians are newly born they put them in a cradle made of a kind of reed very well worked. Two skins hang down from each side of this which they fold over the breast of the baby and which covers it down to the knees. These are joined by a skin [thong] which through various holes extends from one side to the other. The creatures are dressed with their arms inside, all with skins, and thus they put them inside the cradle, and cover them very well down to the feet as stated. Thus they manage the affair, giving them to suck and leaving them stretched out on the ground.” [Wagner, 1936, p.’254].

Suría's sketches show a woman holding such a cradle in her arms (pls. 54, 55). It is exactly like those described by my informants. The more modern type of carrier with cloth covering was photographed by Professor Libbey in 1886 (pl. 63).

The nasal septum of the newborn baby was pierced with a feather, Suría further informs us, and his sketch shows the child in its basketry cradle wearing a nose pin (made of two dentalia?). The baby in Libbey's photograph wears a small nose ring.

The baby carrier was usually made in advance; in the specific examples cited, it had been made by the baby's grandmother. The first carrier (uqwmei yánai; cf. Boas, 1917, p. 132 yánA, a pack, burden) was used for about 3 or 4 months. Then a larger one was made and the baby was kept in this until he was ready to learn to walk.

When the baby's umbilical cord (du tànú) became detached, it was enclosed in a small round, flat skin bag (du tánù dakEt, or dakAgweł), covered with beadwork. This might be made by the grandmother, or given to the mother by her husband's sister. This bag was fastened to the cover of the baby carrier over the child's right side, and preserved as an amulet. Sometimes the father of a boy might make a miniature bow and arrow or gun to attach to the carrier.

Long before the expected birth, moss for diapers was collected. “They get sacks of it from the big trees. The men climb the trees. Women who are going to be confined get plenty ready.” (MJ) There is apparently no feeling that it is bad luck to collect moss or make the baby carrier in advance, one woman said, although some criticism was expressed when a “shower” was given in March 1954, for a baby that was not expected until June. “Too many things might happen.”

The moss (iqá; or ’as cii awu, ’tree-limb hair’; or ’as djiwAn iqai, ’moss under the limbs’) used for diapers was the same as that used for menstrual pads (p. 528). It was “just like hair—long, soft. The one hanging on the trees.” (MJ) According to another woman: “It's kind of yellow-like, soft. It just grows short on the limbs, just like cotton. It's softer than cotton…. You get it out from spruce…. When they take it out from alder tree or the spruce tree—when you take it from the limb, you shake it, so there will be no worm in it. And then you hang it up and dry it.”

The moss was said to have been changed three times a day. “The mother, she never forgets. They wouldn’t leave it [soiled moss] behind, because they don’t want any worm, any rats to get into it. The first thing when they go camping, the first thing when they come back, they take it in the woods, put it under a stump [symbol of longevity], way in back, and burn it. [If rats or worms got in], they say the baby's always getting any kind of diseases. [Was there not also a fear that witches might secure the moss?] You has to make the baby's life real clean and clear, so the baby will grow up pure. That's the way that goes.” This informant felt that moss was cleaner than ordinary diapers, although apparently she had used diapers on her own babies. “Gee, clean! Moss so clean in the old days. Don’t have to have your baby wet.” The use of moss seems to have been abandoned before that of the baby carrier.

During infancy the baby was never separated from the mother, except when fondled by other loving relatives. “The native people never make their babies separate. Keep it by them till they’re about a year old.” At night, the baby in the carrier “sleep with the mother all the time, before. Right on your arm, [i.e., under the blanket with which the mother covered her head]. When you’re going to turn, you turn the baby over. That's when I roll, I won’t roll on the baby…. First thing in the morning, you take the baby out before breakfast. Change the baby. About the time you’re having breakfast, the baby sleeps. They never let the kids cry. They living so many together that time. The whole place disturbed when the baby cried. They never liked to hear babies cry.”

FIGURE 60.—Baby hammock (gegAtc) from a model made by Maggie Harry. “There's a little hammock. We put the baby in there—that‘s his crib.” Maggie used two strips of scotch tape between the arm of her chair and a box to represent the two root ropes, and folded a napkin over them to represent the blanket.

During the day, while the mother was working, the baby in the carrier might be leaned up against a box beside her, but it was more customary to leave the baby in its carrier in a little hammock or swing (èÁtc; cf. È, ‘place between the folds of something,’ and Átc, ’mat’). The swing was made of a blanket or of a sealskin, tanned on one side but with hair on the other, which was folded over two spruce root ropes, so that the fold between them made a secure bed (figs. 60, 61). The ropes were stretched across a corner of the main room of the house. A few hammocks were netted, if the mother knew how to make them or wished to buy one from some woman who did. Hammocks of blankets are still used until the baby is about a year old and able to climb out.

FIGURE 61.—Tlingit child in a hammock. The hammock (or baby carrier) is slung from a beam similar to that supporting the fishracks shown in plate 81 depicting Bear Bit Billy's house on Khantaak Island. (Sketch by Peixotto after a photograph by Taber. From Bugbee, 1893, p. 186.)

“After they feed the babies, they put them in the swing and have a string tied to it and swing them. Then they go to sleep and the women make their baskets.” (MJ) “You have the hammock right in the corner. If you working around, making baskets, as soon as the baby starting to cry, you just pick up that root [string], and rock it. No trouble for mother…. You swing it once, and it rocks about ten minutes…. Oh, it's cute! You pull it once and it rocks itself,” another woman said.

The second informant continued:

The mother will soothe the baby: “AWWWWÉ—Love. NatadeeeeyÉ—Go to sleep!” (Compare the first word with the soothing cry for the peace hostage, p. 598.) At nighttime, the baby is rocked to sleep in the mother's arms. She croons “ ‘suuuu’—That's the way we put them to sleep. We never wake the people. Just rocking in the arms like that.”

“In the morning, the father, mother, little sisters [and brothers?], all take turns to hold him. He goes round.”

When the mother goes outdoors, perhaps to pick berries, she carries the child on her back. The carrier was held in a fold of the blanket which the mother drew over her shoulders and secured with a belt around her waist. The baby was in a somewhat slanting position across the mother's back, “the little head sticking out” and on a level with the mother's shoulder. The baby faced to the side and to the rear, so that he would not be scratched when the mother went through the bushes. “You can look back [over your shoulder] and see if the baby's all right. And then the father always looks [too]. Sometimes the father is carrying the baby.” MJ commented that it was easy for the mother to shift the baby to her breast when he was hungry. Apparently there were no straps fastened to the carrier that could be slung over the mother's shoulder, like that put on the baby doll MJ made for Dr. McClellan (pl. 134).

Grandparents used to carry little babies or small children on their backs, although they did not use a strap around the bottom of the blanket. “My grandfather used to pack me around in a blanket on his back until I’d get so sleepy. Even in those days they believe in fresh air…. [Sometimes the grandfather] used to get us babies on his lap and puts us to sleep like that [cradled in his arms, while he hissed between his teeth], ’, , , !’” Older children in the household, as well as adults, also carried the baby on their backs.

It was when the larger carrier was used that the child began to enjoy more freedom of movement. “First exercise when the baby is about 4 months old. Take his little hands out. Then he starts to play…. They keep his hands in the t’uk [carrier] until he's about 4 months old. Then they make him exercise.” But the baby's hands were apparently tucked in again at night.

The baby was given the breast whenever hungry. Sometimes he was given other foods, such as berries that had been crushed in someone's mouth. A baby was fed “all the time.”

“When it's old enough and the next one coming and they have to wean them, they put something bitter on their breast—hot pepper, anything strong. I used to watch my brother Jim. He likes milk so much, and he sucks and spits. He's 2 years old and my mother was pregnant again, and don’t want him to bother her all the time. She told him his mouth is going to get burned and he won’t have any more tongue left. He like it so much, and spit! I used to pull him away. He don’t yell [that] he wanted some more. He talks. ’U’ma’—wants more milk.’…

“He used to suck when mother was asleep. The other one was born then. He gets his temper and mother gets awake. He almost crush the baby. He try to crawl in mother's bed.”(MJ)

The “native pepper” was made from a wild heliotrope (Valeriana sp.), called “medicine that stinks” (łtcAni nakw, p. 658).[85] “They powder it and put it on and it burns [the baby's mouth] like pepper. It doesn’t harm the mother.”

Weaning seems to have marked the end of infancy, and the account just given suggests that this was frustrating to the baby and likely to result in sibling rivalry. At present, most babies in Yakutat are raised on bottles, the usual formula being condensed milk and corn syrup. This is probably because most deliveries take place in hospitals where the suckling of babies is virtually prohibited by the institutional routine. However, bottle feeding probably eliminates some of the conditions of sibling rivalry.

Magic for Babies

Before discussing the life of little children, it would be well to mention the magical exercises (hewa) that were performed on behalf of the infant or small child.

If the newborn baby were sickly, the afterbirth might be wrapped up to look like a man and the baby's hands be manipulated to knock it down. This had been done by the mother and grandmother of one of the informant's sons. “Gee, you talk about a husky man when he does that! They make him knock his afterbirth down. And then they says ’Gee, the strongest kid! Oh, he's husky!’” While this was undoubtedly a magical wish, no set formula was required. It was denied by another woman, however, that the baby boy was made to shoot his afterbirth in order to make him a good hunter, although perhaps this was formerly done.

The model bow and arrow or gun, fastened to the baby boy‘s carrier (p. 504), was supposed to influence his development.

Most magical treatment for little boys was intended to make them good hunters. Thus the “muscle or nerve” (tendon?) from the hind leg of a wolf was tied around the baby's ankle so that he would be swift when chasing bears and mountain goats. “They claim that when he runs, the alders will break right over his shin, he is so strong” said a man. Or, a tiny splinter of wolf bone was broken over the center of the boy's forehead, or perhaps poked into the skin and then broken, but the woman reporting this was not sure. “That boy just like a wolf, go around the mountain, run fast, just like a wolf.” To make him a good runner, the baby's hammock might be made from the skin of a wolf or wolverine: ‘He swings(?) inside a wolverine skin’ (nuskw dugu tut wudułiqéq; cf. Boas, 1917, p. 145, łI-Aq, ‘to swing’ a hanging skin). The slime from a bear's mouth might also be put on a boy, so that he would become brave (SJ).

The umbilical cord was preserved as an amulet attached to the cover of the basketry carrier. Later, the little child wore the umbilical bag around his neck, until he was “old enough to learn” (MJ), or until he was 2 or 3 years old, another specified. A restless, mischievous little child was said to have lost this amulet and to be looking for his umbilical cord. The cord is finally disposed of in such a way as to benefit the child in later life. That of a little girl, for example, will be stitched into something her mother is sewing, or woven into a basket, to make the girl skillful at sewing or weaving, reported one woman. That of a boy may be put into an animal's hole, so that when he is grown he will not be afraid to pursue bears in their dens (MJ). Or, his cord may be laid in an animal's trail, while one utters a wish: “A tłaétł’—cry luck! ’At ati nasrti—master of things, i.e. a hunter, let him become!”

Similarly, the mother may take the fingernail paring of a baby girl and weave it into a basket to make her daughter skillful with her hands, or a maternal uncle may bind the fingernail parings of his nephew into a paintbrush so that the boy may acquire artistic skills. This was done for a boy who was 7 years old in 1921, when his uncle used the brush to paint the screen for Thunderbird House. In another case, the father of a little girl (MJ) fastened her fingernails to his paintbrush.

Most magical rites for a girl are not performed, however, until the time of her first menstruation.

There was also magic for crying babies. “And kids, little babies when they cry—they got some kind of cotton or something [Alaska cottongrass?]. They put it around their mouth for 4 days.” My informant made a gesture of rubbing around the lips, to show how the mother wiped the baby's mouth. “And they tie it up with roots [magical plants or spruce root cord?], and put it under their pillow, or else in the ground like that. They make a little hole, you know. They put that cotton in there, and 4 days, they stay [it stays]. They take it up again and they take it on the other side [of the bay]. Or else you put it under your pillow. When you sleep on it, that baby's going to sleep, too.”

CHILDHOOD

Small Children

When the new baby came the mother was obviously occupied with him and care of the small child that had been weaned fell largely upon the grandmother, although the grandfather, paternal cousins and aunts, and older siblings—all members of the large household—also helped. Thus MJ remembers that when she was a little girl she took care of her younger brothers. She carried one on her back and led one by each hand when she went out to play. Her father also took into his household the crippled daughter of his sister, “just so she can take care of me…. This crippled girl was supposed to be our nursemaid.”

Small children might continue to sleep in the same bedroom as their parents, or a little girl might sleep with her grandmother and a small boy with an older brother. As the boy grew older, however, he could not sleep with his parents. “Boys ain’t supposed to sleep near the mother.”

Grandparents were and are especially beloved by children. “I liked my grandfather better than my mother” (MJ). “The grandchild loved the grandmother more than theer own mother and father, because their grandmother is always there” commented a second woman. “We love our grandchildren better than our own children,” said a third.

I secured practically no information about toilet training, but doubt if this was a matter over which much fuss was made, to judge by the following story:

“There was no pot in the house, and I don’t want to go outside in the dark. Once I make a mistake on my grandma's bed. She had a lynk and eagledown robe. I caught myself and started to squeal. I thought she’d throw me out, but instead of that she got up and put dry clothes on me. My dress was wet.” The little girl could not have been over 4 years old at the time (MJ).

If a child wet his bed, there was apparently no punishment, but instead, various magical remedies were tried. First, “they pick up a fine moss and put it under them and let them pee all they want for 4 nights. And take the moss back where they get it from. That's a cure for that.” However, if this was not effective, the same procedure was employed with the soft shreddings of spruce cones, “nuts” (‘as tusAni), left by the squirrels. No special magical formula or wish was spoken. If even these remedies failed to cure the child of bed-wetting, then he was made to eat the gills (?) of the crab (taw éu)—“that stringy stuff that grows inside the shell…. Only crabs have it…. You don’t supposed to eat that, but they use it for that…. Just eat that one time. If it don’t help, eat some more.”

Two “pet songs” for children which were recorded (1952, 5–1–A; 1954, 3–2–L; pp. 1272–1273) refer to the beloved child as a “stinker” or as “stinking,” which suggests that when little children dirtied themselves the parents made no particular fuss over it, but treated this as the natural condition of small children.

On the other hand, there seems to have been more concern felt for the safety of the child who went out at night to urinate, because of the dangers from land otters and witches. Thus, a watertight basket was kept in the house as a chamber pot, and very small children were not allowed out of the house at night, while the older ones were cautioned not to go too far. Small boys apparently went just around the corner of the house.

Little children were treated with great indulgence and affection. They could apparently go to any house in which they had a relative and be sure of a warm welcome. My informants remember only a few persons in the village of whom they were afraid as little children, and these were described as ugly old people, feared perhaps because they were relative strangers, or were queer and cantankerous. Children were fed whenever they were hungry, to judge from reminiscences, and even today, regular mealtimes would probably not be imposed on Tlingit children if it were not for school. Similarly, while the household usually went to bed early and rose early, when exciting events were going on at night the children were not put to bed at regular hours. They were expected only to keep quiet and not to interfere.

Children were given presents as valuable as their parents could afford. Such gifts including clothing, ornaments, toys, and good things to eat. Today children are given money to buy candy or soft drinks whenever they ask for it, without a thought that too many sweet things may be bad for them. In consequence, their teeth decay and relatively young people are forced to wear dentures, while toothache is accepted as a common affliction of childhood. It was almost impossible for a grandparent to deny anything to a grandchild. Thus, the myth that describes how Raven obtained the precious stars, moon, and daylight from his doting “grandfather,” simply by crying for them, reflects and explains current Tlingit attitudes.

“That's why up to this day a person thinks more of their grandchildren than of their own child—because Raven taught them how.”

Paternal uncles and aunts were also especially generous to their brother's children.

Children took part in many adult activities, such as potlatches, where they might dance in costume, give or receive presents, and be honored with “big names.” Even if they were babies, the parents would make gifts in their name, and their “grandparents” would give them potlatch names, so that more active participation began almost before the little children could understand what was happening. Small children also danced at home to the special “pet songs” composed and sung for them by parents and grandparents.

Although information on aboriginal clothing is scanty, it would appear that children dressed like adults. This was certainly true in the 1880's and 1890's, when White styles were worn. Children also had their own elaborate costumes for potlatches.

Little girls of well-to-do families wore heavy ornaments (tin) made of beads or dentalia attached to their hair in back (p. 446). The swinging of this was supposed to resemble the motion of bushes and young trees in the wind, symbolic of growth, and so promote the growth of the child. Such hair ornaments might be worn as early as the age of 4 or 5, be put aside at puberty, and resumed until the girl married.

Discipline

Only a few restrictions were imposed on very small children, and it is hard to tell how severely children were disciplined in former days. On the whole, Tlingit children are far quieter and less mischievous or demanding than White American children of the same ages, even though there are, of course, great individual and family differences. Certainly quiet children were formerly desired. “Nowadays people realize children should be active. In the old days they wanted the children to be quiet.”

When asked what people did to make children stop crying, MJ retorted: “Feed them! They find out if they’re hungry, or something wrong or not.” Yet if they cried for something they could not have, “they train them so they wouldn‘t cry for anything they wanted…. Gave them a good shaking up, if they know enough [that is, if the children were old enough to understand].” Things which children were not supposed to touch were usually put in boxes, tied up tight and set high above their reach or suspended from the rafters.

Little children had, of course, to learn to avoid such dangerous things as the fire that burned in the middle of the house, hot objects, sharp knives, the swift running river, and dangers they might encounter if they wandered off into the woods. Dangerous things were pointed out to little children. “ ’! ! !’ we talk to baby, to scare them. ‘Don’t touch! It burns!’ That's baby talk”? “We call it ‘Xox’ when we try to scare the children.”

I do not know just how children were taught to keep away from the edge of the river or other dangerous places, but adane Johnstone fenced in the quiet shallows of the Situk River where his children could play safely with their toy boats.

“You know my father got a sidewalk like from the house down to the river. The gravel spit around there, my father made a big fence out of alder wood, so we don’t fall in the river. And he dug a big hole; he made a pond for us to play with our canoe in there.” (MJ)

Malaspina in 1791 also noted that some parents provided their children with enclosed places in which to play. He interpreted this as evidence of social distinction, but it may have been equally due to a concern for their safety. He had noticed an old man who seemed to share respect and authority with the Ankau. “This ancient, when questioned by me as to the object of a circular enclosure made of stones, which we were passing, replied that only his children and those of the Ankau entered it to play, thus being separated from those of the common people” [Malaspina, 1885, p. 348].

Stories of Land Otter Men that kidnap people who fall in the water or who are lost in the woods, as well as the real fear evinced by the adults of such creatures, must have prevented all but the most adventurous children from wandering away into dangerous places. In the woods, of course, there are also bears. Even today, children who accompany their elders on excursions are warned to keep close. MJ interrupted an account of how her little sister had been lost and presumed stolen by land otters (p. 754), to exclaim to her granddaughter, “That's why when you run in the woods, you stay with grandma when you go anywhere. You stay with me when we go pick berries, you hear?”

It is hard to tell how much physical punishment was formerly administered, although there is no doubt that children feared it. However, none of the reminiscences of my informants suggested the brutality with which the Chilkat punished their children; for example, roasting them in a box beside the fire (Olson, 1956, esp. p. 691). One Yakutat woman, born in 1900, said that there was “spanking in my days,” but that she had never heard of it in former times. However, older women spoke of it. Thus, when I asked MJ, who had been born in 1884, if children used to be spanked, she exclaimed: “You bet! You always get a spanking if you do something wrong. You can’t let your child do wrong things. They believe in that a long time ago.” Another punishment mentioned by her was to “keep them inside and don’t let them out to play until they get over it…. If children run around too much, they tie their feet together, trying to make them behave. When they first begin to walk, you know how children are. You go in a strange house, you can’t keep them quiet. They just make you sweat, ashamed. Now children know it all. But long time ago, they punished.”

Another woman, born in 1896, was asked what was done if a child said something naughty. “That happened to me. Chase me in the room, stay there. Sometimes they slap their mouth if they using bad words, you know. They don’t want it. That's a lower class people [who speak that way]. They don’t have respect of [for?] big people. Oh, my mother used to be strict! But that's the way, if you want good kids.”

The woman who doubted that naughty children were formerly spanked, said: “They tied their feet together. My mother used to tell me that when people used to settle down by the open fire, that means they’re going to tell a story, and the women would get the children and tie their feet together, and then everything would be quiet, so the men could tell the story.” But this seems to have been a precaution rather than a punishment.

“I know when you get fighting with your brother or sister, they tie you together and put water between you, so you won’t fight anymore…. The water was in a bucket. You face each other.” The pail of water was evidently so balanced that the children would drench themselves if they did not quiet down.

“In the old days they used to cure spoiled boys and girls who did wrong by putting their heads in kwAS [urine].”

“I was afraid of a spanking and being put in a dark corner. The dark corner is a little room, no light, no window. I don’t get that often…. Mother or father or my uncles might punish us.” (MJ) A grown-up brother might also punish a small sibling, the same informant said, and she told also how her mother had once pulled her hair when she was naughty.

Children must often have escaped merited chastisement because it was taboo for the mother to punish them when her husband was out hunting (pp. 365, 373, 378), and by the time he returned her anger would have cooled and he may have been too tired to want to bother with such domestic matters.

Although children certainly anticipated spankings when they were naughty, they were actually disciplined much more by threats than by the administration of physical punishment, to judge by the many stories of childish escapades. MJ reported that once when she was a naughty child, her mother reached out as if to scratch her face, “but it's just make-believe. I’m scared they tie me up to the pole and I get whipped.” When asked if such a whipping were customary, she answered, “Yeh. They do that until they promise they won’t do it any more. I never see it, but them days they mind their mother better than they do now…. They are just strict.” She explained that you would expect a whipping “if you tell a lie, and your mother find it out. You got to mind your father, unless you get whipped to death, so I did tell the truth.”

On another occasion, when the children had helped themselves to some mountain goat tallow which their mother had been saving for a special occasion, the angry mother told them: “’Wait till daddy comes home. You’re going to get a licking—no fooling!’…My father is out seal hunting, [so] my mother can‘t lick us.” However, on this occasion not even the older boys who had been the leaders were punished.

Several other times when one of the children had been naughty, they were all lined up and asked who had done it. Sometimes the culprit tried to lie, but again, even when detected, usually escaped with only a scolding.

Scoldings might take the form of a phallic gesture, with the thumb protruding between the fingers of the clenched fist, thusting this towards the child's face, saying “Na’na ‘ma!” (MJ). This is very similar to the Eyak insult, in which the same gesture is made accompanied by the word “Na!” said to mean ‘ ’ Kiss this!” (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 145.)

The child's adult joking relatives were often effective disciplinarians, utilizing the same techniques of public ridicule or practical joking that they might towards an adult joking relative (p. 487). This must have afforded a welcome outlet for irritations produced by a naughty child in the big multifamily household, especially since no one, including the victim, was supposed to take offense. Thus, when a spoiled little girl (MJ) had made trouble between her father and mother, so that their quarrels and her crying disturbed the whole household, one old lady who was the child's joking relative set a basket of urine to boiling, grabbed up the child, and pretended she was going to put her head in the basket. The child was so frightened that she stopped crying. Then another woman, the joking relative of them both, picked up the old woman and threatened her in the same way. In her fright, the child upset the boiling urine on the floor, so all the women had to snatch away the supper dishes and clean up the mess. But there seems to have been no ill feeling in consequence, for the old woman later taught the little girl many skills.

Joking relatives of the same age as the child were sometimes held up as rivals with whom the child was encouraged to compete.

Another method of disciplining children was to let them suffer the consequences of what they had done, often supplemented with threats. When MJ as a little girl took her mother's sharp ulo without permission in order to learn how to slice seal fat, she cut her finger. The paternal(?) aunts to whom she appealed for help at first refused to bandage it, telling her that she was going to die. On two occasions when the same little girl was involved in escapades in which another child in the family was injured, she was punished by having to wait on the hurt child until the latter recovered. Another time, when her brother cut her finger and she cried, nobody paid attention to her because she was always “squealing.” When the same woman's mother was a little girl, she was also something of a tomboy. Once, despite the remonstrances of her older sister, she attempted to walk on a log across a deep pit that had been dug for a cache, and fell in. The child could not climb out and began to run from side to side, crying with fright. The other children notified her older brother, who only laughed. “’Let her suffer a while, learn a lesson.’” However, her father was afraid she might be caught by a cave-in and rescued her.

Other threats involved bogey-men, that is, creatures which the children were told would punish them. Once when MJ was a very little girl and had been naughty, she ran out of the house and refused to come in even when it got dark. “Finally my uncle said, ’If you don’t come in when I tell you, the Crow's [Raven] going to kit you, and you’ll drop dead.’ I start to squeal, and stand there till he come and take me in. They even say they going to shoot me, but I don’t come. But ’Crow going to kit you’ was the only thing scared me. I don’t even know what it means till recently.” Since kitA means ‘seesaw,’ the threat was evidently that the Raven would seesaw with her.

Children were also frightened by owls. “That's why I’m so scared of owls. When I start to cry, they say ’Keep quiet! The owl will hear you and take you away!’” She was quite familiar with the story of the boy who was stolen by the owl and fed what he thought was delicious food, but what was really ants and other insects that ate up his insides. (Swanton, 1909, Tale 11, is the same story told about a Land Otter Man that carried off a crybaby.) Adults are also frightened or disturbed when they hear an owl, since the bird foretells misfortune.

It is evident that myths were used as cautionary tales for children. For example, the story of the KiksAdi girl who turned into an owl (p. 893; Swanton, 1909, Tale 37) is used to point a moral. “That's why they always says, ’Don’t hurt your mother-in-law. You will become an owl.’…Tlingit people always say that. Some girls, you know, don’t want their mother-in-law—some crazy girls. Because they watch, their mother-in-law [watches them]. They say it's true. That girl—she turned into owl.‘

And when the children ate their mother's mountain goat tallow without permission (p. 510): “That's the time my mother said, ‘You mustn’t steal anything, take anything without asking. See what happened to those girls!’ “ Then she told her daughter (MJ) the story of the two sisters who stole their mother's mountain goat tallow (p. 892; Swanton, 1909, Tale 65 and 92 about Mountain Man). Their mother scratched out the inside of their mouths and drove them out to marry the Man Inside the Mountain, and they became owls. “That's why people lick the stuffing out of kids when they do something wrong…. That's why my mother and them preached to me.” (MJ) Apropos of the story of the blind man who shot a moose but whose greedy wife deceived him about it (p. 888), the same informant said: “My parents preach to me about it so I won‘t cheat…. My grandparents preach to my mother about it.”

Myths and stories were also told to teach children correct conduct, and the heroes of these stories, as well as real persons, were held up as models to be copied. Thus, QakEnakugE, the woman from whom all the present Drum House branch of the Teqwedi are descended (p. 279), was cited as a female paragon. “If you grow into be a good woman, you be like that woman. That's why I’m so particular about it [raising girls]. That woman had more Teqwedi out of her. She start the whole Teqwedi tribe. My mother preach to me: ’You’re crazy. You’ll rot in your grave before you’re a woman!’ Oh, they bawl me out!”

However, there was real concern over being too severe with children. Thus, “My grandfather dared not bawl my mother out when she was scolding me. He loved her too much. But he would scratch his head and make a noise: ’HnA! HnA!’ [a complaining grunt]. He used to say to her, ‘Xatcdaqet [her name], you be old like me [some day]. You get some use for your kids, when I’m in the grave. They’ll grow up healthy if you don’t get after them.’ His idea is that they get nervous and excited” if she were too severe, and also that they might then turn against her. It is perhaps significant in this connection that in the myth the daughters who were punished for stealing tallow eventually secured revenge upon their mother who had been so harsh. “My mother would get after us when we done wrong, but my grandfather don’t want us to get spanked. ‘Some day they’re going to be a help to you, when I’m laying in the grave.’” (MJ)

It is interesting that fathers were often particularly indulgent to their daughters, as the quotation above indicates. Another woman reported that her mother used to spank her with a stick or with her hand, but never when her father was present. Her father used to tell her mother not to punish her, because her older brothers and sisters had died and he wanted the little girl to be happy. (Does this suggest that an unhappy child is believed to be especially likely to die?)

A third woman said, “We were raised poor but my father was a good, kind man. He never touched me. But my mother—the number of times she hit me!…Mother had a quick temper. She's not mean but she had a quick temper. But not my father. He never even licked a dog. He was the jolliest man. Everybody in Yakutat liked him…. And he used to be kind. I’m kind because I‘m his daughter…”

“My mother spanked me, but my father spanked my brothers” (MJ). Or again, “I’m not scared of my father, he never put his hand on me, but I’m scared of my older brother. He's quiet, but he gets mad.” She also said, “My mother never used to spank me when my father is around. He wouldn’t let her punish me!…He used to tell my mother, ‘Don’t you be mean to my little daughter. She's just the image of my mother. I don’t want to see that girl cry.’ “ Because of this resemblance, the father called his daughter ‘my mother’ (‘a tła). Often when the mother had scolded her daughter, she would try to make the latter stop crying before her husband returned home. The daughter recalls how spoiled she was as a child and how she used to play her father off against her mother,

The devotion of this man to his own mother, for example, the care he lavished on her gravehouse which stood close behind his house, was made clear by the accounts of his daughter. Unfortunately we lack full personal reminiscences from now elderly men about their childhood, but comments made by one about his first trip away from home (see p. 517), suggests a strong emotional bond between mother and son, comparable to that between father and daughter. Today grown men speak of their mothers with greater warmth than they do of their fathers, even though it was their mother‘s brothers who were their strictest disciplinarians. Conversely, we can find examples of the over-indulgent “mom” who cannot believe that her grown sons are old enough to take care of themselves and so continues to mother them in the way all too familiar to White Americans. On the other hand, one woman told how she had beaten her 16-year-old son with a broom, believing him lazy. When she discovered that he had shirked work because he was sick, she never beat him again.

Education

Children began to learn practical skills by watching and imitating their elders. There seems to have been a great deal of variation in the amount of formal instruction given. Thus one Dry Bay woman recalled, “I go with my mother all the time. She showed me how to weave baskets. She gave me one [already started?] and showed me. I was 10 when she gave me a knife to slice fish. I squeezed the fish all up.” She also remembered that, “In my days, my mother used to tell me, ‘Do this thing. You’re going to have 10 husbands if you don’t work hard.’ That's the way she says to me. [That is, husband after husband would divorce her if she were lazy.] When I make basket she help me. I do one row; she does the next; I do the next. That's how I learn it so quick.” Her father and mother were drowned when she was 11 years old, and after that her father's sister cared for her.

MJ told me, however, “My brothers were pretty small when my dad passed away. As the only girl, I had to learn to do all kinds of things. My mother didn’t want to teach me, but I watched and learned.” She also mentioned the old woman, her joking relative (p. 510), who taught her how to do many things. This was the little girl who took her mother's ulo without permission because she was so anxious to learn how to strip blubber from a sealskin. Another woman recalls how eager she was to learn how to slice fish for drying and how she nearly cried when she made mistakes (see p. 400).

Little girls learned how to cook, not only from helping their mothers, but because they were given toy dishes and pots in which they could really cook. They also had toy lamps that would really burn oil and their parents would caution them to be careful with the fire. Little boys were given small bows and arrows with blunt heads to play with, and thus learned to shoot. Little boys and girls also fished with hook and line or with gaffs. Children might be given small canoes big enough for them to paddle.

It should not be supposed that small boys did not learn many of the arts normally practiced by women. Thus MJ is proud of how skillful her little brother was at beadwork. As we shall see, boys were taught to cook, especially by their uncles. In Yakutat today there are a number of small boys who are just as reliable and competent in caring for small siblings, cooking and washing dishes, and in performing other domestic tasks, as are little girls. There are, of course, great individual differences, and it is usually the oldest child in a well-managed household who can do such things.

In former times, children learned a great deal by listening to the older people talk, especially when the old men gathered in the sweathouse to bathe and chat. Then the children might sit outside and listen to their stories. It was perhaps characteristic that when one woman was telling us about a monstrous birth (p. 500), she interrupted her narrative for a moment to turn to her 10-year old granddaughter who was sitting at the table making paper dolls and told her not to listen so hard. Naturally, the little girl was listening and her grandmother knew it, but went on with her story. In this account she told how she and another little girl had sneaked over to the tent where a woman was in labor and had listened with fearful interest to her cries. On another occasion, her mother had taken her as a small child to witness a cremation. Perhaps the only thing that children were not supposed to see or learn about was sexual intercourse.

Moral education was stressed and children were instructed by moral lectures and the recitation of proverbs and stories. In these, correct behavior was explained or illustrated and the benefits were pointed out, just as the consequences of improper behavior were made explicit. Such moral instruction was usually given by the house chief and was all the more impressive because it was directed not simply to the children but to all the members of the household. The education of aristocrats (pp. 465–466) has already been discussed; that of ordinary children was similar but less comprehensive or strict.

“As soon as a grandchild could talk, the chief tells him what is right and what is wrong. Each person has a power or spirit above you to punish you if you do wrong—same thing as God, only we didn’t know about only one God then—so people won’t lie and steal…. Bad people goes to Dog Heaven, they used to say—just like Hell…. Witchcraft, too—nobody likes it. Indian doctor says it‘s people who lie and steal are witches.” All this was taught the children.

“Kindness,” that is, gentle speech and manners were stressed (see also p. 467). “My father tell me: ‘Don’t take after your aunties. My sisters are no good.’…They were too out-spoken. ‘Be kind to people. Don’t run away with the idea you’re above other people…. If you are too outspoken, that's when people will find fault with you.’ “ “My grandma…trained me. She would say, ‘Don’t be like a yellow cedar.’ A yellow cedar sparks loud when it burns. ’Your ma's that way with a hot temper. She didn’t take after her father either.’ My grandfather was the kindest man, old man—even to his slaves.” (MJ)

Again the same informant reported, “My grandfather always preached to my mother to ‘Be kind to your own people and don’t try to insult and bawl them out. Do what you can to help. That's the way to get along with your own people.’ My mother—just like yellow cedar, put it on the fire and it cracks, makes noise—‘You got to cut that out,’ he told my mother…. And my mother answers my grandfather, too. ’How come at Diyaguna’Et you make that little slave killed? Get somebody to kill her—put a piece of pole over her neck? That's not nice!’ My grandfather don’t know what to say. ’You preach to us to be kind to everybody, and not hurt somebody's feelings…. And you make other people kill the slave!’…And my mother get back at him. She never get over it, you know. The slaves all sitting around when they give a potlatch. Just grab that little girl out of her mother‘s lap and take it outside and kill it. She [my mother] is only a girl then. She never forget it. She come back at her father for that.” [For other accounts of this incident, see p. 471.]

Small boys were taught not to kill or torture little animals. (This prohibition did not, apparently, extend to playing with hummingbirds on the end of a string.) But one small boy (CW) used to rebuke his grandmother. “ ’How come you always throw my little dog out? You’re mean!…You’re not so kind to animals!’…My grandmother's got a mink skin robe, clean. My father and mother got that for her. And that little dog always go for it and lay on it. That's why my grandmother chase it out. Sometimes [she] get ahold of it and throw it out. And Charley says, ’How come you always throw my little dog out and hit it in the face?’ “ I judge, however, that such retorts were not common.

Frugality was also a virtue. “I hear my grandmother and grandfather talking about it—preaching to my mother about that. ‘Don’t be careless with grub.’ “ (MJ) The story of Salmon Boy (p. 889; cf. Swanton, 1909, Tales 99 and 100) could serve as a reminder to those who treated food disrespectfully. “My grandma said that some people never look ahead,” and MJ told a story of starvation as an example (p. 399). “That's why my grandma preached to us. ‘Don’t say ‘Iiii!’ to anything. Eat what you can get!’ She say that to them also.”

Children were also taught not to be greedy, but to share choice food with each other, the sister being especially enjoined to give food to her brother (p. 484).

Children were scolded when they were lazy. “My mother preached to me to put things away. ‘Pick up your things and put them away—and your brother's things, too!’ ”

Laziness (‘uska) was conceived as something on the left shoulder. It was said that if children hung their heads to the left when told to run an errand they were “asking their lazy” if they should do it. “Am I going to do it? (yé ’AgI wAsané?)” And the ’uska would say “No.” “Don’t ask that ’uska!” children were told. “It drags you down, slow. When you turn your head to the left, people will know that you are going to be slow. When you turn your head to the right side, people will know you’ll do it right away…. That‘s what my mother said to my brothers.” (MJ; also others.)

To make children obey quickly, “Olden time, they’re going to take that charcoal out, put it by the fire. ‘Go get water! Run as fast as you can!’ That‘s the fastest one—before it go down, they [the fast ones] coming back…. That charcoal is still red when they come back.”

Laziness was equated with worthlessness and poverty (łA-’ican, literally ’to be pitiful’). “When I was young,” said a man, “I always wanted to go out all the time, and [when] my dad would tell me to pack water or get wood, and I would turn my head away, he used to say that to me: ’ŁA-’ican ’awe ewu—You’re asking a lazy [poor, worthless] person!’ ”

Poverty (łA-’ican) was conceived almost as a living thing, and there were a number of taboos connected with it. Thus, children were not supposed to stand around near the fire—“that's bad luck”—or to sleep late in the morning, for łA-’ican would suck them. It lurked in their pockets or under their armpits, and if children stood about idly, warming their hands in their pockets or under their arms, they were told: “That łA-‘ican, they say, they suck your hand. You never make any money.”

Boys were not supposed to sit on rocks, according to one man, for this would make them heavy and slow as hunters. They were not allowed to “sit lazy,” but were to “sit ready to get up all the time,” that is, squat on their heels. This was because they “got to be quick. Whenever big people want something done, they just get up…. If you sit with your legs out in front, the old man would just take his stick and hit you right over the shin. They used to be strict about it.”

Lying and stealing were particularly abhorrent because they were believed to be characteristic of witches. “Father tells they tie you up for witchcraft [if you tell a lie]. The Indian doctor announces what is bad for kids, so they learn. Just like the Bible—Ten Commandments: Don’t lie or steal! My father says, ‘Don’t bring something and say you find things. Nobody throws away things for you to find.’ Anybody who steals or lies, they think he's a witchcraft.” (MJ) When some children used to help themselves from a maternal uncle's garden, he would chase them away with a club. “He just hates stealing. You know, fatherless kids [bastards] always steals for their grub.”

The higher the rank of the child, the higher the standards to which he had to conform. “My grandmother used to tell me, ’You’re descended from big man. You’re going to try to be good. That's the way.’”

The myths, legends and stories that were told children served to instruct them in the history of their sib and in the deeds of their ancestors. “They told us when we were small. When we start to smoke fish [that is, when the children were old enough to help], Uncle put us together and tell us. Then he quit. He don’t say he quit, he just talk about something else. Then he go away. Next night he put us together and ask us where he quit. Then if I know, I tell him. If we make mistake, he told us to think it over. That way he can tell who listen, who's smart enough to learn stories. He don’t say anything to those that don’t listen. But he start over again from the beginning. That way he tell how they’re going to be in the family.” These methods were very important in selecting and training the successor of a chief (pp. 465–466).

While Yakutat children were certainly not encouraged to brag and show off as are the children of White Americans, yet their skills and accomplishments were praised by their elders, and there was always a big and appreciative audience in the old-fashioned household to applaud the deserving child. This is revealed in personal reminiscences. Parents and grandparents today are proud of their children when they can sing, play a musical instrument, recite or dance at the school commencement, just as White parents are.

Food Taboos

There were a number of food taboos that had to be observed by children. These seem to have lasted until the girl married and until the boy became a recognized hunter. In the case of the girl, such taboos, as we shall see, became intensified when she was adolescent.

Boys could not drink soup made from bear or mountain goat meat, or they would have heart trouble when they hunted on the mountains. Indeed broth of any kind was forbidden to young hunters except that made from animals they had themselves killed, for it was said that broth from another's kill “would make them heavy, they can’t kill anything.” Girls could not drink broth, either, until they had married and their husbands supplied the meat. Otherwise, no man would ever love them.

Boys and girls were also forbidden to eat fishskins. Boys were told that if they did so, they would miss the fish they were trying to harpoon. The reason why fishskins were forbidden to girls was not given, but I suspect that the underlying sanction was based on an analogy between the fish and wealth, specifically between the shiny scales and silver dollars, and that to eat fishskin was to risk poverty.

Children could not eat marrow: “They claim they get rheumatism.” If they ate developed seagull eggs, “when they‘re turning into little chicks…they claim they get cold easy.” Halibut stomachs and the intestines of all animals were also forbidden, although my informant did not know the reason.

Children were not supposed to eat bear paws. “My mother used to stop me from eating that black bear feet. Just like pigs’ feet—it tastes good. That's why I always eat it. She says, ‘When you get old you’re going to have hard time—chapped finger,’ because the bear paw is rough.”

“We don’t drink water when we’re little girls, because it's bad luck. Money comes to you—that’ll wash the money away. They used to train us so we would drink just a little water at night. Then when we get married we could drink as much water as we wanted to. Anything we wanted to do, we could do it, if we stayed with a man.”

Because of this early training, older women say that even now they don’t care for water, and find it hard to drink the six or eight glasses a day prescribed by their physicians. We should also note that a married woman was not free from dietary taboos, since she would have to assume those of her husband.

Other food taboos were specifically mentioned in connection with a girl's puberty, although they may actually have been imposed upon her in advance.

One informant commented, “We used to say ’Things the old people wants to eat, they don’t want us kids to eat.’” While the taboos mentioned applied to both boys and girls, he also remarked, “Girls—it's stricter, because girls from the time they start growing up [are] getting ready to get married. They have to live just right…. Little girls have to be careful even before they’re wetedi [adolescent].”

On the other hand, things which we would regard as bad for children were not denied them. Thus, a little girl (MJ) was given a drink of whiskey, and children used to eat the liquor-soaked dough used to plug the cracks in the still. Some boys (CW) and girls regularly chewed snuff or smoked tobacco, and at smoking feasts for the dead, all the participants, even small children, were supposed to smoke.

Children's Games and Toys

No adequate picture of childhood could be given without mentioning children's games and toys. Reminiscences of childhood include climbing rocks on the beach, going wading, swimming in ponds, picking flowers, paddling in small canoes, and other simple amusements.

Boys and girls “used to make a big hole in the sand, just big enough to get your head in…. Get your head down and hear the surf—sound funny…. You hear all kinds of music when the sea is rolling, or like somebody is whispering to you when the surf is sounding…. Each one has to hear what it sounds like.” (MJ) She also recalled how she and her little brother lay down together under her red blanket in the sunshine to see how red everything looked.

Children played “teeter-totter,” or seesaw (kítÀ). Little girls, at any rate, used to play jumping games to see who could jump the best. Or two older children would take a little one between them by the hands and swing her along to make her jump.

Small boys had bows and arrows, little fishooks, and dogs for pets. Little girls had dolls, dishes and pots. While some of the latter were big enough for real use, others were doll-sized. “My father used to carve a little dish as a plaything” from shelf fungus. He also made her a toy canoe in which she could keep her toys, and she played with her dolls in the canoe at the wading place her father had fenced on the Situk River. (MJ) Another woman remembers playing with little tin cans and paper boxes when she was small. Love of the miniature or the toy is not confined to children, for older women were delighted by small pots or dishes (for example, those in a mess kit), and one old lady, Mrs. Frank Dick, posed for her photograph holding the model of a skiff which her husband had made because she was so fond of the toy (pl. 4).

Dolls (si, ’little daughters’) were made by mothers for little girls. The heads were of white rocks from the beach, the bodies of rags. The Dry Bay people sold dolls obtained in the interior. These had heads of a white rock (marble), described as powdery, which came from a mountain near the head of the Alsek River (p. 89). This rock was easy to carve when fresh, but hardened when exposed to the air. Surí described the same kind of dolls: “For their children they make some toys with heads of marble for them to play with” (Wagner, 1936, p. 256). Emmons obtained a stone doll's head at Yakutat about 1885 (AMNH 19/242). About that time big china and wax dolls were brought from the traders (MJ). Little girls rocked their dolls to sleep just as their mothers did the babies, said another woman.

Little girls also had real animals as pets. “My brother used to bring home black and brown bear cubs. My mother fed them with her breast as a pet for me. When they were a little bigger, my father made a cage for them. They would go in there. I used to pack them around like a baby. They would follow us on the beach like dogs. They got a couple of brown bear cubs as company for me…. But when they get older they get angry. They scratched my ma and snap at me, so they shot them…. My mother stuffed the dead cub with moss, and I played with it, like teddy bear. I had brown bear, squirrel, ermine stuffed. But I was afraid of groundhog. It's got fuzzy hair…. I also had a stuffed baby seal.” (MJ)

Children also used to catch hummingbirds with something sticky, and fasten the little thing to a sinew thread which they held while the bird tried to fly away. MJ remembered how her little brother had ruined her new red blanket by pouring molasses on it, in order to lure hummingbirds.

Children used to play a blindfold game. They divided into teams and stood on each side of a hole dug in the sand, “just big enough for your legs to go in.” One child was blindfolded and swung around. He then tried to cross to some one on the other side of the hole without falling in. If he did so, he was “captured” by the other side, and had a chance to blindfold another child. The game ended when all those on one side had been captured, or when one fell into the hole. This game was called tanA kugAtsa.

A great deal of children's play involved imitating the activities of older people. Thus MJ recalls how girls would play mother and daughter in a little house made of branches and blankets. One small girl would be shut in behind a blanket at the back, as if she were an adolescent. While small children might be taken into the sweatbath house by a parent, older girls might make a bathhouse of their own and take baths in it, in imitation of their elders. This was probably done because the regular bathhouse was the special sanctuary of older men and of older women.

Children, that is girls who were not yet adolescent and boys old enough to go hunting but not old enough to marry, indulged in sexual games on the sly. They “play house, like husband and wife…. Them days they just play together, just play man and wife—nothing wrong. But nowadays they get into mischief…. Johnny cuddle up with the girls, and I don’t know nothing. We’re little kids. And the big grown up girls [almost adolescent] know something about the business, you know.” (MJ)

As children grew older, the brothers and sisters, including parallel cousins and other members of lineage and sib who were considered siblings, began to be shy of each other, although the rules against looking at or speaking to a sibling (or moiety mate) of the opposite sex were not strictly enforced until they reached puberty.

By this time, too, children had already acquired a good notion of the ramifications of the kinship system and of the importance of sib and moiety. Thus, they realized that if a playmate were hurt when a group of children from different sibs were together, the affair was likely to be treated very seriously by their elders, for it might necessitate the payment of damages. In such cases, no matter how the injury had occurred, it would be the children of the opposite moiety who would be held responsible, and their kin would have to pay the relatives of the injured child. Children who found themselves in such scrapes, would, if they were wise, keep quiet about the circumstances to protect each other from parental wrath.

GROWING UP

Training of Boys

As we have seen, the preparation of the boy for his future life as a hunter began at birth with magical exercises (hewa). Active training for this role was started when the boy was only 6 or 7, when he was supposed to leave the house of his parents and live with his mother's brother who became his mentor and disciplinarian. What is most clearly remembered by all informants is the way in which the small boys were made to take icy baths in order to harden themselves.

“If I had a brother, [my son] is going to stay with him,” explained one woman. “…They leave their mothers when they‘re about 6 or 7 years old, I guess. In the morning, they [the uncles] take it [the nephews] out and put it in the snow and the water, icy water, so they can be strong. If they stay with their mother they weak and they poor…. They sure respect what their uncle says and what their [older] brother says. When he was small [my husband] stay with his uncle.”

However, it is evident from personal reminiscences and from the lists of occupants of the various old houses that many boys did not go to live with their uncles, even when the latter lived in multifamily houses large enough to accommodate all the nephews of the owners. Very often the boys seem to have stayed at home until marriage, or sometimes after marriage, although in such cases the uncle usually lived next door or near enough to fulfil his traditional functions. Furthermore, the hardening process seems to have been initiated by the parents. One woman who was doing this to her children is said to have been stopped by the U.S. Marshal, for the Whites were bitterly opposed to such exposure of the children. The woman herself believes that she prevented her children from getting tuberculosis by bathing them in the snow twice a day, “even the baby.”

Sitka Ned is reported to have said, “My mother used to throw me in the water. [She said] ‘If you get poor and lazy, somebody's going to take your uncle's body away from you and pay for it [the burial], and you die poor, and you my son!’ ”

CW, born about 1879, told of his experiences as a little boy. “Everything I do. I jumping in the water—that kind of water [the bay]. No clothes on this weather [March]. That's why I get strong. No get sick. No get chest cold. That salt water, it's pretty cold! My mother told me, ‘That's your uncles die. Your uncle he die.’ That time they throw me in the water. ‘That's good man!’ my mother tell me. ‘Good man! Next time, big boy. No more in your family. Your uncles all die.’ That's why I jump in the water, see? No consumption.” In other words, some of his uncles had died of tuberculosis, and the boy was to grow strong to take their place.

His sister (MJ) had a somewhat different version of her brother's training. “Charley's uncle beat him when he tries to get out of the cold water. His father used to do the same thing in Situk, even when the ice was running. I used to squeal, I thought he would drown.” “My uncle made his nephews go out in the winter, cut blocks of wood. They had their shirts tied up, no clothes on. Or else he throw them in the water. Ice in Situk River. My brother goes in just a little way.”

When telling the story of a youth who had acquired supernatural strength by bathing in icy water (p. 890; cf. Swanton, 1909, Tale 93), MJ interrupted her narrative to remark, “I know my grandpeople preaching to Charley. A boy ain’t supposed to stay with his mother—supposed to be raised by his uncle in the old days. Everytime Charley refused to go anywhere, they all preached to him about it.” In concluding, she added: “That story, that's as far as I go [know], because my mother and them preached to Charley. In Situk, he hates to go in the water. They had to drag him in. My uncle and them had to drag him down in the water. That's how come they tell him that story.”

The severity of the training and the punishment that might be imposed on cowardly boys are illustrated, though presumably in exaggerated form, by the story of CAKwe, the female shaman who revived the nephews that her brother had stabbed because they tried to evade the cold baths and the floggings with branches (p. 714).

The cutting of firewood was a daily chore for older boys and young men, one preferably performed before the raven called at dawn. In referring to an illustrious ancestor, an informant remarked: “He had a big name, that man from whom we are descended. That's why I try to be good, I guess…. He's a big man; he's the luckiest man. He chop wood, he chop wood all the time. The fire never go down. The fire was just going like that. After a while he got lucky; he got what he wants…. He's just a young boy, but anybody he sees—his uncles or his grandfathers—he always chop wood [for them.] He goes around without eating. In the winter time he just puts a belt around him and goes around without clothes. He just wears shoes [moccasins] in the winter time. Then he gets lucky.”

Such hard exercises in the cold dawn not only strengthened the body but were purifying and virtuous, and hence rewarded by good fortune.

Cold water baths were not discontinued with adulthood, but rather were intensified as the youth became older and stronger, and were considered a necessary preparation for any dangerous or chancy undertaking, especially one involving the supernatural.

“When they wanted to be strong, they throw the kids in the water. Big people like me [—the speaker was a man of 41—] stays in the water till they drop dead like. To bring them back alive, they pour hot oil in their throat. If it's going to be four times, that's tough. [It was early in the morning.] They get so cold they float up in the water. They froze up, so they put hot grease in them. In the winter time, when it‘s freezing weather, it comes to him, the blessing—łAtsín [strength], they call it. It comes to him—what he been wishing for comes to be true. They used to whip each other with branches. My dad used to.”

The uncle was also responsible for seeing that his nephews took nourishing food. “Gee, how my uncle used to make the boys eat! He makes them drink hooligan [oelachen] oil. Whole spoonful at a time. But Jim hates it…. My brother Jim didn’t like him because he give him that horn spoon full of hooligan oil. In winter time it's frozen white. And dried fish soaked overnight with it is good healthy food. Jim hates the grease. Mother sends the boys over to help pack wood…. ‘Go to your uncle,’ my mother said. ‘No, I don’t want to drink no hooligan oil. It stinks!…I don’t like that oil he feeds us with. It stinks. I puke every time I smell it!’ “ (MJ)

Uncles also helped to teach their nephews how to hunt, and took them on their first hunting trip when they were very small. As SJ told: “[My uncle] took me hunting when I was small. We left early in the morning. There was the moon. He fixed bait for me in the canoe. I fell asleep…. I don’t think we got anything. We came ashore on Knight Island and went in the woods. I remember I came down to the beach and he fixed a place for me to sleep. We went to a big lake on Knight Island, but I don’t remember where…. I was 6 or 7 years old…. We came back the same day. Another time we went to sealing camp. He shot a newborn seal. He told me to pull it aboard. I couldn‘t make it, I was too small.”

Another man, CW, described a hunting trip with his uncle:

“I been hunting with my uncle two times up at Icy Bay. Long way—hand power [i.e., paddling the canoe]. One time I been there he killed two yUxt [sea otter]. I was lonesome that time. I was little boy. I think of my mother….

“He was teaching me. He told me, my uncle, ‘You go with me now.’ I say ’Yes, I go with you.’

“Early morning we start way up to other side [of Yakutat Bay]. All way hand power, hard work. That‘s one day up there. We stay all night. We get up early in morning, and started again. Go to Icy Bay….

“Next morning, next day, go hunting sea otter. Come back same place [to the camp]. Next day going out, come back same place.” The small boy paddled in the stern of the forked prow canoe while his uncle used a shotgun in the bow. Neither could eat while they were out in the boat (see the statement quoted on p. 378).

“Wind blow all that time. I was thinking of my mother. Sometimes I cry, I think of my mother. Pretty hard staying with my uncle—talking, talking! ‘Don’t sleep too long. Wake up early in the morning!’…Every morning I heard no yeł [raven—it was before the raven called]. It's pretty dark, dark two mornings. ‘Make the fire! Make the fire!’ my uncle [told me]. ‘Cook some coffee!’”

This was the first time the boy had left his mother. Most of what he learned on the trip, we gather, was how to handle a canoe, make camp and cook, and some of the magical rules to follow on the hunt. According to his sister (MJ), he was about ten years old when he went sea otter hunting with his uncle.

Others who might take boys on hunting expeditions were their fathers, older brothers or brothers-in-law. When they were young, they never went out unaccompanied by an older relative, but as soon as they had more experience and were older they might hunt alone, even though such an expedition might not be fully approved.

It is interesting that one of the things which the uncle traditionally taught his nephew was how to cook. Presumably this was on hunting trips. Thus one woman, who has no brothers, reported that her husband had said that if their sons had been raised by an uncle they would have been able to cook.

The uncle could get his nephews to work for him and also might expect to receive the spoils of their chase, or a large share. On the other hand, they were free to use his property. Legally, they seem to have formed one ‘person.’ But the uncle was always “the big boss.” It is my impression that the abandonment of the old pattern of rearing by an uncle has meant that in some families there was no effective disciplinarian of the older boys, since the father might be too old-fashioned to assume this obligation for his own sons.

There was no event in a boy's life comparable to the first menstruation of his sister. Yet in former times, his first success as a hunter was a matter for rejoicing by his family and meant an increase in his personal status. I was unfortunately able to learn little about how this event was celebrated. SJ denied that he had ever heard of any specific ceremony, but that what might be done “depends on the class of people. High class likes to do something for their children. They are always feeling good when a boy kills something. It proves he’ll be a good hunter.”

An older man, however, reported that when a boy killed his first game he was called “master of killing” (‘At ati, literally ’master of things [animals]’). The boy's father would divide up the game, but whether this was simply given away or cooked as part of a feast, and who were the recipients, I did not learn. At any rate, the act of sharing was supposed to make the boy lucky the next time he went to hunt. He was not allowed to eat any part of his first kill, lest the head of the slain animal bite him in the face. This was expressed by the saying “The head of what he killed will bite him” (du djAq ’AtcAi keyAa ya[?]. (MJ and CW)

As already noted, the specific food taboos which children had to observe were lifted for the youth or man with respect to the animals which he himself had killed.

Adolescent Girls

Almost the most important event in a woman‘s life was her first menstruation, for her conduct during her long puberty confinement was supposed to influence not only her own future life for good or ill, but the fortunes of her relatives and of her future husband. For this reason she was surrounded by taboos and enjoined to perform magical tasks. Many of these were to be repeated when she became a widow, and a similar pattern was followed by any one taken as a peace hostage, for such a man, like the young girl, then “became a woman” (pp. 536–538, 598–599).

Mothers watched their little daughters carefully from the time they were about 12 years old, anticipating this critical period. One woman explained: “They watch the 12-year old girls to see if they menstruate. They usually menstruate in the night or before breakfast. So they eat last [in order not to contaminate the food of others by accident]. And if they menstruate before they eat, they go without food and water for 4 days.”

The little girls had been warned what to expect. “My mother told me beforehand that blood was going to come, so I wasn’t scared. She said, ‘If anything sticks your clothes to your body, look and see if it's blood.’ When I wake up that morning, my nighty was all over blood. I told my mother. Afterwards I’m sorry.” The child‘s regret was because she was then promptly secluded. This same woman, however, as a grandmother taking care of four granddaughters, forgot to give them any hint about menstruation, probably because the old taboos had become obsolete, and she told how the children were panic-stricken at the sight of blood when the oldest began to menstruate.

In former days, little girls were well aware of the confinement and restrictions they would endure, because they knew what had happened to their older playmates, and themselves had even played “mother and daughter,” pretending to “shut in the smaller child as a menstruant. Although other children were not supposed to play around the place where the adolescent girl was secluded or to visit her, they sometimes did so; fortunately this did not mean a serious breach of taboo if only little girls were concerned. The consequences of concealing the first signs of menstruation were, however, quite another matter. Once when a young girl cut her knee in an escapade and the blood from the concealed would was finally discovered, the older women were in a panic. One exclaimed: “ ‘Here, examine the kid. Look at the blood stains on her clothes. She's mature! Shut her in quick!’ ”

When the older informants were young, puberty observances already were being modified or omitted because of pressure from missionaries, other Whites, and from the younger, more acculturated members of the group. Most of our information comes from two women who were adolescent at Yakutat in 1897 and at Dry Bay in 1909, but whose confinement was apparently not as rigorous as it would have been a few decades earlier. Another Yakutat woman who reached puberty about 1902 or 1903 escaped entirely.

The oldest informant said: “They used to keep girls shut up for a whole year, but the missionary made them let me out early” (MJ). She was confined for perhaps 4 months, the younger woman for 3. “They had a tent over my bed so I won’t see daylight. Every-time Johnson [the Reverend Albin Johnson] came, they told him I was sick in bed so I can‘t go to the Mission. When Hendrickson came they took up my tent and made me sit up in bed. After he left they shut it down.” (MJ) In former times, some girls, probably only the most aristocratic, were said to have been confined for 3 or 4 years, although this period is probably exaggerated. The maximum or optimum period was probably 2 years, I should hazard, a round of eight seasons for the “eight bones” of the body (see p. 761).

The adolescent girl (wetedi, wEtedi) was confined in one of the rear rooms of the house, at least after the Old Village of Yakutat was built. In earlier days, she was probably kept in a back room or partitioned-off place near her parents’ room, or in a special annex or hut behind the house. Such a place at the old village on Khantaak Island was said to have had its own toilet or latrine, through which one could enter from outside. Perhaps the birth house was used, since this was where older women went when menstruating. In any case, the place of confinement was dark because the girl was not supposed to look at the sky. In the framehouses of the Old Village the rear bedrooms had windows, and for this reason a tent was put over the girl's bed. The period of seclusion was called being “in the hole,” which suggested that the original place was underground. During her confinement, the girl was in theory supervised by her father's sister, since rituals at life crises were the responsibility of the UnEtkAnayi, although in practice her mother or grandmother might perform all the necessary services.

The first 8 days were the most rigorous. Originally, the girl was not allowed to eat or drink except for a little food or water given to her at the end of the first 4 days. Later, this period of abstinence was shortened, and she was given her first nourishment after 2 days, although the total period for fasting and thirsting still lasted for 8. Possibly modifications could always have been made if necessary for the girl's health.

The first water was apparently offered at the end of 2 days, and when the girl reached for it, the water was spilled. “They spill the first water to see if you’re going to be nasty.” Thus, “They test them. They trained them so they wouldn’t get so greedy about water. They tease you when they give you first drink of water…. They test—just when you’re going to handle it, they spill the water, just when you’re going to reach it.” This was done because the drinking of water was supposed to wash luck and wealth away, and even before puberty girls had been taught to drink as little water as possible. They were told that if they drank too much, “things that flow to you will flow away from you” (MJ). According to another woman, “[If] they likes water, drinking all the time, you know—that water‘s no good to use it—luck all floating away. Even when you got a boy friend, they going to floated away. You not going to get lucky, they says.” The water which was given to the girl during the first 8 days was traditionally offered in “a little basket the size of your thumb” (MJ), evidently a miniature version of the old-style basketry drinking cup. Informants denied that bone drinking tubes were used.

The younger woman described this ordeal; and the following account is pieced together from statements made on three occasions (July 12, 1952, February 21, 1954, March 21, 1954).

“I don’t eat for 8 days. After 2 days they give me some water.” “My aunt [father's sister] comes in…. She give me that water, you know. Soon as I grab it—I’m thirsty, you know—she spill it. Oh, I just get sore about it! Next one, she give it to me, I don’t take it. Two days more—.” “For 2 days more I never eat. That fourth day I dream about that stream under our house. I dream I go over there and drink that water.” “Fourth day, I dream about it—[that] I go down by little stream by our house; I go drinking. Gee, it's dirty, that water! But if I steal it, going to get bad luck.” “Gee, I get so shamed! Then on that fourth day, I wouldn’t eat or take water. I’m still so shamed. I’m just crying. [My aunt] said, ‘Eat now. You going to get sick. For four days you don’t eat.’ Then they give me boiled fish and some kind of potatoes with it and canned corn for a side dish. I eat it. It was store potatoes and canned corn. They got it from a scow that was there [Dry Bay]…. See, that's why I’m lucky. Four days, and then I eat—one day I eat, another day I don’t. That way until 8 days. Then I‘m sure healthy, though.”

MJ, though older, had a less painful ordeal. “They don’t let me eat the first going off. A whole day—and not even water! My poor grandmother [mother's mother]—when my mother's out she come in and say. ‘You want glass of water?’—’No.’ [Our informant said she was sure her grandmother was going to spill it, so she made up her mind not to drink]…. [My grandmother] think I’m so dry, and she just want to sneak me a glass of water…. My grandmother just took pity on me. She wants me to drink when my mother's not around.” “My stepfather, my father's nephew, was a young fellow. He said starving me was old-fashioned. He told my mother to cook for me and give me some water. For the first 8 days I had to have special dishes, special cooking pot. They made me drink water out of a plain tin can. After 8 days they buried all my dishes, the can, and my cooking pot under an old stump.”

The 8 days had a mystic connection with the “eight bones” of the body, and the old stump was a symbol of longevity (see pp. 761, 764–765).

When the girl breaks her fast, “all the preserved things in the house are shared all around the village, but only if the family can afford it…. The family puts up special food for the girl's feast. It is called duaoni—share of what the girl eats.” (MJ) This feast corresponds to that given when her brother made his first kill. MJ's parents gave a big party to all the village when she broke her fast after her first 2 days “in the hole.” But she herself, of course, was not present. To this party were invited her cousins on her father‘s side, UnEtkAnayi, and she had to “potlatch away” all her dolls to these girls when she was “put in the hole,” but it was not clear whether the dolls were given to them at this feast or whether they had been distributed previously. Her mother told her who was to get which doll.

During the first 8 days of confinement the girl was supposed to remain quiet. She wore strings laced around the fingers and thumbs of both hands. This was done to our oldest informant, who explained that the practice was “so money wouldn’t slip through her fingers” (MJ). The younger woman said: “Olden time, they do it like that—wetedi, each finger, so they can’t do anything, you know.” (See the similar explanation given for lacing up the hand of the peace hostage, p. 598.) She demonstrated how the fingers were laced together with twining, beginning with the little finger and drawing the thumb tight across the palm of the hand. This was not done to her. “Just one day I stay in that room, I start weaving basket. Soon my aunt come in. ‘Your hands going to be cuts all over. Just lay down. Don’t do anything.’ That's how it got that way, just cut,” and she exhibited the scars on her fingers. “I didn’t have my fingers tied then…. Way older people before us do it like that.”

A girl was not supposed to cut anything with a knife during the 8 days. This was probably because if the adolescent girl, like the widow, used a knife this would be equivalent to cutting short her life and the lives of others.

“For the first 8 days they got one of those old rotted trees (nAk; cf. Boas, 1917, p. 142, yÁ-nÀqu‘—‘to be rotten’. They put it in that toilet place. You have to do it on that. That's to keep you clean when you are old—so you don’t have to go the washroom so often. So you won’t rot away. They don’t have doctors those days.” “They fix the soft dead wood like a powder for you to pee on for eight days. Then they put it back again where they got it. This will keep you from dirtying the bed when you are old.”

The girl's hair was also specially treated to keep it from turning gray. Although informants admitted that hair was washed in urine before soap was available, they did not associate this practice particularly with the puberty rituals. At Dry Bay, at any rate, the hair of the adolescent girl, like that of the widow or mourner, was washed at the end of the 8-day-period with blueberry juice, while a wish was made for luck, for a good husband, and for permanently black hair. This practice was denied by my Yakutat informant, “but they put a black loon skin on her head, to wish for black hair, so it wouldn’t turn gray” (MJ).

“When they shut in, they generally get the skin of that—a duck that sets around on the rocks—big long neck—yuqw [cormorant]. That thing never grow old…. You know that black duck—just long slim thing, good for nothing, they don’t eat that. That's the kind…. They skin it…and they get it on the round pot, and they dry it that way. When you become mature they make you wear it, and they making you wish…. They skin it and they make a cap out of it for you…. They heat it up and put it on your head…the first 8 days. Just so you would get the feeling…That's what the old people use. But they never made any for me, because I was around the White people so much they think I don’t appreciate what they do for me. Don’t even make me wish for anything. Just shut me in and keep me away from people's talk.” (MJ) She commented on how, long ago, few old women had gray hair. One very old woman, her aunt (Mrs. Emma Joseph, 1867–1950, wife of Joseph Abraham), had told her that “her aunty put it on her, and that's why she never get gray hair.” MJ was skeptical; “I think that‘s just a nature.”

The Dry Bay woman told how evergreen branches had been fastened above her for 8 days. “And my aunt, my father's sister, put trees right on top of me…. They put some kind of branches above me, and they tie a string to them. Every morning when I wake up, I pull the string and the needles fall on me, and I wish for money: ‘That's money falls on me!’ This type of magic (hewa) was like that practiced by the young man, łkettitc, who made a similar wish when snow fell on him from the branches when he was cutting wood (p. 244).

This same woman said that her hands never seemed to get cold. This was because, “when I was wetedi they put my hands over hot water, and I wish I never get cold. I hold my hands over that and I say: ‘I wish I’m not going to get cold on my hands!’ You just say it to yourself.”

The girl was given a hard round stone from the beach. It was not, however, made clear whether this had to be white. “I know that same time, my grandmother go to the beach before the crow [raven] sounds…. She got an ’itc [boulder] and she rub it eight times on my mouth. She go round in a circle eight times…. They rub that ’itc around the face for the first 8 days to keep them from being talkative. It's for the eight joints, big bones. It‘s your upper arm, lower arm, thigh bone, lower leg bone…” enumerating the main bones of the arms and legs. (MJ) This symbolism is discussed later (p. 761).

The Dry Bay informant said of the adolescent girl: “They gave her a stone to rub on her mouth. It has to be round. Just called tE [stone]. Every time they hear something [gossip], they put it on the mouth.” She gestured to show how it would be rubbed around the lips. “Then put it under your feet, step on it. Whenever something is going on and people talk about it, they do that because—.” “So they won’t become gossips?” I suggested. “Yes. That's why they do it. They rub it along the face. If you put it around your face when you’re wetedi, you going to be like that stone—not do any trouble or bad thing. You’re going to be good. That stone is good. They can’t move it. It's heavy–tEyA kudAł qaya [stonelike is-heavy one's-face]. You can’t turn your face around to do bad things. I do it. Now nobody comes to me, say, ‘You been talking about me?’ After 4 days”—the informant probably intended to say 8—“they put that rock…under an old rotten fallen tree…dig in the mud under it…. It stay there forever. That's hewa, medicine. Her mother or aunt put it under. It‘s going to stay there for good. It makes you good and lucky.”

All the time the girl was secluded she used a stone to scratch herself, apparently to avoid self-contamination from her fingers. The scratching stone was described as “a long thin stone,” and was obviously a different one from the cobblestone which had been buried.

Widows (p. 538), peace hostages (p. 598), hunters (p. 666), and shamans used similar rubbing amulets (pp. 689–690).

It was denied that the adolescent girl was given advice through the earbone of a salmon, as was practiced by the Inland Tlingit (information from Dr. McClellan), but she might throw the humerus of a seal in order to divine what her luck was to be and what kind of a man she was to marry. The position in which the bone fell when tossed determined whether the answer to her question was favorable or unfavorable (see p. 807). This form of hewa would be practiced “the first thing in the morning when they get through ‘exercise’ and make a wish” (MJ).

During the remainder of her period of seclusion, the girl was given various tasks to perform, not only to educate her in a practical way but as a magical “training.” For example, “When I was in the tent, they ripped sheets and I had to sew them. I just had a a quilt of my mother's. I don’t know how many times she ripped it and I had to sew it together again.” “They would rip up clothes—rip up the seams and throw it at you. You have to sew it fast and wish that you be handy. The red tape the wetedi go through!” (MJ) The same woman said she had to pluck the down from five swans.

The adolescent girl would start to weave a basket, then twirl it around very fast, pretending to weave, so that she would be a quick worker. In addition, of course, she was supposed to learn how to make baskets.

A third woman remembered how, when she was adolescent, the woman who had charge of her gave her dresses to sew. “She made me sew it. I sew fast. She had little fingers, and she stuck them through the stitches and pulled them all out. I had to do it over again. Oh, I believe I’m the baddest girl ever!” She did not make clear whether the seams were ripped because the stitches were too big, or whether this would have been done in any case, as good training. The same girl was also supposed to cut out and sew up two pairs of gloves or mittens, “but I cut them all for the left hand…so they cut out four more, and I had to sew them…. I believe I’m the most naughty girl when I am young. I get a licking, but I do it the same.”

There were also food taboos to be observed. “You dare not eat fresh stuff out of the salt water. It has to be dried up. [Fresh] fish will make you flow lots—especially halibut.” “You doesn’t dare eat fresh fish or anything fresh, or your mouth will be moving [when you are old]—you can’t stop it…. I see a woman…. Gee, her mouth goes constantly at it, top and below!” (MJ)

“A young girl after she menstruates never eats anything from the beach for 2 or 3 years,” commented one woman. To eat beach food makes you poor. “Never get rich…. Sea food brings you tough luck. And when you going to eat [dried] fish…you start at the tail part so you wouldn’t be so hoggish and eat too much…. [Otherwise] the fish swim away quick. That way, you don’t have to be so hog. There's not much grub that time, long ago, only what they put up. No stores. They training the girls that way so they won’t eat all their husband's wages up when they get married.”

Here we see a combination of the general fear that eating “beach food” will mean poverty (p. 405) and the special training in frugality which the young girl must now undergo.

All this time the adolescent girl had her own dishes and spoons, kept separate from those used by others.

What my informants remember most vividly, after the initial deprivation of food and water, was the long incarceration. As one recalled, “Oh, what a hard time—3 months—summer, too! You couldn’t look out the window. You couldn’t look at the sky—it's bad weather. It's going to be bad weather.” “They had a tent over my bed. Shut me in so I couldn’t see daylight. It was cruel. My mother slept in that room…. Girls my age were running around and playing, making noise with tin can, and I had to stay shut up under that tent.” “It was hard being in there. All the other girls were out picking berries, and me in there!” The only mitigation of boredom might occur when two girls were confined together, as happened in one instance.

During this period the girl was not supposed to look at anything alive, or at any fresh killed game or fish, and she was not supposed to touch anything moving, the penalty being a “shaky head” in old age. The taboo against touching moving things still had to be observed for a time after she was released from confinement. “Even after you are in there and first go free, you can’t touch any berries or your head will go like that. Don’t take anything out of the bushes. Your head will wave back and forth before you get old, because the wind blows the bushes.”

In folklore the glance of the adolescent girl is represented as so baleful that it can turn living creatures to stone; bears (cf. p. 64), dogs, men, and even the girl herself may turn to stone from breaking this taboo (cf. Swanton, 1909, Tale 31, p. 106). If she looks at the sky it will bring storms, and a shaman may have to perform magical rites to restore good weather.

It should not be supposed, however, that all girls docilely observed the regulations, for one of my informants cut a hole in the tent over her bed with a pair of scissors so she could peak out. For a time her cousin was confined with her, until the other girl shot off her father's gun by accident, while they were playing “husband and wife.” No one was hurt, but the cousin was sent away. Later, when the informant‘s term of confinment was almost over, the family moved to fish camp. Her mother carried her from the house in the Old Village to the canoe on the beach, with a blanket over her head, for if she set foot to the ground or saw the sky it would storm. The girl, however, peeked out of the blanket to watch the property contest between Situk X and Nakitłan (p. 643), and when it did storm later, she was blamed. At fish camp, where she had a little room and private toilet built as an annex to the smokehouse, she woke early one morning and caught sight of a mink by the riverbank near the pit where the fish entrails were buried. She was so naughty that she ran out, caught the live animal in her blanket, and released it in the smokehouse. Still later, when her confinement was over, she could not resist the temptation to go with other girls to pick berries. For these misdeeds she was not punished, but merely scolded by her mother, who pointed out that most of these restrictions were for her own good (MJ). This girl had been at the mission, which may in part explain her behavior, but in addition she was bright and naturally mischievous, to judge from other childhood reminiscences.

When the girl was finally released from seclusion, her old clothes were burned with the tips of spruce branches, and the ashes were pounded into an old stump, so she would have a long life. This presumably also removed any contamination. She was then given new clothes, which might include a button blanket and other finery. “My mother put lots of gold bracelets and rings on my hand when I came out of the hole…. They cut the labret hole when they mature, and they get a tattoo.” (MJ) At the period when our informants were adolescent, labrets had become obsolete. Traditionally, tattooing and cutting the labret hole would have been performed by a relative in the opposite moiety, who would have been rewarded for these services at a potlatch. I saw only one woman with a small design tattooed on her hand, but did not feel that I knew her well enough to question her about it.

For a time the young girl's head was covered with a hood; at a later period a Hudson's Bay Company kerchief was substituted. “ ’Anqawu—a rich man's daughter puts on wetedi axw [puberty hood] when she gets out, so nobody will see her face until her husband, until she get married.” “After the girls come out of the hole they wear hoods with tassels of dentalium shells until they get used to being seen.” This was then described as “like a raincoat hood…. You keep it to give to your children. Mine was my mother's, and used to be my grandmother's. The white shells (dentalia] came from Tsimshians’ place. [They were sewed in parallel lines to cover the moosehide hood.] Someone swiped my hood at Situk.” (MJ)

“I stay in wetedi 3 months. I don’t like to see anybody. I get shamed when I stay in the room,” another woman said. “I’m in a room in a dark place for 3 months. There's just a little light. I’m weak. When they open that thing, everybody just watch me. Gee, I got shamed!”

“When girls come out of the hole, they are white; their hands are like glass.” This very clear white skin was much admired. “I was paralyzed in the legs so I couldn’t walk when they let me out” (MJ). Girls who had been confined “can hardly walk or stand when they come out,” commented her friend.

Even though the girl was no longer shut in, she was not really free, for her mother exercised a strict chaperonage until she married. “They didn’t let me go free for good. Everywhere I go, my mother went behind me. I never went alone.” “I dare not go without my mother. Even when I go to the wash room [latrine], my mother takes me out.” (MJ)

This period of supervision did not usually last long, however, for a girl was considered marriageable as soon as her puberty confinement was ended, and careful or aristocratic parents would arrange for her marriage as soon as possible. Sometimes, she was even betrothed while still secluded.

Premarital Sex Knowledge and Illegitimate Babies

Although girls were not given sex instruction, they were impressed with the desirability of attracting a good husband. Modest and quiet behavior, skill and industry, a gentle tongue, good looks—all were important. Long beautiful hair was evidently much admired. “Used to be just like million dollars, that hair. A man's like it, too. All the boys like it. That's why when you had a little girl you going to tell her to take care of hair. So she can be cute, that girl—man stuck on her—so big ’anqawu [noble] will marry her. That's why they think about your hair—beautiful!”

Despite the ideal that girls should be sexually innocent at marriage, there is no doubt that some actually knew more than they were supposed to know, as may be inferred from stories referring to sexual games played by children, and to what they might overhear from women in childbirth. Tlingit children, then as now, evidently followed the maxim of watching and listening and not asking questions, especially when forbidden matters were concerned. Unfortunately I do not know how boys usually acquired sexual knowledge or their first sexual experiences. The Tlingit are exceedingly reticent about sex and about all bodily functions, so this was not a subject which could be freely discussed with friends.

In the 18th century, girls must have been familiar with the appearance of the man's naked body, since he so often went about with little or nothing on (pp. 145, 435; pl. 61). Although women then, as now, dressed very modestly, with clothing from the neck to the wrists and ankles (p. 435; pl. 53) and probably then also were prudishly reluctant to uncover themselves even in the presence of other women, nevertheless there were slave women who served as prostitutes (p. 145). Even if boys and youths were denied as free access to them as older men, because of taboos connected with training, they must have known what went on for they were the ones who were offering these poor creatures to Malaspina's men.

When I asked MJ what she had been told as a girl about the origin of babies, she said: “There's no such thing as Santa Claus in them days. But my grandma would tell me that she had found a baby on the beach and brought it back to my mother to feed. I was so used to seeing my mother feeding even those brown bear cubs,” that this explanation seemed reasonable. I asked if she had believed that story and if she had herself looked for a baby on the beach. “Yes, and it was some time before I found out that babies don’t come that way, or that easy!”

This woman had been first married when she was not yet 16, and at that time apparently knew little about sex and procreation, for she told a funny story about how a cat had frightened her by having kittens on the bed where she was sleeping with her husband. “The funny thing,” she explained, was that she hadn’t known cats had kittens. She didn’t know “a single thing about it.” But all I could learn further was that “some girls didn‘t know a thing when they were married.”

Another girl had been taught by her mother to be afraid of men. “My mother would tell me, ‘Don’t talk to a man. You talk to a man, you going to get big stomach!’ “ Mothers did not instruct their daughters about intercourse or conception. “They tell them, but they don’t tell the truth. My mother says, ‘If you walk or talk with a man you going to have a baby without husband. It's going to be too bad.’”

For a girl to have an illegitimate child was formerly a terrible disgrace.

“Fatherless people is good for-nothing. In the old days there was no such a thing. They killed both the mother and the baby. The girl's uncles and brothers did it because she brought that disgrace. It's the same as with the Whites.” (MJ)

However, when I asked a younger woman about such unwed mothers, she said: “Just the poor people with nobody to help them.” That is, these were girls whose parents had died and who were neglected by their relatives. Probably the girl who was not chaperoned or who lacked protectors was considered fair game by the youths. If such a girl became pregnant, “they just says they got sick. They got a big blanket around. Nobody can see…. They kill the baby. When they’re born they kill it—smother it, choke it. If they raise it up, that family's relations going to die off, they says. All that people's going to disgrace.”

A mother of an illegitimate child was called ckAłyéyè, a term apparently applied to any woman who was promiscuous or “a girl going around with a man, without husband.” The bastard was “a child of the empty beach” (?, nitckA yAdi), or “the child between fun” (tu sA-gu ak yAdi).

Informants had never heard of native methods of contraception. “But when they do without husband, though, they try to kill it, you know. They do heavy things. Sometimes they fall on themselves, you know, so the baby can died. That's the way they do, they says. Or else their mother do something to them. That's the way I hear, but not that stopping baby, I don’t hear that.” She said that the mother of the pregnant girl might “fight with” her daughter, that is, punch her in the belly to kill the baby. “It's pretty danger,” the informant agreed, “but it's big shame olden time. Even they’re going to kill it when they’re born, before their uncles or brothers knows it. They going to tell that girl is just sick, you know. It's a big shame. And all that family going to die off if they raise that baby. All their relatives die off. That's a big shame. That's why they kill it.”

I doubt that the relatives were expected to die off because of sanctions against illegitimacy, but rather because the attempts to keep the birth and the origin of the baby secret would have meant the violation of many serious taboos.

MATURITY

The Missionary's View on Marriage at Yakutat

Albin Johnson interpreted the seclusion of girls not so much as a preparation for adult life, but for marriage.

“Marital conditions among the Tlingit people were very mixed up when we opened the mission there [1887 or 1888, p. 198]. Here was a great work for the missionaries to carry out in teaching Christian customs and ethics. The people lived in polygamy. Old men married young girls and young men old women. Their customs and laws allowed this. When parents had opportunities to marry out their daughters—this happened when they were quite young, say 10, 12, or 14 years old—the girl was closed in a little room by herself. Only the mother was allowed to see her. Here she occupied herself with weaving, handicrafts, etc., painted or stained dark on her face. After six weeks or three months she was taken out of this prison. The belief was that she would grow prettier through such a procedure and that her parents would receive a higher price for her. When she now came out, she married, and the one who got her had to pay a large bride price to her parents. The payment consisted of blankets, bearskins, sealskins, or other skins, from 100 to 400 blankets or a lot of skins, according to the rank of the girl's tribe. The old widows were often married to youths, since the latter were poor and the youths did not have to pay anything for them. As is easily understood, the consequences of this were hate and misery, quarrels and adultery. This is heathendom in its ugliest shape.

“Through the Christian mission polygamy is now almost entirely abolished. The younger generation have acquired the taste for cleaner habits and behavior, and it is now considered shameful for a native to live in polygamy. They now come to the mission to be properly married. So-called church weddings are now held.” [Johnson, 1924, pp. 73–74.]

The photograph of a bridal pair in the parlor of the mission (ibid., p. 73) shows the groom stiff in a dark suit and impeccable high white shirt and stock; the bride in a high-necked, ruffled white cotton dress, holds his hand and glances timidly at the photographer.

Marriage

All individuals were expected to marry, and as far as can be ascertained, there were no old maids or bachelors, except for the occasional transvestite. Even men and women blind from birth, crippled or subject to what appears to have been epilepsy, or sick with tuberculosis, seem to have been married or sought in marriage, according to genealogical records and biographical sketches. Most persons married young, and even when old and widowed married again, although they might be too old to lead an active sexual life. In 1954, there were in Yakutat only one middle-aged man who had never married, and two younger men, one of whom was suffering perhaps from slight cerebral palsy and had homosexual traits; the other was apparently disappointed in love. There were also a few old widows and widowers who had remained single after the deaths of their last spouses; several of them later remarried. A number of young men had not yet married, although in former times they would have been old enough to do so, since boys married at 16 and girls at 15. Perhaps these youths had remained single because of the scarcity of young women of the opposite moiety, for the dwindling numbers in the three Wolf-Eagle sibs have in recent years produced a serious imbalance in the population. Marriages to White men have also cut down on the number of native women available as spouses. Nevertheless, there have been only a few persons who have broken the old prohibition against intramoiety unions. Economic conditions have also made it more difficult to marry, and therefore have encouraged philandering by boys and girls, especially since love affairs and fatherless children are no longer condemned as they once were.

In former days, although marriage was important for the individuals concerned, it was not regarded as a union between private parties but rather as an alliance between two family lines or lineages in opposite moieties (pp. 491–492). It was felt to be especially fitting to marry the young person to someone in his or her father's lineage, thus reinforcing the bonds between the two lines. A man might marry a father's sister or her daughter, and a girl her father's brother or her father's sister's son (p. 490). Very commonly the first marriage of a young man was to the widow of his mother's brother or even to the relict of his mother's mother's brother, or to the widow or discarded wife of an older brother. A girl usually was married first to the widower of her maternal aunt, or even of her own mother (that is, she married her stepfather). She often entered the household as the young co-wife of her older female relative.

This practice of perpetuating or reviving former alliances frequently resulted in great disparity of age between marriage partners. This was justified by one informant as follows: “Old woman teaches young boy to make money; old man teaches young girl.” When the older spouse died, then “they pay it back,” that is, the surviving young spouse would be married to a younger sibling, parallel cousin, or maternal nephew or niece of the deceased, so that for the second marriage the partners were more nearly of an age. Others felt that to make the young person marry an old man or an old woman was “a dirty shame.”

Formerly it was not uncommon for a man to designate in advance the nephew who was to succeeed him and marry his widow. This young man, the “reserved husband,” was usually already living in his uncle's house, and in former days apparently had access to his uncle's wife, even before his uncle's death, although he was not yet considered the woman's real husband. The younger unmarried brother might have similar privileges with respect to his older brother's wife.

Most of my older informants, as well as their relatives in previous generations, had been married about three times, some more often, and the last marriage had often been with a much younger person. Separations as well as deaths accounted for a number of such remarriages.

Since kin ties counted so strongly in determining the suitability of a proposed match, marriage can hardly be discussed adequately except in reference to kinship (pp. 475–496). Although kin ties tended to produce marriages between persons of different ages, they also brought together persons who already knew each other well in most cases. Family affection or at least tolerance probably had to take the place of romantic inclination in such unions.

Of course, not all marriages of one lineage were with members of another lineage with which the first had already been connected. There were many examples of marriage with other lines and other sibs, so that often an individual had grandparents in three sibs, not two: his own, his father's, and his mother's father's or his father's father's. Although the second marriage was apt to be with the close kinsman (or kinswoman) of the deceased spouse, it was not always so; a child's stepfather or stepmother might belong to another sib from that of the deceased parent.

Besides kinship, other considerations involved in marriage were the relative social positions of the two parties, since aristocrats were not supposed to marry beneath their stations (p. 463). Pretty young girls were, of course, often sought by established house heads, usually as second wives, and the girl's parents often considered his wealth and prestige rather than their daughter's preferences (p. 464). It was not uncommon for a prominent Yakutat family to look to southeastern Alaska or Controller Bay for a suitable husband or wife for their child, and in this way a number of Yakutat people “married into” Katalla or Kaliakh River or Chilkat or Sitka. In such cases, the husband might move to the village of his father-in-law, especially if he were a young man and not yet a house head. However, in other cases the wife was brought to her husband‘s home, and her children might establish a new branch of their sib or lineage through this marriage, as the Teqwedi claim to have married into Yakutat from southeastern Alaska (p. 251).

While the ordinary young son-in-law customarily lived in his father-in-law's house and worked for him, a rich man might make gifts instead. Whenever posible there was, in fact, an exchange of gifts. The nature and quality of these presents was often the prime consideration. Because a man received valuable gifts from his wives’ brothers it was possible for him to acquire wealth through a judicious series of marriages. This is what the notorious atgawet is supposed to have done, and it was a device employed by the Tlingit from southeastern Alaska in their trading relationships with the Athabaskans and with their less sophisticated northern relatives.

On the other hand, the girl's father and his kin often profited, as when Daqusetc (Chief Minaman) regained possession of the Teqwedi's Killerwhale Drum as part of the bride price for his daughter. “It was a great thing when they got it back” (p. 459). But I do not know how the girl herself felt about the match. Another girl, however, who was sought in marriage by an old man who offered a dancing hat, bearskin, blankets, and money to her uncles and mother, ran out of the house in such a tempest of tears that the mother refused to sanction the match, even though the uncles uncles urged it. It should be remembered that a woman was supposed to obey her brothers. In this case, the girl (MJ) took refuge in the mission, which was the deciding factor, especially since her own father was dead. The mother, however, seems to have been unusual, for on other occasions she also rejected the money offered as bride price, protesting that her daughter was “not for sale,” and that when old enough she would chose her own husband.

One old woman who had been married many times, the first time as a substitute for her mother's sister, explained that the girl did not have much to say about her marriage. Her parents arranged it. If a boy wanted a girl, his parents would go to see hers, and if the latter concurred, the girl was supposed to agree. (KDI) Another woman, however, said that the girl would be consulted, and even intimated that she would have more freedom of choice on her first marriage than on the second (after her husband's death) when she could be forced to accept the successor that his relatives had picked. It was usually the mothers of the young couple who made the arrangements for a first marriage, but there must have been many individual variations.

Although several older women were questioned, they knew of no case in which a girl had committed suicide because she had been forced into an unwelcome match. One woman, however, remembered hearing of a girl who shot herself when her stepfather tried to take her, or when the mother tried to give her to him; the details were not clear. There were cases in which girls ran away from their first husbands and were not forced to return to him. In another instance, one girl was supposed to have drowned herself because she could not marry her father's young nephew, since the latter had already been appointed by her father as the successor destined to marry his future widow, the girl's mother (cf. Case 10, p. 604). In my opinion, the girl was drowned by accident or through her own carelessness, even though she was despondent and although the young man in question was blamed.

I also heard of a young man who shot himself because he was spurned by the girl he hoped to marry, and other youths were cited who had shot themselves or each other because of a woman.

The ideal, however, was for a happy and enduring marriage, even though divorce was not uncommon a generation or more ago, and I heard of few couples who married young and remained together until old age. While marital fidelity and mutual affection was desirable, there does not seem to have been any emphasis on romantic love. “Love songs” are essentially asexual, since the same words may be addressed to a sweetheart, spouse, father, or friend of one's own sex, provided only the individual is in the opposite moiety; even here it is the group of sib-children, not the specific individual, that is addressed (p. 573). I heard nothing corresponding to our love stories, either in folklore or in biographical accounts. Rather, the ambitious, hard-working or lucky young man became wealthy and then married the chief‘s daughter, but the latter was more a symbol of his success than the object of a romantic attachment (pp. 243–245).

Almost all of my informants had been married in church and it was hard to discover what had been the older ceremony.

“Young girls, they keep them, watch them, especially at night. Some may stay 3, 4 years in the room. Then they give them to a husband, so they will love each other and not get divorced. The girl's father and uncles sit here [on one side] and the boy's relatives on another. [The groom would be seated on a mat in the middle of the room, and the bride would emerge from a rear sleeping room to sit beside him.] They talk: ’This girl is anyAdi, descended from big people. You going to be her husband as long as you live?‘—‘Yes.’ [Then to the girl:] ‘This man going to be your husband as long as you live? Even if he gets sick? You going to have respect for your husband?’—’Yes.’ ”

Although the form of this reported speech seems to have been influenced by the Christian marriage service, there can be no question that the elders of the couple lectured them on the duties of marriage in the presence of the assembled relatives.

“Sometimes the boy's people give blankets and coppers to the girl's mother. The boy gives things to the girl's mother. Her father is going to give clothes, dishes, to the young people so they can use it…. The boy's mother gives things to the girl's mother and daddy, and out of it the father gives two blankets to the young couple.”

The young couple live first in the house of the girl's parents, “while they teach the girl to love him. Then they go to the boy's home.”

The informant had been married in this fashion. “It's just like a meeting. We have no marriage license. At the meeting, they give me all kind of good names. We’re ’anyAdi. They talk and say we’re going to stay together for good. If they [we] go away from each other, they [I] going to disgrace for my people and my kids. And they say he's going to disgrace for his people. That‘s why we stay together…. The big people all talk, and nobody can break this marriage.” On such occasions, the lineage and even the sib chiefs would speak. The informant also referred several times to her children as her “marriage license.”

I gather that at a formal wedding, or even at a betrothal, the groom and his party would assemble at the bride's house and pile up all his wealth offered as a bride price. The groom would sit on a mat, formerly woven of grass or cedar bark, and the bride would be summoned from a rear room to sit beside him. Her father and his lineage might give the groom and the latter's line some ceremonial prerogatives, for I heard of two songs that had been acquired in this fashion. For example, when the Kwacqwan went to Klukwan to get a Kagwantan wife for Cada, chief of Moon House, the Chilkat gave them a “tribal” mourning song, used at potlatches, along with the girl. The second song acquired in this way was “S’ełtin's marriage song,” a Tsimshian dancing song, given to the Tlingit Kagwantan of southeastern Alaska (Swanton, 1909, p. 401, Song 47; 1954, 3–1–B). According to the version I was told, the girl was a Tł’Uknaca (Raven), who married a Kagwantan youth of noble birth. When they were to be married, the bride came out to him in the middle of the room, stepping on eight coppers that had been laid down to form a path from the rear room. The coppers were subsequently given away, presumably to the groom's sib, and they were also given the song to which the bride had danced out. It is perhaps properly called ‘place beneath S’ełtin's feet’ (S’ełtín úsi yédi, or yidE?), although Swanton translates it as “S!ełtÎ’n's-return-song.’

An informant who was married in 1916 had a very different wedding. “I was 16 years old then. Both Nu hIt [Fort House, Kwacqwan] and DIs hIt [Moon House, also Kwacqwan] wanted me for a daughter-in-law. I had the bestest wedding. There were dances for 3 nights. Ca hIt [Mount Fairweather House, Tł’UknaxAdi), my father's house, was just finished. I had a big long veil and was the first bride in Yakutat to wear one. My father's house was a great big one, and it was just full. The party went on till late at night. There were refreshments left over so we had another dance again. We danced waltzes, quadrilles. Jack Ellis was the caller for the dances. That was my first dance. Everyone was dressed in that year's style.”

This woman was the ałyI-Kagwantan daughter of a Tł’UknaAdi man, and married a Kwacqwan man of Fort House. Although this marriage did not follow the pattern set by her own father and mother, it did follow those of the many unions in her husband's and mother's mother‘s line that linked ałyI-Kagwantan and Kwacqwan.

Adult Life

After marriage, there is little to tell that has not already been discussed. Young husbands continued their usual occupations, maintaining their rigorous early morning training, working for their fathers-in-law and their uncles, and giving gifts to their sisters and their sisters’ husbands. Young wives were free from the irksome food taboos of their girlhood but had to observe those necessary when their husbands were engaged in hunting or other chancy undertakings. They worked hard, under the supervision of an older woman: their mother, their mother-in-law, their husband's uncle's wife, or an older co-wife, depending on where they lived. They gathered and put up food so that they would have plenty for the winter and also enough to share with other families in the big house and with their brothers.

Soon there were babies, often one every year, although with the high rate of infant mortality there were more to mourn that to watch grow to adulthood. Barrenness was a misfortune and women with large families were admired. In answer to a question about contraceptives and abortifacients, one woman said: “Olden time, I’m going to tell you, olden time they like babies, you know. And that's why all girls they take care of themselves, you know, so they can have lots of babies, lots of family, you know. Strong families…. Never heard of a girl that didn’t want to have a baby. This time, I know, doctor gives medicine to somebody.”

Since the man‘s life was more hazardous, hunting in the mountains or on the sea, the wife and sister had to protect it through careful observance of taboos, especially during menstrual periods. “In olden days they were afraid of monthly. It was bad for a woman to be among men. Men are going to die or get poor.”

The menstruant or “bloody woman,” literally the ‘tabooed woman’ (wUłIasi cawAt) always went to the birth house at this time. “She stays in a small place outside for 4 days, until it's all over. The house is made of planks. Even if she has a little baby she takes it with her.” An older woman explained: “There is a shack near the tribal house where women go when they’re that way. It's a sin to be seen if you’re that way. Mustn’t walk on the ground. The shack is built out of red cedar drift wood and spruce bark, with a toilet inside dug deep down. They put old rotten wood under the toilet so your monthly wouldn‘t hurt.” (MJ) It will be remembered that this use of rotten wood by the adolescent girl was said to protect her from incontinence of bladder and bowels when she was old (p. 520).

Menstrual pads were made of the same moss (iqa) that was used for babies’ diapers, and care had to be taken of these to prevent any possible contamination from spreading to men. “My mother used the finest moss for pads, I remember that…. You biun [bury?] the soiled pads under an old stump so the men wouldn’t see them. If you kept dirty pads, your brother would die soon. Now they pass them around like anything.” This rather exaggerated statement reflects the older generation's comment on the younger's lack of concern for the old rules. Still, another woman stated: “In olden time, they never keep it in the house, they never keep it around the house. That's why they call it łìás [taboo]. When bloody woman going to come in, everything they take it outside…. When it‘s over, they burn it up.”

Both the menstrual period and anything connected with it was called ‘taboo’ (łÌás), and the same informant explained:

“That money is just like human being. If you have dirty thing by your side, it go away. If you do that thing, you not going to have money. If I lazy, I not going to have money. Can’t put any dirty thing by the door, or by your husband. Money's coming in there [through the door]. They live good when they listen to their mother. It's coming true.”

Women were careful about their clothes. “They used to wash women's clothes separately from men's clothes because of their monthlies. It would make the men weak, they wouldn’t live long if they came near them when they had their monthlies.” (MJ) This informant's mother used to wash her clothing separately from that of her husband and her grown son all of the time, and kept the bundles of dirty clothes separate, also. “It didn’t matter about small children's clothes.”

A menstruating woman (and probably any woman between puberty and menopause) should keep away from fishing places on the streams (especially or only ?) when the salmon begin to run. “A woman can’t go close to the river. It's łÌás. That's why there's no more fish in the river—girls get close to fishing…. Fish see it—just like the blood. We go by that Indian doctor. They see [the contamination in the river which looks like blood]. That's why they train us like that.”

To purify the water if a woman had broken the taboo and to make the fish come back, the shaman would put devilclubs and branches in the river. “They put it in the water, you know, especially that devilclubs. There's lots of devilclubs to put in the water. All that łÌás wash out. That's hewa [magic]. That bloody woman wash out.”

But when a woman was past menopause, (łÌás djIwAnAq, ’taboo released’), “monthlies no more,” “she can fish when she's an old woman. She can do everything.” It was denied that there were any rites to mark her new status.

Domestic life, of course, did not always run smoothly. In the big multifamily houses and in the villages of closely integrated lineages even the naughty escapades of children could develop into serious quarrels involving their elders. Marital friction could be aggravated if brothers-in-law or sisters-in-law took sides because they felt they had not been treated with proper respect. In theory, most of the married-in spouses of the house were the sib-children of the owners; that is, they formed a group of joking relatives and were supposed to be jolly together. In practice, of course, there were always cantankerous persons without a sense of humor, or lonely individuals who had married in from some distant village and who had no kinsmen at hand. No doubt they were often suspicious of their housemates. Some co-wives, even when related, quarreled constantly, we are told, and must have made life miserable for the husband who slept between them, as well as for every one else in the house. The war party, the long hunting trip, visits to relatives in other communities, even the monthly retreat of women must have afforded relief from such bickering. However, co-wives were usually close relatives and good friends. Husbands who were poor hunters and providers, or wives who were lazy housekeepers, created domestic difficulties, and no doubt a husband who had suffered bad luck blamed his wife for some breach of taboo. Sometimes a happy marriage might be broken up if an older brother decided to exchange his elderly wife for his younger brother's young one. In theory this was not supposed to matter to the women concerned. More serious ruptures could, of course, occur if the sibs of husbands and wife became embroiled in feuds.

Some of the worst troubles were caused by jealousies within the lineage, especially if a brother were envious of another‘s good luck, wealth, or prestige. Such rancor might smolder for a long time or lead to open violence. If the more fortunate brother sickened, his rival would be suspected and perhaps openly accused of witchcraft (see p. 728).

The other great traditional source of trouble was women, who might provoke quarrels or bloodshed through wanton gossip or infidelity, Men, of course, also philandered, but there seems to have been something of a double standard, and the man was not as much blamed as the woman. Thus, one woman who suspected her husband of infidelity while she was away, acknowledged that a man needed a woman every so often “or he might get sick,” but accused the girl or girls involved of having used love charms. Traditionally it was only the man who employed love magic, and while he might be the subject of jokes, as was the man who had too many wives (either simultaneously or in succession), the women who used love charms or who married a series of husbands were condemned.

A good wife was careful not to arouse suspicion of extramarital flirtations. She must never “walk around with a man.” As one woman explained: “That's what my mother told me—’not even your husband's brother. You musn’t walk around with him.’ “The husband's nephew, as the woman‘s potential future husband, was in a different position. He might “hang around.” But even here there must have been danger lest the uncle become jealous of his young rival (cf. The Birth of Raven, p. 844).

“In the old days, husbands were pretty strict with their wives. When they come back from hunting, they look see if they got any of them ‘berrypickers’ louse nests’ in their hair. They’re suspicious the women been out with another man.” (MJ) These “louse nests” (qUii CA ii, ‘berrypickers’ head snarls’) are tiny green burs which the woman may have caught in her hair while lying in the grass with a lover, since illicit affairs were conducted out-of-doors. These burs were also called “slave's louse nests” (p. 471). An unfaithful wife might pretend to be menstruating, as an excuse for staying out in order to meet her lover, as was done by the woman who precipitated the war between the Sitka Kagwantan and the Wrangell people over a hundred years ago (p. 280).

“They kill a man who leaves his wife, or kill a woman who leaves her husband. The brothers kill her.” When husband and lover belonged to the same lineage or sib and one had killed the other, there were no formal means of restoring peace like those available for intermoiety feuds. A number of traditional sib histories record the break-up of a sib, and the emigration of one section to found a new branch in a distant land, as a result of such “woman trouble.”

Actually, even a generation or two ago, a number of women had illegitimate children both before and after marriage, without provoking such disastrous consequences. Other women left unwanted husbands and found new ones, just as men divorced and remarried or shifted wives. In this, the gap between Tlingit ideal and practice was probably not dissimilar to that found in contemporary America. Of course, there were also infatuated husbands who sacrificed much for their wives, as there must have been women who endured a good deal for the sake of their husbands and for domestic tranquility. I was told of one chief, Chief John (ałyI-Kagwantan): “He don‘t build a house. He marry a pretty girl—worried about her, and followed her around. The others built the house” that he should have built.

Since malicious gossip and angry words were the second traditional fault of women, the ideal wife did not quarrel with her husband or with anyone else, no matter what the provocation. MJ described her grandmother as such a person, who did not interfere in quarrels between her daughter and her son-in-law, although both lived in her house. (Of course, she could not have spoken to the man directly.) “My grandma was calm. They give her credit for that…. She didn’t cause any more trouble…. My grandma would say, ‘My husband and I never slapped each other or pulled each other's hair.’ She said she never followed him around when he was drinking. She knew he remembered who he was married to, and would come back.” At a potlatch, this same woman was honored for her good temper and thereby committed never to quarrel (p. 467). “My grandma on my father's side never quarreled. They gave a slave over that.”

The ideal person of either sex was generous, not stingy (cI-eq), especially not stingy with food (cAgun ’itut ’Ati). He was hard-working, helpful, and eventempered. Perhaps the most prized virtue was “kindness,” that is, gentleness of speech or politeness. The person of noble birth lived up to his rank by not bragging, insulting others, taking offense, or gossiping. Just as the true aristocrat was “kind and gently,” so the good man who displayed such virtues was called ‘anyAdi, though poor and of humble birth (cf. p. 467).

The good person ignored the misdemeanors of others, and was literally ‘heavy’ (yÁ-dÁł) with solid virtue. (The same expression was used for the wealthy aristocrat and for the person impervious to witchcraft.) Such a person was also a “tł’éAkw qa [crystal person]—just like that sun—nothing in their body or their spirit—just pure. When something going on, he don’t get into it, just go away. Clean, clean things—like crystal—that's what they call it—tł’éAkw,” and the informant pointed to our glass ashtray. Although the righteous aristocrat should be ready to avenge an insult, the ability neither to participate in trouble nor to blame others was a virtue prized as especially appropriate to those truly noble in birth, who had stain neither on their genealogy nor on their character.

To preserve peace within the house, within the lineage or sib, and between sibs, persons rubbed their mouths ritually with a hard rock.

Old Age

Old age came quickly, according to our standards, and the graveyards are full of men and women who died at 40 or 50, even though a few lived to venerable age. People now, however, look back on their ancestors as stronger and healthier than themselves and as much longer lived.

Thus, Yakutat Chief George, who died in 1903 (pl. 64), was described as a “big tall fellow. I think every Indian man [then] is over 6 feet, big broad shoulders. We’re small now. My father was big, tall. All were over 6 feet, big, husky. I think that's funny. I think it's because they go in the water all the time. Early in the morning they have to go in the water—even the babies, they carry them—the boys, the old men. Every night they had a hot bath, steam. I think that's why they grew big…. Maybe food, I don’t know. Maybe clothes. The chief gave the order no clothes—be strong. Old days, Indians never used to believe in clothes—make them weak.”

Another man said: “People one hundred years ago were pretty strong people…. They claim the cold weather makes them strong. So they go in the cold water, or in the snow.” (SJ)

“Old people used to live against the North Wind. They were strong people. Old Sampson was a hundred and twenty years old…. They put the young boys in the water. But we can’t live that long,” conceded a third man.

“Nowadays it's new store grub,” suggested one woman (MJ). “We been using our own medicine before—lived to be a hundred and ten,” added her friend. “Blind Sampson—a hundred and ten—He's not that old,” and both ladies discussed the point. (His tombstone near the Old Village reads: “BLIND SAMPSON, OCTOBER 1948, AGE 110,” but according to the school census made in 1946 he was born February 24, 1866. See pl. 30.)

There was discussion of other reported centenarians. “Mrs. Joseph [Abraham, born May 5, 1867, according to the school census; died in 1950] was getting her second set of teeth. Long time ago they believe that a person [who lived to be so old] go around Can eyí [Old People's Bay] and come to the place where you started. That goes to show you’re over a hundred years old…. Sitka Ned's ma [whose tombstone is inscribed ’Mrs. Bessey, 1916, Age 100’] went around Can geyí, and AJ's mother lived to be a hundred and ten…. When the old one died it was all the same sleep.” (The latter's tombstone reads: ’MEMORY MARY KO-MY-YECK, AGED 135 YEARS‘; pl. 31.)

“In the old days, there was no sickness, no T.B., no toothache, no sore eyes, no blindness—only old age. How come? Now you got rocks in your stomach [gallstones]. In the old days, was no such thing as tumor.” (MJ)

‘Old People's Bay’ (can eyí) is apparently a figure of speech.

“Just a feeling, just the way it looks to them…. When they young, they start out on this bay.” The informant traced an almost perfect circle on the table with his finger, moving it slowly around in a clockwise direction. “Then pretty soon old age start affecting them, and they say, ’Can eyí tunA ’A yadE qusInuk’ [old-people's bay out-of my face-towards it's-gently-blowing]. That's the breeze from that bay, from the old bay. [They say that] when they start to feel old…. Lot of young people, after they’re 20, start saying that just for a joke, because they can’t run around the way they could when they were 16 or 17. They can’t stand racing or basketball like kids of 16…. And then they start to fail, and they just keep going around, and after they make the turn and come pretty close again to where they started, they go to second childhood. And they get so old they act like a child, and they go around the fire and start eating that charcoal, just like a baby, and start eating that charcoal from the fire.”

“When they go around the bay, they turn into a kid, you know. They eat charcoal just like a kid, just like a baby, you know. They eat anything. They can‘t walk, too, just go around like a little baby. Old people sit like that,” and she demonstrated by leaning back in the chair, eyes closed, hands folded.

“They say: ‘Can eyí djiyawaha—she go all the way around Old People's Bay.’ “ The informant was demonstrating with a counterclockwise motion, but when questioned, reversed it.

“That's better, you know, to go like that sun go,” but whether this was really a correction was not clear. She did not know of any term that applied to persons who died young without completing the circuit. “Only thing I now is that very old people, then they goes to baby place, you know. That's why it turns to a baby—’At yAti qwani utdjiwaha ['something's childrens’ spirits—qút djiwAhÁ(?) they were born,’ cf. Boas, 1917, p. 133]. You know that babies’ place, that babies’ town. That's the place they go, way round Can eyí. They goes to Babies’ Land.”

However, I could learn nothing of “Babies’ Land.” It was apparently not a place where the souls of babies stayed before birth, but seems to have been rather the condition of senility.

DEATH

Death Ceremonies

Death was a bereavement affecting all members of the community. It initiated a series of observances which finally culminated in a potlatch at which the deceased was honored and those who had disposed of the corpse and worked on the grave were rewarded by the maternal relatives of the deceased. For the Tlingit, death was the supreme event, providing the major occasions and themes for cultural elaboration and emphasis. Nowhere else can we see so clearly the solidarity of the sib and moiety, balanced against internal rivalries, or the mutual bonds between the two moieties, as in the great rituals of the death cycle. The most treasured material possessions and the most cherished sib and lineage prerogatives were valued because they were memorials to the dead, made or displayed and validated on occasions connected with death (pp. 606–607).

While death marked the end of this life and the dissolution of the body, it was not the end of the individual. Rather, with it began a period of ghostly existence which was only a transition until the dead person returned to his relatives in the form of a baby.

In former times, all bodies except those of shamans (or of some prominent persons, or sometimes of slaves) were cremated, but the practice was abandoned at Yakutat in favor of interment after the mission had been established, although it is said to have been continued a little longer at Dry Bay.

After a death there was a wake of about 3 days, and cremation usually took place on the fourth. This also is the pattern of funerals today. The whole period of mourning was said to have lasted 8 days, during which there were many observances to be followed by the bereaved. It was not made clear, however, whether the 8 days of mourning included the 4-day period of the wake and cremation, or whether the 8-day mourning period began on the following day, making in all 12 days of funeral rites, since periods both of 8 and of 12 days were mentioned by my informants. Possibly there were variations in actual usage, or in the ways in which it was conceptualized.

According to Krause (1956, pp. 155–157), reporting primarily for the Tlingit of Sitka and Chilkat, the funeral ceremony (which included the wake and “smoking feast” of my informants) lasted for 4 days, or rather 4 nights, immediately following the decease, although these nights were not necessarily consecutive. Cremation might take place on the third or fourth day, but was sometimes delayed for a few days until the corpse was “in an advanced state of decomposition” (ibid., p. 163). This was especially the case if the deceased were a chief or other prominent person, in order to enable his relatives to prepare for the “cremation ceremony.” Poor people, who could not afford to give such ceremonies, seemed to have disposed of the corpse sooner and with less publicity (ibid., p. 157). The full scale “cremation ceremony” for a chief began on the night after the cremation and lasted for three more. Although called “feeding the dead,” because this was one of its functions, the feast was actually given to members of the opposite moiety from the deceased. During the feast, those who had performed funeral services were paid (Krause, 1956, pp. 163–164).

Although Krause does not clearly distinguish between the two series of ceremonies, it would appear that once there were properly 4 nights of preliminary ceremony (“smoking feast”) before the cremation and 4 nights of feasting following the cremation (although the total elapsed time might be more than 8 days and nights). I gather also that for ordinary persons these ceremonies were greatly curtailed. At a later time, even for chiefs, there were only the smoking feast on the single night before cremation or burial and a single night of feasting (or preliminary potlatch) after it. At Yakutat, I believe, the smoking feast and the later feast came to be combined, which further increases the difficulty of determining the total length of the mourning period and the exact sequence of events.

Some of the observances after death were for the welfare of the ghost and are believed to have been taught by a Sitka man, ’Askadut, after his return from the dead (p. 768). Other acts might be performed to insure the reincarnation of the beloved dead (see pp. 777–778), and still other rites and taboos were to protect the living. Some time, usually several months, elapsed between the funeral and the completion of the grave house that held the ashes of the deceased (or the erection of a tombstone at the grave). When this was done, another feast was held (pp. 538–539), the property of the dead person was distributed to the heirs, and the surviving spouse married the successor. The final ritual was not reached, however, until a potlatch was held, and this might not take place for several years since it involved the accumulation of considerable property to be distributed. Ordinary persons, who could not themselves give a potlatch, took advantage of those given by their lineage or sib heads to honor their dead relatives and to pay off their funeral obligations. In one sense, there was no end to the drama initiated by death, because at all subsequent potlatches all of the lineage and sib who had died were remembered by their relatives.

A number of practices of former days are still observed, or have been until recently. Unfortunately, most of my specific information about death taboos and observances are those affecting the female relatives and the widow of a dead man, and I do not know how far these might once have applied to the male relatives or to the widower. However, it is obvious that the death of a mature man, especially of the head of a house, was a more serious blow to the community than would have been the death of one of his wives, or of a child, and for this reason his funeral would naturally have been more elaborate. Furthermore, the actions of women, from whom all the lineage “generated,” were believed to exercise a profound effect upon the welfare and lives of all the members of their line and upon the fortunes of their husbands or future husbands as well. Thus, the rites and taboos enjoined upon women as mourners must have been more rigorous than those observed by men. A number of these practices repeated those of the adolescent gir].

The whole round of the potlatch cycle, although based on death, is reserved for a separate chapter (pp. 607–651), as are Tlingit notions about the soul and its fate, and the methods employed to insure reincarnation (pp. 765–781).

The Corpse

Formerly, when a person was dying and hope had been abandoned, his clothes were made ready in order to dress his corpse as soon as possible. These were probably his best garments, or even new ones. As he took his last breath, the door of the house was opened, “so his breath can go out of the house” (MJ).[86] As soon as death had occurred, all the relatives in the opposite moiety (unEtkAnai) hastened to the house and dressed the body. It was formerly wrapped in a Chilkat blanket, with a headdress (cAki’At) on the head, and was propped up to sit at the back of the house. Important heirlooms or other property owned by the deceased were piled beside the body.

“The body was always sitting up against the wall, on a chair or on a box…. They never laid the body down flat because it would be too hard for the spirit to get up. The spirit had to get up and walk to Spirit Town [ee qawu ’ani]. They got to dress you [the corpse] with strong shoes and gloves—mitts of any kind—because you going to go through a lot of devil-clubs and bushes and nettles. If they don’t put no gloves on you, you never get through…. And they always covered the face with a handkerchief. Just before they took the body out they took off the handkerchief so people could take a last look.” (MJ)

MJ remembered seeing an old woman's body propped up in state in a house at the old village on Khantaak Island when she was a little girl. When the handkerchief was lifted, “that lady at Khantaak looked awful,” and the child was frightened.

Formerly, the body was kept in the house for 3 days and was said to have been cremated on the fourth. All during this time, the members of the opposite moiety kept watch beside it, night and day. They were fed by the deceased's relatives, that is, by members of the deceased's lineage and sib. Apparently the best food available was given to them and at meal times a little dish was set into the edge of the fire for the ghost. It was said that if the food and water for the ghost were put into the middle of the fire, the dead could not reach it without burning his hands, nor could he take it unless his name were called. “Then he knows it's his…. The spirit of the fire waits on him” (MJ). This was done by the deceased's mother, if she were living, or by another close maternal relative, and the rest of the food Avas given to the most closely related gunEtkAnai woman. If the deceased were a man, this would be his widow, otherwise it was probably a father's sister. “They feed the widow. Part of what she eats goes in the fire.” Apparently the other dead were in some way present, and may also have been fed in the same manner, for I was told that those whose relatives did not have a dish of food for them were imagined to be sitting way back, hungry and envious.

Emmons (MS) reports that the Tlingit widow ate sparingly and only in the evenings, and that in earlier times she fasted on alternate days—eating only on the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth evenings. The practice of fasting corresponds to observances followed by adolescent girls (p. 519), and by female mourners at Dry Bay (see p. 536).

Mourners were supposed not to weep too much, for this would make rain and sleet fall on the dead, or so a man told me. Also, too much weeping might make another die, added a woman. “If you cry too much, they going to die…sister or brother, your own children. That's why they don’t cry too much when they lost their daughter or something.” The same belief applies to the living. “My son's going to Icy Bay. If I cry over him, my son, get lonesome, he's going to have something happen to him. That's why we don’t cry about living people.” The woman who told me this denied, however, that the dead would return to take away the souls of those who grieved excessively. Another informant corroborated the belief that it was another relative of the weeper who would die.

To judge by modern custom, the expressions of grief were very violent. Long after the death they might be renewed as, for example at potlatches or on any other occasion when the dead were called to mind. MJ said that when she was a child her grandmother used to go outdoors and take her in her lap while she sang and wept for hours over the death of an uncle who had died many years before.

However, the sorrow at the wake was not unrelieved. The UnEtkAnai who sat beside the corpse and the mourning relatives sang. This singing (‘At tcA łA-’atc) was believed to clear away the underbrush from the path of the ghost, and it therefore undoubtedly served to comfort and distract the bereaved. The rites affecting the mourners are described later, since they did not terminate with the ending of the wake.

Emmons (MS.) specifies that the relatives of the deceased always sang four mourning songs every morning and night while the corpse sat in state, and also while the cremation was being carried out. Krause (1956, pp. 155–156) mentions mourning songs which accompanied the feasting and giving of gifts to the unEtkAnai during the four evenings preceeding cremation, as well as during the cremation (ibid., pp. 157, 158).

The Smoking Feast

While my informants spoke of a smoking feast for the dead person (eq-yis duwa’i, ’invited for a smoke’), it was almost impossible to determine when this was usually held. According to Krause's information, we might suppose it to comprise the first 4 nights of the funeral, the last of which might occur after the cremation. Swanton (1908, p. 430) reports that it was given just before the corpse was carried out to the pyre. My impression is that it was usually held the night before the cremation (or the burial). One man indicated that a slightly more elaborate feast than the usual food served to the unEtkAnai was given the night before the cremation, although he did not specifically mention smoking in this connection. Rather, dishes with food were put into the fire for the deceased.

Another man, who owns a meerschaum pipe which formerly belonged to the Teqwedi Chief Minaman (1810–90) of Shark House, said that this pipe was used only when there was a “potlatch.” “Sometimes the other tribe give a potlatch just to smoke. It's the night somebody died, or the next day.” Apparently the Teqwedi chief would take this pipe to the smoking feast given by a Raven sib when one of its members died. On such occasions, all the guests of the opposite moiety, men, women and children, are expected to smoke in order that the dead might enjoy the tobacco.

Others who mentioned the smoking ceremony implied that it was held after the disposal of the corpse. My information from Yakutat is thus contradictory, and would suggest that no specific day was set for this feast, or that the original customs had been modified and forgotten. Obviously all the tobacco which might be smoked by the unEtkAnai while they were guarding the corpse, like the food which they ate, was supposed to benefit the dead. In most recent times, I suspect the original smoking feast of more solemn impport was combined with a feast given after the burial.

Krause (1956, pp. 155–157) described a funeral ceremony which he and his brother had witnessed among the Chilkat in 1880–81. This seems to have corresponded to the smoking feast of our informants, and was associated with the first 4 nights after the decease, although there is no mention of the presence of the corpse. The ceremony was given by the “Bear tribe” (Kagwantan?) for one of their women. It was held in a newly finished house, which was packed with the Raven guests, the men near the fire, the women against the walls, while 10 or 12 “Bear” men stood near the door, singing mourning songs and pounding with long poles on the floor. A few women (close relatives) with blackened faces and cropped heads also held poles, and from time to time danced in place. A small boy stood near the fire, wearing the dead woman's blanket. The gifts (blankets and bolts of cloth, etc.) were distributed to members of the Raven moiety during each of the four nights of this ceremony, while the latter were also being feasted with berries and sugar. A large carved pipe (perhaps decorated with the Bear crest?) was circulated among the guests so each could smoke. Several hundred dollars worth of goods were distributed in this fashion by the “Bears.” The dead woman's husband (a Raven, of course) also contributed almost “his entire fortune,” although he had concealed a few blankets with the trader “which he held out for his future wife, a 12-year-old girl.” DAnawAq (‘Silver Eyes’), the anAtedi chief, as principal guest, received “the lion's share.” “The shaman of the Raven tribe” thanked each of the principal “Bear” donors.

In several respects this ceremony resembles the feast or small potlatch now given at Yakutat after the burial (see below, pp. 546–547) at which payments are made to the guests for their work and at which the dead person‘s spouse may also distribute property. This further suggests a fusing of the preliminary tobacco feast with the cermony after the cremation. Krause (1956, pp. 157–158) also reported that a “large potlatch” was given at Sitka in April, 1881, immediately following the cremation of a chief. The relatives of the deceased tore up and distributed blankets worth $500, presumably to pay for the funeral.

That a feast was formerly held at Yakutat before the corpse was cremated is clearly documented by the following passage.

Albin Johnson (1924, pp. 74–77) describes a funeral feast on Khantaak Island, which must have been held before 1890, since it was attended by Chief “Janaa-shoo” (Minaman).

“The Tlingit used to ‘bury’ their dead in various ways. To burn the dead was the old method most usualy followed. Great men and sometimes children, especially Indian daughters, were set in small houses, especially built for this purpose, and were not burned. To burn the corpse was, however, the original way. A big fire was made, and the dead body was thrown on it, amid screams, sobs, noise, and weeping. When the corpse was burned, the bones that were left were kept, and put into containers, and beautiful pieces of cloth were wrapped around them [the bones]. Their old cemeteries were covered by such small houses, resembling playhouses for children, in which the bones were placed. Since the mission started, the Tlingit people have learned to bury their dead like the whites, and we missionaries conduct a sermon for them and in particular give the converted a Christian burial.

“On the little Island of Khantaak an old and important man had passed away. I have forgotten his strange name. It was late in the fall. Brother K. J. Hendrickson and I went out to the island. In a large house everything had been prepared for the funeral. In a dominant position in the house the dead man had been placed on a high platform in a sitting position, so it looked as if he were still alive. He was dressed in beautiful, brightly colored blankets.

“Below him were four chairs destined for the most important mourners. Now I and Hendrickson were invited to sit in the middle, and on the one side the first chief, Janaa-shoo was invited to sit, and on the other side (the left), the sorcerer Dettion. First there was eating: Boiled rice, bisquits, sugar, coffee, seal meat and fat were eaten. The number of mourners was not great. When eating, strange tales from old days were told. The deceased was especially mentioned: what he had accomplished in his lifetime in the matter of bravery, in hunting and fishing, etc. Some acts were performed as feasts for the spirits of the dead. Somebody then took the best food or the best clothes and threw them on the fire, reciting the names of as many dead persons as he could remember. They thought that the spirits of the dead came to them at the feasts and saw them and received their gifts. After such a big, old-fashioned funeral the corpse was burned, as described. This feast lasted for many hours. We missionaries were offered canned peaches and did not have to eat the disgusting seal fat and what they had prepared as food. After the funeral, the people held a wailing session, which lasted for hours and nights, when they wept for their dead people. They all wept, and they all started simultaneously at the order of the chief or the sorcerer. At the same order they all stopped at once. Thereafter they would laugh and dance and play, and it looked as if they had already forgotten their grief.”

Since “Janaa-shoo” or Minaman was the Teqwedi chief, the funeral was evidently given by a sib of the opposite moiety (Raven) for one of their dead leaders or chiefs, probably a Kwacqwan man. The shaman, Dettion, whom we have been unable to identify, was also an honored guest, so must have belonged to the Eagle-Wolf moiety (perhaps a ałyi-Kagwantan man, the leader of his sib at Yakutat?).

Cremation

Although cremation is now obsolete, MJ had witnessed two when she was a little girl. The first was at ’Aka, a summer camp on Aka Lake in the Ankau area southeast of Yakutat, and probably occurred in the late 1880's. The pyre was a crib of logs, about 4 feet high, in which was laid the body, that of a young man, dressed in his best clothes. Spruce limbs and brush were put on the fire and seal oil poured on to make it burn fiercely. The unEtkAnai poked the corpse with long poles, and as the fire burned low, threw on more seal oil. Later, when everything was consumed, they gathered up the charred bones and put them into an imported Chinese camphorwood chest. “They do this wlien the relatives aren’t looking…. My grandma was appointed to pick up the bones. I went to watch. My mother held my hand.” Evidently the sight had a horrible fascination for the child. The cremation was carried out in the daytime, but MJ hazarded that “they might do it at night, if the person died away from home, and it was necessary.”

In all essential respects this cremation was like one attended by the Krause brothers at Chilkat, although MJ made no mention of attendant mourners singing and pounding on a plank with long staffs (Krause, 1956, p. 157).

The second cremation witnessed by MJ was that of her baby brother, 1 month old, who died at the sealing camp above Point Latouche. At this time (in the 1890's), burial had become customary, but the parents did not want to have to take the body back to Yakutat for immediate interment. Instead, the father's sister took the body into the hills, burned it, and gathered the ashes into an expensive blanket. MJ's little Chinese chest was taken to hold the remains, and this was placed behind the tent until the family returned to Yakutat when the chest was buried in the cemetary.

Krause reports (1956, p. 157) that the wrapping of the calcined bones in a blanket is done to preserve the dead from the cold.

All handling of the corpse, from the moment of death to the final disposal of the remains and the finishing of the grave house or tombstone, was and still is carried out by relatives in the opposite moiety. I was not told, however, whether the corpse was formerly removed from the house through an opening other than the door or whether those that handled it had to observe any special ritual precautions. In southeastern Alaska while cremation was still practiced in the early 1880's, the corpse was carried out through an opening made by removing a wall plank from a rear corner of the house, or else was hoisted through the smokehole. Sand or a dead dog was thrown out ahead of the corpse or a live dog might follow it, and ashes were often strewn on the path behind it. After the cremation, all those who had handled the corpse or attended the ceremony took baths (Krause, 1956, pp. 157–158; Swanton, 1908, p. 430; Emmons, MS.).

At a still earlier period, slaves were killed by the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska, either at the cremation itself, when some might be burned alive upon the pyre, or during the feasts that followed, when they were either strangled by a pole across the neck if the deceased had died of an illness, or were drowned if he had met his death in that way (Krause, 1956, pp. 159, 163–164, citing Shabelski, Simpson, Holmberg, and Veniaminov). I heard nothing about such slave sacrifices.

The bodies of shamans were not cremated, but were laid in small elevated grave houses (p. 673). Sometimes brave warriors or very prominent men were entombed in a similar fashion. I have been unable to find confirmation, either from informants or from the literature on the Tlingit, of Albin Johnson‘s report that children, especially girls, were put unburned into grave houses (p. 534). We should note, however, that among the Copper River Eyak the dead were either buried or burned, according to their own wishes or those of their relatives (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 164). The special treatment of children, if Johnson is correct, must reflect an older Eyak practice.

According to Swanton (1908, p. 430), entombment without cremation might be done to the corpse of a very noted warrior because he was thought to be too brave to need the warmth of the fire, and some individuals might request to have their bodies put away intact. Yakutat traditions indicate that the bodies of enemies slain in battle were thrown into the water, or left where they fell (p. 585). At one time the bodies of slaves who died or were killed were probably thrown out on the beach or in the woods, as was the custom among the more southern Tlingit (Krause, 1956, p. 161).

The Yakutat people formerly had carved posts with a hole in the back to hold the ashes of the dead (KDI), or a chest containing the ashes was put into the grave house. Both box and container were called ‘someone's cover’ (qadakédi). Some persons of means might have the bones or ashes of their relatives transferred at intervals to new chests and grave houses as the old ones decayed (HB for FI). The oldest type of grave house known to my informants was described as a little house with a gable roof, set on four posts. Ancient grave monuments and modern graves are described later (pp. 539–545).

When informants were questioned about the reports of LaPerouse and Beresford that the people of Lituya Bay and Port Mulgrave formerly decapitated the dead and put the head in a separate box in the graveyard while cremating the body (see pp. 539–540), they denied that this was ever a regular custom.

“If someone dies from a bear, or out hunting, far away, they just bring the head back,” it was suggested. Or, the body might be entirely cremated and the ashes brought home. “Maybe they didn’t burn the body and send the ashes because there might be too much brush. Or they were too high on the mountain [where there was no wood], and they didn‘t want to bother with the body.” (MJ) Whenever possible, however, the corpse was brought home to the lineage house for the cremation (HB for FI). The scalps or heads of slain warriors, either of one's own dead or of a noted enemy, were customarily preserved (p. 584), which might explain the skulls found by LaPérouse and Dixon.

The only time that a post-mortem was performed was when a pregnant woman died, for the foetus had to be removed and cremated or buried separately. The daughter of Chief Minaman, who died in Sitka in 1890 of poisoned whiskey at the same time as her father, was pregnant. “She just about to have a baby. She was buried with the unborn baby. They claim if they do that it cleans out the relatives…. Anyway, they all died off. They believed it was on account of that. If she had died right here they would have cut the baby out, but all her close relatives were up here when she died. She was down in Sitka.” (MJ)

It is obvious that the observances at the death of someone who had drowned and whose body had not been recovered must have been different from those previously described, although I do not know in what particulars. In fact, when a person was supposed to have drowned, the Tlingit expression was not that he had ‘died,’ but that he had ‘gone into the water,’ or that he had been ‘saved’ or ’captured’ by the land otters. Every effort was made to recover the body, for if it were not cremated (or buried), the soul remained earthbound in the form of a land otter (see pp. 744–754). It is therefore difficult to know what would have been done by the bereaved relatives or widowed spouse in such a case.

The same belief applies to someone who is presumed lost in the woods. Much of the same feeling prevails today, so that deaths by drowning or by a plane crash in the inaccessible mountains or by exposure when lost are still the most tragic.

If the body is found, the funeral proceeds as usual, and one would assume that the mourners or widowed spouse would begin the usual rites (see below) as soon as the body was brought home. However, in most cases it was probably necessary to cremate it on the spot and bring home only the ashes.

Even if the body were never recovered, the dead person would be remembered at subsequent potlatches and funerals when the dead were fed. In the case of a person presumed drowned, however, when food and drink were offered him these were put into the water, not into the fire. The spot did not have to be at the supposed place of death, however, simply in the nearest bay or stream. There was also a custom, begun perhaps only in Christian times, of erecting a memorial to the dead as near to the scene of drowning as possible. Such markers are described below (p. 545).

The Mourners

Except when a shaman died, the hair of the deceased's female relatives was cut by the UnEtkAnai. It was not made clear, however, whether this was usually done at the time of death, as indicated by the informant who described the practice at Dry Bay, or at the time of the cremation (Krause, 1956, p. 163, reporting Veniaminov), or whether this was done at the end of the mourning period, as was stated by a Yakutat informant. The women's hair was cut only for the death of an adult, not for a child. If the deceased were a married man, his sisters also cut the hair of his widow.

Rites performed by mourners were briefly described by a woman who was a little girl at Dry Bay at the time of the death of her father's father's older brother, a member of her own sib. This was about 1900 to 1905.

“When my grandfather's older brother died, that's the time my father's people cuts our hair. Then we go around without eating…about 12 days. Twelve days they go around. They eat just a little bit. They drink just a little water. We wish to be good people, and wish for make lots of money, have lots of money, good living. That‘s the kind of people they call it Áni [mourners].”

She also mentioned that sometimes the mourners carried long branches or ‘mourner's brush’ (Ani wAI), and danced with these, but did not make clear that this had been done on this occasion.

According to Emmons’ notes, it was the UnEtkAnai women, members of the widow's sib, who danced with branches during the cremation, while the male relatives of the deceased led the singing, and the female relatives wailed. Swanton (1908, p. 430) says, however, that if the dead person were much esteemed, his relatives of both sexes donned their best blankets and carried such canes, pointing them at the setting sun and lifting their tips slightly to delay its sinking, while each made a private wish for good fortune. Krause (1956, p. 163) implies, that the mourning relatives would carry such staffs while singing and wailing during the ceremonies following the cremation. The ceremony described by Swanton seems to have been performed for 8 days during the rebuilding of a grave house for some shamans at Dry Bay in 1909. A file of women belonging to the dead shamans’ sib walked out about a mile every morning before dawn, carrying canes and wishing for good fortune (cf. p. 646).

When questioned, my informant denied that men cut their hair in mourning, because “men cut their hair all the time. I just heard that girls, you know. We do it one time. I was a little girl. I don’t understand much.”

In southeastern Alaska, Tlingit men formerly cut or singed off their hair when mourning a relative, and probably this was also done at Dry Bay and Yakutat before White man's hair styles rendered the usage impossible. According to Krause (1956, p. 163), mourning relatives of both sexes might even singe off their hair by thrusting their heads into the cremation fire.

My Dry Bay informant explained that women's hair was precious, and so was cut “to show you’re sorry…. That's why when loving man, good man, smart man dies off in the family, they cut their hair.” She denied that the hair was washed first, because that would make it too hard to cut. Part of the hair was buried in a hole under a dead tree. The rest, in four strands, was draped on the branches of a young tree. After 8 days this was removed and put in a hole under the tree. “That's hewa [magic]. Then that girl's hair going to grow good again….

“That's a law, you know. If we don’t cut our hair, we going to have some kind of trouble. We cut if off in place of that. Some bad luck, you know…something's going to happen to that [another] relation again. That‘s why in olden time they cut your hair in place of that other trouble….

“After you got 12 days, 8 days—8 days, I guess—they [presumably the UnEtkAnai] going to wash your hair with that special water…blueberries. So you can get old, your hair not going to be white…. They don’t wash it clean, you know. Just make a wish: ‘Don’t get gray hair.’ ”

She went on to explain that the blueberry juice was used for the same purpose to wash the heads of adolescent girls, and cited her grandmother who lived to the age of 80 without gray hair as proof of the efficacy of this treatment.

“That blueberries, that's hewa. They wishing ‘Don’t get bad luck, you don’t get too old gray hair.’ And in your mind you’re going to wish, ‘Oh, I get lucky so I can get lots of money!’ You don’t say it out loud. Just like you pray to God, you know. That's the way we wish it—’married with a good man!’ “ The informant denied that washing or cutting the hair was to remove dangerous thoughts of death.

The widow's hair was also cut. My Yakutat informant‘s mother was widowed in 1888.

“And they wash my mother's hair, too, before they cut it—after 8 days…. My father's sisters cut it. They used mussels—yis. There were no scissors then,” MJ said. “I don’t know about men in the old days…. When a man dies, his widow, all his family would cut their hair, [including] his mother. When Uncle CkInan died [about 1901?], Mother [the dead man's ‘sister’ or parallel cousin] cut her hair, and even the little girls, but not the boys…. They got a certain way to do it—hewa for the widow, they call it…. They cut your hair, and they split this here—some kind of bush—in the spring something grows on it like candy. There's very few around here. They split the top of the bush in two and put the hair on top of it. The bush is called ítÀn. It's for the widow. They leave it in the bushes. The waving of the bushes means it grows back on quick. And then after that, they head away from that bush. They just don’t look back again. They go straight away from the bush so that none of her family will die. The wind waves the bushes and makes her hair grow quick back on her head again and none of her people will die so easy.” (MJ)

The differences in procedure may be accounted for by the fact that the first ínformant was describing customs at Dry Bay while the second was recounting practices at Yakutat. I am confused, however, when the latter also speaks of burning the widow‘s hair, together with her old clothes. Perhaps part of her hair was left on the bush and the rest burned.

“They don’t cut the widow's hair now. That, my uncle CkInan's widow was the last,” she went on. “They all get together in the house [Wolf Bath House, to cut her hair and that of the dead man's ‘sister,’ our informant's mother]…. They took my mother's beautiful hair and put it on a headpiece, cAki’At [dancing headdress]. All the UnEtkAnai grab it. It's a wooden one. It's got sea lion whiskers on the top. They put the hair in front of the sea lion whiskers. It curls up like. My mother's got natural curls. They hate to see that hair wasted. They grab it before it get burn.” (MJ)

The widow (ł ati cawAt, ’masterless woman’) was surrounded by taboos. She was supposed to “keep quiet for 12 days…. She doesn’t dare talk [except to the UnEtkAnai, for example, her husband's sister], but not to her own people,” and then may speak only on matters of importance. (MJ) From the context of this remark, it is evident that the taboo on idle talk began at the time of death and lasted through the 4 days of the wake and funeral, and through the subsequent 8(?) days of mourning. “She was not allowed to speak and no one was allowed to address her for eight days after her husband's death” (Krause, 1956, p. 157).

During this time the widow was also forbidden to work. “They have to tie your fingers together for 10, 12 days to keep you from working, like knitting. You mustn’t get angry with anyone, or talk…. Well, you can talk, but you mustn’t talk the way we’re doing, or tell stories.” (MJ) The same informant said on another occasion, “She dare not touch anything or do any work for 8 days. Then they cut her hair and take off the old clothes and burn up her hair and clothes.” “Then after 8 days, the widow gets new clothes, new bedding—take away the bedding she was using with her husband—gets everything new.”

The burning of hair, bedding, and clothing, and the furnishing of new clothes and blankets certainly suggests removing the contamination of death, although none of my informants expressed this idea.

The woman from Dry Bay said: “See, if your husband died, you can’t use a knife—or a cup, you can’t broke it—your [next] husband going to die. The first time my husband died, that dish, that broke—I lost my husband again [i.e., her second husband]. That's why I believe that Tlingit law. My mother-in-law [mother of the first husband] give me that dish and that cup…. That‘s the one I broke. See, I lost my husband again.”

Presumably it was after the disposal of the corpse that a rock, symbolic of the life of her future husband, was put in the widow's bed. Perhaps it was also at the same time that a rope, representing the lives or her own relatives, was tied around her waist. According to Emmons’ notes, during the wake the widow and all the maternal relatives of the deceased were dressed in old clothes (presumably those which were to be burned and replaced by new garments). All had their faces blackened, a point confirmed by Krause (1956, pp. 156, 158), but about which I secured no information. The widow and male relatives of the dead belted their blankets around their waists with ropes (cf. Krause, 1956, p. 158). Since none of my informants mentioned the old clothes or the rope for anyone but the widow, and since neither Krause nor Emmons mentions the widow's stone, I cannot be sure of the exact period during which these were used. Quite possibly there were differences in custom between Yakutat and southeastern Alaska.

“A woman who has lost her husband has got a big rock to sleep with, for 8 days, so she won’t lose her next husband. They make my mother do that when my father died [1888]. I wonder what that rock is doing in my mother's bed. My aunties on my father's side took it away. I don’t know what they done with it.” MJ further explained that sleeping with the rock was “to make your next husband live longer—like a rock. She [the widowed mother] had the stone beside her for 8 days. It's just a piece of rock.”

A UnEtkAnai woman also tied a rope or belt around the widow's waist which she wore for 8 days. “They tie a rope around the widow and put a stone alongside, so her next husband won’t leave so quick…. I watch my mother and my aunts taking care of CkInan's widow [about 1901 ?]. They got a belt tied around, and after 8 days they take it to the woods…. They put the belt over a stump. They dare not untie it. It means her relations will die off. They took it over her head or down her legs. The belt is made of spruce roots. Now we use any kind of string. We still do it.” (MJ) The widow of a man who died in 1952 wore such a rope.

The widow apparently was also given another rock, often pierced by a hole so that it could be worn on a cord around her neck. “A widow rubs her mouth with it…before raven calls…and puts it beside her. She does this and keeps it for 8 days. Then she puts it in an old stump so her next husband won’t die so quickly.” (MJ) This mouth rubbing with a stone, like that performed by the adolescent girl (p. 521), is also to guard against gossiping which might provoke strife. The stone or rubbing amulet was also used to scratch any itching place, since it was dangerous to use one's fingers.

I do not know whether any such rites were performed by the widower, or by the male relatives of a dead person. Probably they once followed similar procedures and taboos, analogous to those adopted by the peace hostage, although these are now forgotten.

The nephew of a dead man was expected to distribute the meat of any seals (or other game animals?) which he killed to the UnEtkAnai in the village until his uncle's grave had been fixed. This custom was still being observed in 1952, except that anyone in the village was free to ask for the seal meat. The uncle died in March and it was believed that the nephew would continue the distribution of seal meat until the fishing season was over in the fall. In this case, I do not know exactly when the uncle's grave was finished, for the tombstone was being ordered in September when I left Yakutat, and when I saw the grave in the spring of 1954 it had been erected.

The End of Mourning

After the cremation (or burial), perhaps that night or the next, or at the end of the mourning period, or possibly still later, the relatives of the deceased gave a feast to the UnEtkAnai. This was described by Veniaminov (Krause, 1956, p. 163) as one of the three great feasts or potlatches, since in southeastern Alaska in the early part of the last century it seems to have been given only by the relatives when a chief or other notable had died. According to the account cited by Krause (1956, pp. 163–164) it began immediately after the cremation, when the mourners had singed their hair in the cremation fire and returned to the house of the deceased. Here the widowed spouse sat in the circle of guests, while the mourners entered with singed hair and faces smeared with soot, carrying staffs. Then followed 4 evenings of wailing and singing mourning songs, the guests accompanying the relatives. The latter might kill one or two of their own slaves to serve the dead. At the end of the wailing on the fourth night, the relatives would wash and paint their faces, pay their guests, especially those who had helped at the cremation, and the ceremony ended with a feast.

As practiced at Yakutat, the guests seem to have been given small tokens of the rewards which they would receive at a later potlatch. Even if they were paid in full for their services to date, they would have to be paid again when the grave was finished and the monument erected (pp. 609–610).

The only instances described in any detail have all been modern funeral feasts, but from these we may infer that, if possible, the favorite food of the deceased was served to the guests after the funeral and tobacco was smoked, the dead person again enjoying the spiritual counterpart. As already mentioned, it is impossible to distinguish with any certainty between the smoking party held before(?) the disposal of the corpse and the feast or ceremony held afterwards.

After the funeral, some little time, usually several months, would elapse before the grave house was completed or the monument erected. As soon as this was done, the dead man's possessions were divided among his heirs. Included were also the widow's own dishes, feather beds, Chilkat blankets, etc. Most of these went to the nearest maternal relatives of the deceased, but other sib-mates usually received something. If a nephew had been designated as the successor to the dead man he would receive the major share. The heirs in return gave some dishes and clothing of their own to the widow. Although it was painful for the widow to part with these treasured possessions, she could expect to receive valuable gifts at the final potlatch for her husband. This is what happened after the death of adane in 1888.

The widow normally married a relative of her dead husband as soon as the property was divided. It is difficult to know how much freedom of choice she had in the selection, or how much choice the man in the case might have, for I was told of pressure successfully applied to reluctant persons on both sides, as well as of families taking into account the characters and preferences of the two (pp. 490–492). It was, however, rare that the widow married outside the sib of her former husband, for that group still considered her “their wife,” and were ready to defend their rights, especially in the case of a young and attractive woman or a wealthy though elderly woman of noble birth. On the other hand, the widow could still claim support and a new husband from her dead husband's sib-mates. No doubt cases varied greatly, depending upon the personalities of the individuals concerned and upon the number of men available or considered suitable to take the widow. I gather that the White man's condemnation of plural marriages created additional difficulties in cases where the obvious solution, in native eyes, was to add an elderly widow as an honored co-wife.

Trouble also occurred when a widow attempted to retain her husband's property, in harmony with White customs but in defiance of native law. Sometimes this was attempted as a bribe to induce a reluctant nephew to assume his dead uncle's marital obligations. Some women in recent years have been successful in keeping their husband's property, even when this included his sib heirlooms, but in 1912 a woman who tried to retain her husband's things while refusing to marry any of his kinsmen was so severely beaten that she died shortly afterward.

Graves in the 18th Century

The oldest grave monuments of which we have any record are those described by LaPérouse at Lituya Bay in 1786, by Beresford with Dixon at Port Mulgrave in 1787, by Ismailov and Bocharov the following year, and by Malaspina and his party in 1791. Some of these descriptions are fortunately very detailed and we also have the sepia sketches by Suría, (pls. 59–61).

LITUYA BAY, 1786

While searching for the bodies of the lost seamen, LaPérouse's men came upon a native grave monument which he called morai, explaining in a footnote (1799, vol. 1, p. 389): “I have retained the name morai, because it is more suitable than tomb to convey the idea of an exposure to the open air.” This was described as follows:

“Our travellers saw likewise a morai, from which they learned, that these Indians were accustomed to burn the bodies of the deceased, and preserve the head. They found one wrapped in several skins. This monument consists of four tolerably strong posts, supporting a little chamber of planks, in which are reposited the ashes of the dead, enclosed in chests. They opened the chest, unfolded the skins in which the head was wrapped, and, having satisfied their curiosity, replaced every thing with scrupulous exactness, adding presents of iron instruments and beads….” [Ibid, pp. 389–390.]

The natives, though uneasy, took these away (p. 121).

YAKUTAT BAY, 1787 AND 1788

Beresford has described somewhat similar grave monuments seen near the mouth of Ankau Creek, in Yakutat Bay.

“When we came into this harbour [Port Mulgrave], on the 23d of May, our attention was a good deal engaged by the sight of a number of white rails, on a level piece of ground, not far from the creek [Ankau] which I have already observed was situated to the Southward of us. These rails were about a mile and half from the vessel, and appeared, at that distance, to be constructed with such order and regularity, that we concluded them beyond the reach of Indian contrivance, and consequently that they were erected by some civilized nation. Captain Dixon, willing to be satisfied in this particular, took an opportunity of going to the spot, and to his great surprize, found it to be a kind of burying-place, if I may be allowed to call it so, where dead bodies are not deposited in the earth. The manner in which they dispose of their dead is very remarkable: they separate the head from the body, and wrapping them in furs, the head is put into a square box, the body in a kind of oblong chest. At each end of the chest which contains the body, a thick pole, about ten feet long, is drove into the earth in a slanting position, so that the upper ends meet together, and are very firmly lashed with a kind of rope prepared for the purpose.

“About two feet from the top of this arch, a small piece of timber goes across, and is very neatly fitted to each pole: on this piece of timber the box which contains the head is fixed, and very strongly secured with rope; the box is frequently decorated with two or three rows of small shells, and sometimes teeth, which are let into the wood with great neatness and ingenuity; and as an additional ornament, is painted with a variety of colours; but the poles are uniformly painted white. [These must be the “rails” mentioned above.] Sometimes these poles are fixed upright in the earth, and on each side [of] the body, but the head is always secured in the position already described.

“What ceremony is used by these people, in depositing their dead in this manner, we never could learn, as nothing of the kind happened during our stay in the harbour.” [Beresford, 1789, pp. 175–176.]

One would assume from the above description that the decapitated but uncremated corpse had actually been seen, yet it would be more consonant with all known Tlingit customs if the body had been cremated, as described by LaPérouse, even though the head, or a head, were separately preserved in a box. Furthermore, the construction of the grave monument does not quite correspond to those seen in Lituya Bay in 1786 or at the same place on Ankau Creek in 1791 (see below). The taking and keeping of trophy or memorial heads, although perhaps less common in more recent times than the preservation of the scalp, is well documented (p. 584).

Near Sitka, Beresford saw a large cave in which was “a square box, with a human head in it, deposited in the manner already described at Port Mulgrave; the box was very beautifully ornamented with small shells, and seemed to have been left there very recently, being the only one in the place. This circumstance seems to show, that the natives of this place dispose of their dead in the same manner as at Port Mulgrave, but probably make choice of caves for that purpose, in preference to the open air.” [Beresford, 1789, p. 181.]

It should be noted that no mention was made of bodies or of calcined bones in this cave. The head in the box was therefore a trophy or memento like those more recently found in a cave near Sitka (de Laguna, 1930).

When Ismailov and Bocharov visited Yakutat Bay in 1788 they apparently saw native burial places, for Shelikhov reports, on information received from them:

“They burn their dead, place the ashes in a chest, and suspend it on poles, called Imilasaby” (Coxe, 1803, p. 327). Although this description certainly fits Tlingit and Yakutat practice as known in more recent times, the word for the grave monument is not Tlingit or Eyak. Nor is the word Athabaskan, as far as I know.

Unfortunately, Colnett does not describe any graves at Yakutat.

YAKUTAT BAY, 1791

The cemetery on the Ankau near Port Mulgrave was described by Malaspina and Suría in several passages.

“Having made an excursion to the nearby island, we came to a little one [islet], but of an agreeable amenity; it was covered with grass, many-hued with flowers, although the greater number of plants which were encountered were strawberry patches with fruit very little different in taste from those cultivated in the gardens of Spain. This spot was used for the deposit of the bodies, as it seemed to us, of persons of distinction. We saw three monuments: one of these was shaped like a large and horrible figure, holding in its claws a box in which we believed were the ashes of some personage [pls. 60, 61]; another which the chief told us contained the ashes of his father, and which was formed of two pillars which supported a box, about one vara [2.8 feet] in size, in which were calcined bones [pl. 59]. The ditches which were in front of these monuments, and the half-burned timbers which were found in them, inclined us to believe that which the natives gave us to understand, that they cremated the dead, like some other Indians of the coast.” [Malaspina, 1849, p. 289.]

[On June 30, Don Felipe Bausá] “had moreover penetrated somewhat up the river close by [Ankau Creek], and visited, not without much admiration, the graveyard mentioned by Captain Dixon. The circumstances surrounding this place are all so curious and capable of casting so much light on the religious principles of these people that we would have been guilty not to have visited it.

“Accordingly on the following morning [July 1], Don Thomás Suria, Don José Espinosa and other officers went by boat directly to the river and a little after nine were in the indicated spot. Opportunely four or five natives appeared who were wandering in the nearby fields, looking for strawberries to eat. They appeared, in truth, to be of the lower class, and in consequence, little apt to satisfy the curiosity, but as the principal object of this excursion was to collect for the Royal Cabinet something from the sepulchres, this company was more opportune at the time than would have been that of the local harbor, who, either from motives of fear or of veneration, perhaps might not have permitted the execution of our plans.

[No para.] “After first measuring them, Don Thomaś Suria drew in perspective the posts and beams that enclosed a large habitation that seemd to be intended for the winter. Then they were occupied for a long time for the same objectives with the ancient sepulchre and finally with the newer one, which, because of its location, ornamentation and good preservation, could not do less than cause wonder and admiration. Finally, not offending the natives, since they had been provided with gifts, they took out and sent to the boat one of the boxes that had been in the ancient sepulchre. It was lightly ornamented on the outside with the usual little snail shells (caracoles) [i.e., opercula]; inside it was another smaller box, in which were found, enclosed in a kind of small basket (esportilla), some few calcined bones, mostly pulverized. Nevertheless, the view of these sepulchres which accompanies this narrative will give a better idea of its different parts and properties than could be comprehended from a difficult and tedious description. We will only state that we understood from the natives that these sepulchres were solely for the Ankaus or reigning family, and that there was no doubt that the bodies were burned around the huge figure, since, besides the indication to this effect by the natives, they saw three or four excavated little ditches, the size of a man, in which were covered with some planks and stones the charcoal or wood which had served as the pyre. We shall speak later at greater length on this interesting part of the customs of these people, and will venture our conjectures on the interpretation of what we were able to observe.” [Malaspina, 1885, p. 161.]

[On the trip to Disenchantment Bay, Malaspina's party examined Knight Island, or the “Isle of Pines.”] “On its south shore, there could be seen other sepulchres, identical with those which we had visited in the vicinity of the port.” [Ibid., p. 164.]

[The report later returns to a discussion and description of these grave monuments, adding some further details.]

“Among the many reasons and positive data which dispelled all doubts as to the succession [of chieftainship] being hereditary in the family of the Ankau, and the distinction which it merited, our attention was particularly drawn to the repository of the dead of this same family, which we examined with great care and the peculiarities of which were represented with great accuracy by the painter Cardero [sic; pls. 60, 61]. We have never been able to understand whether the colossal monster represented an idol or whether it was only a frightful reminder of the ravages of death. We were led to believe the former when we considered that there were in its immediate vicinity several pyres on which various bodies had been cremated, and in the casket which was held under its claws or hands, one could see a bowl-shaped basket, the crown of a European hat, a wolf skin, and a piece of board. The height of the monster was not less than ten and a half French feet; the whole was made of pine wood; the ornaments on the box were small shells inlaid in the same wood, and the coloring was of red hematite, with the exception of the teeth, the claws, and the upper part of the head, which was painted white and black. The two repositories at the sides held in their upper boxes (caja) two baskets, one larger than the other, made well fast, the contents of which it was not easy for us to discover. The lower box was covered with a few loose boards, itself loose on the ground, and contained a small basket with a few calcined bones, broken into such tiny pieces that it was scarcely possible to distinguish that they were parts of the cranium and of the first two vertebrae of the neck. [Footnote: One of these boxes with the small basket and the bones was sent to the Royal Cabinet.]

“The face of the monster looked to the east. Its name (according to some plebian natives who were with us), Iukitchetch [yu-kitc-etc, or yu-kit-xetc, “this–?—], and the two monuments at the sides corresponded to two sons of the present Ankau, as he himself informed us on our return from this excursion.

[No para.] “Even more remarkable was another repository [pl. 59], no more than two musket shots from those already described, and even though the function was the same, to shelter a small casket inside and to elevate another a greater distance above the ground, its ornamentation and painting better furnished, the hair which hung from either end of the poles which served to support the box, and the high posterior peak probably placed there to remind the passer-by of the person whose ashes were deposited there, all gave to this place an admirable prominence which then acquired a new degree of beauty with the pleasant environs surrounding it. Some officers of the Descubierta who visited this site, accompanied by the same Ankau, were able to ascertain that it was the repository of one of his wives. Don Antonio Tova, on the other hand, found a similar group of monuments, facing in the same direction and with the same monster, on the Isle of Pines [Isla Pineda, Knight Island], which finally led us to believe that each branch or family makes its own particular monument, which made of wood and afterwards neglected, in a few years falls victim to weather and time.” [Malaspina, 1885, p. 346.]

[Suría has also left us a description of the cemetery.]

“In their burials they keep some system and put up monuments to the posterity of the good memory of their dead. The geographer [Don Felipe Bausá] gave us an account of the various monuments which he had seen on the bank of a river [Ankau Creek] by which he had entered to take a certain bearing, a river which was quite close to the anchorage. One morning the commander arranged for us to go in the boat to look at these monuments which no voyager had seen. [See, however, Beresford with Dixon, 1788.] We therefore went and saw their sepulchres in this form. A little bit away from the bank of the river, or rather arm of the sea (because this enters into it and by signs the Indians even gave us to understand that it divided the island and passed to the other side of the great sea [either by an opening into the Ankau lagoons which is now closed, or via Summit Lake and Lost River], there is….” [Suría mentions the strawberries, wildcelery, etc. (Wagner, 1936, p. 257).]

“Near these on the right-hand side there were two square boxes raised from the soil 2 yards and held up by four pillars, also square. Of these boxes that on the left-hand side had on the face of it to the front various masks and other signs of which we do not know the significance. At the foot of these boxes, that is, on the surface of the ground there are others, which were those that we explored and inside found a calcined skeleton between some mats. This box with all it contained we took on board.” [Ibid., pp. 257–258.]

Farther along was the frame of the winter house with decorated house posts, and the chief seemed to indicate by gestures a potlatch or ceremony connected with the funeral (involving the sacrifice of slaves?)

From these accounts and Surí's sketches, we know that near the mouth of the Ankau, probably very near the site of the present ANB cemetery, there were the remains of cremations and at least four monuments in which the ashes were placed. The most famous of these was the figure of a Bear, holding a box under his paws (pls. 60, 61). In style, this figure is perhaps not too unlike the Bear Post carved at Yakutat about 1875. Like the latter, the grave monument seems to display a Teqwedi crest. On each side was a box or open-sided shelter raised on four posts, with a box on the ground below. I gather that the monument on the left was the older of the two, and from it the Spaniards took the lower box. These two monuments were believed to contain the ashes of the Ankau's sons, who would, of course, belong to the Eagle-Wolf moiety, since the Ankau was a Raven man. Lastly, there was a grave monument (pl. 59), variously ascribed to the Ankau‘s father or to his wife, which might well have contained the ashes of both, since they were likely to have belonged to the same sib. This consisted of two boxes, the upper one carved with the face of a Bear, very like that carved on the petroglyph from the Ankau lagoon (de Laguna et al., 1964. pl. 3, b). This is supported on each side by two posts or planks carved to represent Killerwhale fins, and decorated with hair like dance paddles. The lower box rests on the ground, but is surmounted by a crest hat or helmet, apparently representing a Wolf, from which rises an exaggeratedly tall pile of cylinders. These monuments were painted: red, black, and white are the colors mentioned.

Not only do these grave monuments indicate that the Bear and Killerwhale were crests already represented at Yakutat before the end of the 18th century, but that they were rendered in the style characteristic of Yakutat art (and Tlingit art in general) of a later period. Moreover, the placing of these monuments at the Ankau and also on the southern shore of Knight Island would support native tradition associating the Ankau graveyard with the Teqwedi (see below, p. 544) and the Knight Island site with the Teqwedi leader, atgawet. It is a great pity that no graves of the Raven moiety were mentioned by Malaspina or Surí.

Graves of the Late 19th Century and Modern Times

The oldest grave houses that contained the ashes of the dead were described by informants as boxlike structures raised on four posts, like caches. There were also posts, presumably carved with sib crests, that were hollowed out behind to contain the ashes. Those of each sib were grouped together, usually behind the lineage houses of the sib, so that the ‘village of the dead’ (ee qawu ’ani) duplicated in its arrangement the village of the living. Only the corpse of the shaman was carried farther away.

By the 1880's, modifications had been introduced in the construction of the grave house. It was apparently built on the ground and therefore bore a closer resemblance to an actual dwelling. One such grave house was built by adane Johnstone at Situk for his dead mother and placed close behind his own Coward House. His daughter described the grave house as like a little house with glass windows. Inside one could see the camphorwood chest containing the dead woman's charred bones, and the things which she had used in life, including her baskets and dishes with food. There were also Chilkat blankets hung around. These things had been repurchased from the members of the opposite moiety to whom they had evidently been given for funeral services, or who might have rightfully claimed them when they were to have been burned. “He was his mother's favorite boy, and his mother was scared of just the least bit of thing, that's why he built that house and put her bones in there. You just look in and see nothing but that fancy trunks.” The other chests in the grave house held the ashes of adanes sister and of his maternal uncle. Other grave houses at that time were often surrounded by a fence, and the man had been planning to add a fence to this when he died in 1888.

“Before that, they put a fence around the house. And some poor people can’t afford a house, put up a fence. And some people can’t afford a fence and put just a wooden cross.” (MJ) The last obviously refers to the practice of Christian burial, which was just being introduced with the establishment of the mission.

Unfortunately we have no published descriptions of native graves or funeral practices at Yakutat after those of Malaspina and Suría until the end of the 19th century. For example, Seton-Karr (1887, p. 132) mentions only that the body of a child who died of arsenic poisoning in 1886 was cremated. He apparently did not witness the performance, and has nothing to say about the funerals of the adults who died a few days later from the same cause.

Mrs. Shepard (1889, p. 228) gives only a very brief description of the graveyard on Khantaak Island in 1889:

“These Indians cremate their dead. We saw several little houses like sentry-boxes, with a window on one side, in which were set, sometimes one and two, often three, elaborately ornamented leathern chests, in which we were told the ashes of the dead reposed. In one more pretentious than the rest there was a small clock; it was not running and I could not imagine their idea in putting it there.”

The same type of grave house was observed at Kayak on Wingham Island in 1906 or 1907, although by that time the natives of Controller Bay were inhuming the dead. Thus, Higginson (1906, p. 20) notes:

“There is an Indian graveyard at Kayak that will repay a visit. Small houses are built over the graves, and through the windows are to be seen dishes, provisions, lamps and other articles for the use of the dead. Houses, fences and Russian crosses are all painted white.”

When adane died in 1888, the mission at Yakutat had just been started, and he was apparently buried, not cremated, for his daughter mentioned seeing him in his coffin, and later was active in erecting a handsome monument over his grave. This led to a misunderstanding with his nephew, Sitka Ned, since it was the duty and privilege of the latter, not of the man's child, to pay for the furnishing of his uncle's grave. adane must have been one of the first to be interred, for cremation continued to be practiced for a few years longer.

There always seems to have been the feeling that the dead should rest near the houses where they had lived, and so now, as formerly, bodies are brought home for burial, sometimes from considerable distances. As the older villages became deserted, their sites were often used as burial places for those who had lived there. At the same time, other cemeteries were established near the newer villages. There were presumably cemeteries adjacent to all settlements where lineage houses were erected, although for many of these nothing now remains to mark the location.

Old cemeteries, no longer used, are at the abandoned villages on the west side of the mouth of Dry Bay, at Situk, on Khantaak Island, and also on the hill between the Old Village and the mission. The original graveyard on Khantaak Island, which probably contained both cremated ashes and burials, was at Point Turner, south of the village on Port Mulgrave. This was washed away during the great earthquake of September 1899. Many of the coffins or boxes of ashes were rescued and buried at the village, which by that time was abandoned (pp. 287–288). The village site is now crowded with graves, the last of which date from 1921. Here the dead are grouped according to sib, as was reported to have been the custom in still earlier times. From north to south, there are the graves of Teqwedi, Kwacqwan, Tł’UknaAdi, and ałyI-Kagwantan, probably corresponding to the original alinement of houses, although the Tł’UknaAdi were said not to have had a house in the village, and the ałyI-Kagwantan house is reported only by Emmons (p. 319). The graves of a few White men are clustered somewhat apart near the southern end of the cemetery.

The graveyard on the hill between the Old Village and the mission (pi. 31) seems to have been used during the same period as that on the island opposite, although no such clear grouping of graves could be observed, perhaps because of the nature of the terrain. Most of the graves which could be identified were those of Kwacqwan, although there were a few belonging to the Teqwedi and to the Sitka Kagwantan. One of the latter is empty because the nephews of the dead man took his body back to Sitka the year after burial.

There was also a small Kwacqwan cemetery on the flat below, near the shore, which was destroyed when the road was built from Yakutat to the Old Village and to the lagoon beyond. Some of the monuments, including one or two that formerly stood near their houses in the Old Village in memory of persons who had drowned, were moved to the point north of the Old Village near the turn of the road to the lagoon (pl. 30). These are dated from 1902 to 1948.

When the Yakutat Camp of the Alaska Native Brotherhood was founded in 1921, the sandy point at the mouth of the Ankau was adopted as a common cemetery for the Yakutat people (pls. 32, 33). The point is visible both from the Old Village and from the modern town. Although during World War II there was an Army bridge across Ankau Creek and a road running all around Phipps Peninsula, it now can be reached only by boat. Very near the site of the modern cemetery was the settlement noted by Dixon, Malaspina, and Vancouver, and the graveyard described by Beresford and sketched by Suría. One would gather that the striking monuments seen by Malaspina's party in 1791 had already fallen by 1794 (since they were not mentioned by Vancouver), although this seems unlikely. At any event, I was not able to discover any trace of older occupation near the ANB cemetery. Although my informants had no trustworthy recollections of any tradition about the older site, they did report that a Teqwedi shaman had been put into a grave house near the ANB cemetery. The oldest dated monument is that of the reputed centenarian, Mrs. Bessey, who died in 1916, and who is said to have been buried here because she wished to be near the grave house of her mother's brother, the shaman. This would suggest that the Teqwedi had used Ankau Point as a burial place ever since the eighteenth century. In the modern cemetery, however, there is no segregation by sib, but the graves of biological families are grouped together.

At these cemeteries can be traced the changing styles in graves. All of the older sites have grave houses, built of commercial lumber, with gable roofs but without doors or windows and apparently without floors. These show that the custom of erecting grave houses survived until comparatively recently, although the house was built over the interred remains and did not hold a chest of ashes or shelter a coffin inside. Some graves were surrounded by a wooden fence, often built of commercial turned posts, like those of a banister. At Khantaak Island there was a group enclosed in a wrought iron fence.

A slightly newer feature, introduced about 1900(?), was that of covering the grave with a solid slab of cement. Many of these slabs are unmarked and could not be identified by informants, and many others that were identified seem to have been made some time after the original burial. Such slabs may cover a single grave or those of several relatives. Some have initials or a name spelled out with round pebbles, occasionally with marbles or beads, or an inscription that was cut into the cement before it hardened. MJ claimed that it was her mother and a baby sister who were the first to have cement put over their graves, and that her husband, a White man, had gone “down below” (southeastern Alaska or the States) to get the cement.

At about the same time, or perhaps a little later, marble tombstones or monuments were imported from the States. Again, MJ claims that the first ones were procured by her husband for her father and mother, but erected some time after their deaths. Such monuments usually have an inscription, but it is not always possible to discover the identity of the person or persons named, especially when a native name is transliterated into English spelling. Quite frequently, several names appear on a single shaft, and several shafts may be set on one large cement slab. A number of these stone monuments are known to have been erected long after the original burial, perhaps replacing an earlier wooden grave house. Some of the first marble monuments are said to have been carved with sib crests, copied from wooden models sent to the stonecutters in Portland or made up by the latter from verbal instructions. Most of these early stone figures have now disappeared. They obviously took the place of the carved mortuary columns that held ashes, or the carved wooden figures on grave houses.

The grave of adane Johnstone (1888) on Khantaak Island, originally had a grave house and fence, and two of the carved posts from Coward House at Situk were believed to have been left on the grave. Later, the grave was covered with cement and was said to have had a stone marker surmounted with a large Bear, the Teqwedi crest. This tombstone cost $400 (MJ). Still later, this fell down and was replaced by a rather plain but impressive shaft.

The modern cemetery at Ankau lacks grave houses, and the graves are either covered over or walled around with cement. Most have tombstones of conventional type, those for children being frequently decorated with cherubs or lambs. Within the past few years (since about 1950) some monuments of brown marble have been set up.

The most elaborate grave house was one seen at Situk in 1949. It later collapsed and the debris had been entirely cleared away by 1952. This was a small house of commercial lumber with gable roof, glass windows on four sides, and a door at the end with a china knob. On the wooden floor inside was the cement box or tomb of Situk Jim, who died in 1912, identified by JIM spelled out on the top with pebbles set into the cement. Beside it was the unmarked tomb of his brother, Situk Harry, who died in 1945.

In the cemetery between the Old Village of Yakutat and the mission, there is said to have been the large grave house of Yakutat Chief Yaodaqet (II), mother's brother of Chief George. This once had a large wooden Raven on the roof, but now no traces of grave house or of the carving remain. It is said that the Raven was sold to some museum or collector. (Cf. pl. 167.)

Only a few marble monuments with crest figures were seen. One of these, on Khantaak Island, was a fallen and broken shaft that had been carved to represent an Eagle in a nest on top of a stump. It was incribed “SHORTEY CREETHE 1891–1909,” whom I was unable to identify, and “KITTIE CHARLEY 1875–1909,” the Teqwedi wife of Sitka Charley, head of the Tł’UknaAdi Whale House in Sitka. On the point just north of the Old Village, are a number of stone monuments to Kwacqwan men, which had been moved to the site from their original locations (pl. 30). Two of these gravestones are squared monuments each with a Raven carved on one face in low relief. These are to Bear Bit Billy, “BILLEY,” Chief of Fort House, who died in 1902, and to Jack Shakokon, a son of Ca-kuwakan of Coward House, who died in 1912. In the modern cemetery at Ankau Point the tombstone of Jack Ellis, who died in 1952, is incised with a figure of the Tł’UknaAdi Frog, in recognition of his hope to build a Frog House at Yakutat (pl. 33).

There also seems to have been the custom of erecting a monument to those who had died by drowning, usually as near to the scene as possible, but I do not know how old this practice was. A Teqwedi man, the brother-in-law of Chief Yaodaqet (II), drowned in the Arhnklin River some time in the last century. About 1900 a wooden “flag” was set up near the mouth of the river in his memory. This was a wooden placard, about 6 by 4 feet, painted white, with his name and dates of birth and death. The “flag” was attached by ring bolts to a pole 10 feet high, so that it could swing in the wind (SJ). This was not the first monument of its kind, for Schwatka in 1886 (p. 76) noted a high pole with a weathervane at the top, which had been erected near the outlet of Lost River from Summit Lake, in memory of a young Indian who had died there some years before in a terrible storm. About 1896, I was told, two Kwacqwan brothers drowned in the Ankau, and a wooden cross with their names was put up here.

The same custom has continued up to the present time. A marble shaft, on which two hands are incised as if clasped in friendship, was erected in the Old Village, in memory of Sitka Ned and his wife, both prominent builders of named houses (Teqwedi and Kwacqwan), who were presumed lost from their boat in 1926. The monument was later shifted to the point north of the Old Village (pl. 30). A most impressive marble shaft stands at the mouth of the Ankau for Henry Adams (Kwacqwan) and Norman Lott (Eskimo-English), who drowned here in 1948 and whose bodies were never recovered. The setting up of such markers, like the making of graves and erecting of tombstones was, of course, the responsibility of the maternal kin of the deceased who paid the members of the opposite moiety for doing the actual work.

Modern Funerals

Changes in the character of the cemeteries accompanied other changes in funeral customs. Thus, while clothing, including valuable Chilkat blankets and other ceremonial costumes, were once burned with the body, it later became customary to inter these with the dead. The grave of Situk Jim is said to contain three to four thousand dollars worth of clothing and regalia. According to a credible White informant, it is still the custom to deposit food (canned goods, cookies, soft drinks) and sometimes a suitcase (presumably full of clothing) in the grave. One man told me that he intended to be buried with his crest blanket, in order to prevent quarrels among his heirs. Flowers, often expensive wreaths and hothouse blooms, are put on the new grave. Apparently food is still set into the fire for the deceased at some funerals.

When a woman died as a result of a tragic accident in the early spring of 1954 a modern funeral could be observed. Her body was brought back to her mother's house, where both relatives and female members of the UnEtkAnai gathered. The latter dressed the body in new clothing, and wrapped it in a soft new blanket. A little later in the day it was brought to the ANB Hall, where it lay flat on a stretcher at the back of the hall, the face covered with a silk scarf. Here the body was kept for 3 days, the UnEtkAnai keeping vigil in the hall, where they were fed by relatives of the deceased. The close relatives of the dead woman were also in the hall during this time. While some of the UnEtkAnai might sit up all night, singing old songs and playing such games as checkers, Chinese checkers or Monopoly and exchanging stories, others were given blankets and matresses on the floor where they could rest. There was also a public meeting in the ANB Hall, the first evening after the death (Sunday), at which the minister spoke, and prominent men of both moieties lamented the dead and preached sermons about the death. Meanwhile, a skilled carpenter among the unEtkAnai men was making the coffin. On the fourth morning, after the body had been put into the coffin and her sisters had posed beside it for the photograph they asked me to take, the coffin was carried to the church for a funeral service, at the conclusion of which the face was uncovered for the last time, and almost all the townspeople filed by to look. It is not the custom for the relatives or sibmates to accompany the coffin to the cemetery; rather they take leave of the deceased at the door of the church, and the UnEtkAnai pall-bearers carry the coffin to a skiff waiting at the landing place below and ferry it across to Ankau Point. Here they dig the grave and bury the coffin.

It is still customary to have a feast for the dead the night after the funeral, given by the bereaved to the members of the opposite moiety. At this party the favorite foods of the deceased may be served, and those guests who had performed funeral services (caring for the corpse, making the coffin, keeping vigil, attending to the grave) are given small gifts, kerchiefs, yarn, etc., as tokens of the greater rewards which they will receive when full payment is made at a final potlatch. The latter will not be held until after the grave has been covered with cement and the tombstone set up, or they may be paid at a small potlatch as soon as cash becomes available at the end of the fishing season, with a second potlatch or payment made for finishing the grave. I believe that the old smoking feast for the dead is now combined with the feast after the funeral, for I was told of a smoking feast held in the cemetery for a woman who died in 1935. On this occasion, cigarettes were passed around in a large dish, and members of the opposite moiety were expected to smoke for the benefit of the deceased's spirit. Now, it would be customary to hold the party in the ANB Hall or in a restaurant in Yakutat.

“The last time when they were feasting for Jack [Ellis, who died in March, 1952], I made Siwash bread boiled in oil, and old-fashioned candy. They [the speaker's sibmates] liked it so much before I give it away to opposite tribe, they pretty near eat it up! Anything your old mother, or sister like to eat [referring to a hypothetical relative who had just been buried], you put it in the fire, call their name and they get it, but not too close, or they burn their hands.” (MJ)

The expenses of funerals are heavy. Thus, at a recent one the relatives of the deceased spent $160 just to feed the watchers at the wake. The Alaska Native Sisterhood, however, regularly raises money through Bingo games and this fund is available to help defray costs. In this case the coffin was paid for by the fund. For another recent funeral, the Sisterhood provided flowers and refreshments for the first night. For the subsequent nights, the deceased's sibmates paid for the food and coffee, although the Sisterhood fetched the things from the store and charged them to the family. Sometimes, the relatives may order a commercial coffin flown in by air, but they are usually made by an expert native carpenter. The tombstone is always as handsome as the family can afford, often costing several hundred dollars. In addition, there must be special payments made to those who erected it, as well as to all those who assisted at the funeral. For example, the monument to Henry Adams and Norman Lott, whose bodies were never found, is said to have cost $3500. Payments are usually made at a potlatch to which all members of the moiety of the deceased make a contribution, so that every guest receives something. In some cases, the workers may be paid at the graveside when the grave is finished, yet they would expect to receive something more when a potlatch is given.

Widows and bereaved mothers now wear black kerchiefs on their heads as a symbol of mourning, and the former, as already mentioned, may also wear a string around the waist for the ritual 8 days. The widow's hair is no longer cut. She apparently resumes her usually bright-colored head scarf when her husband's grave has been finished and she is ready to remarry. Elderly women who have lost their husbands and other relatives and who do not intend to marry again continue to wear the black kerchiefs. The end of mourning would normally come after the tombstone had been erected on the grave and the potlatch or “party” was given for this. At such a feast, the deceased's property might be distributed to his heirs.

Such a funeral party was given in the fall of 1952, marking the end of mourning for a TłUknaAdi man who had died that spring. This was held in a restaurant, the TłUknAdi providing the food. At this “potlatch,” there were complicated transfers of money, for the Kagwantan widow distributed her husband's estate among his sibmates, plus moneys which the Kagwantan had collected to increase these payments. Then, the dead man's sibmates as hosts paid the members of the opposite moiety for their services at the funeral and for covering the grave with cement, so that, in effect, much of the money was returned to the original donors.

The widow said that she had known her husband would want his funeral to be conducted in the old way, which was why she had arranged this. It had cost her $1500, that is, through the distribution of his estate and her own contributions to his sibmates. It is not clear whether the cost of the tombstone which was ordered at that time was included in this amount. Apparently she did pay $800 for the stone (including transportation and the subsequent cost of erection?), although according to the older notions this should have been the charge of his sib. While she mentioned specific sums, it is impossible to work out the full amounts involved and just how the payments were made. For example, the deceased had left an account of $3200 in a bank, of which the lawyer got $1200. Of the remainder, the widow had given away or loaned other sums to her husband's nephew and to other close relatives in his own sib, apparently prior to the funeral party, although this was not clear. There was said to have been left only $375 for the widow and $185 for the son. This inheritance followed Territorial law, not the old-style native pattern under which the widow and son would have received nothing, so it is obvious that the distributions of money to the dead man's sibmates were, in effect, a substitute for the inheritance they would have received in former days.

Thus, at least two men and two women in the dead man's sib who were considered close relations (cousins), each received $100 at the party; other sibmates were given sums of $50. All the dead man's clothes were given away, and the widow put the money with the garments to be distributed. The TłUknaAdi are said to have “fought over the money—old way,” although this was not further explained.

In addition, the Kagwantan had gotten together $250 to give away. To this sum, the widow herself contributed $100, the son $50, and others $5 to $10 each. Apparently the money was handled by the widow at this party (cf. pp. 610, 640–642).

Then the TłUknaAdi, as hosts and debtors, “paid the opposite side for taking care of the funeral.” The TłUknaAdi were “supposed to stand all the expense of the funeral,” but the Kwacqwan can also (would also) contribute, the amounts depending on how much they could afford and how closely related they might be to the deceased. I did not learn how much was paid by the TłUknaAdi for the funeral.

As in former days, the graveyards are never visited except in connection with a funeral or to work on a grave. However, Memorial Day has come to be a community feast for the dead. In preparation, wreaths are ordered from Juneau and the women make boxes full of beautiful artificial flowers. Everyone goes to the cemetery at Ankau Point early in the afternoon, to weep over the recently departed, and to clear away the weeds from the graves and decorate them with flowers (pl. 32). Quantities of food have been brought along, and families eat together, sitting on the graves of their relatives, sharing cake and soft drinks with their friends. In the late afternoon, the minister will lead the group in singing hymns before they go home. In 1954, one native man who had been converted to the Church of Christ stretched out his arms and “spoke with tongues.”

In the Memorial Day observances there is, I believe, a real communion with the dead, and the old custom of feeding the dead at the fire during a potlatch was compared to these. Formerly on Memorial Day, when people went to the cemetery, “they used to have kind of a party there, a long time ago. We eat there and they talk back and forth, but not this time” (1954). Apparently the leading men spoke as if it were the oldstyle feast for the dead. On Memorial Day too, flowers and food may be dropped into the water for those who had drowned. “For drowned people they put the food in the water—even lunch buckets, thermos bottles, and all…. My mother, before she died, she reminds us of our little sister that got drowned. We always got flowers and put them in the water on Decoration Day, and Mother puts a dish of grub in the water. They put in anything they used to eat—the dead person. Nowadays they put in cigarettes, candy, soda pop. In olden times they used to put in dried berries.”

[1] Dr. George Plafker informs me that these coal-bearing rocks are most probably the stratigraphic equivalent of the Kulthieth Formation farther west, and are probably of Eocene age.

[2] I have taken Anderson, 1959, as a guide to the scientific botanical terms in modern use, and have translated the plant names from Coville, 1895, according to Anderson‘s system. Sharpless, 1958, has been very useful for popular names. I have also consulted Fernow, 1902, and Stair and Pennell, 1946, but am not attempting to list all of the plants of the Yakutat area. Those items starred (*) are represented in the 1952 collection made by my field associate, Dr. Catharine McCellan.

[3] In Boas’ Tlingit vocabulary of 1891, as rendered into more modern orthography, runningpine, Lycopodium clavatum, is ‘deer's belt,’ qo’kan si’gi [ùwáán sigi]; fern is tsâts; moss, Parmelia, is e’one; moss, Cychrus longicollis, is “woman in the wood,” as toyik ca (’às tuyik ca]; shelf fungus, Polyporus, is “tree biscuit,” or astaqa’di [’as taqadi].

[4] According to Harrington, the dwarf dogwood is k’aykhaétł’kh while the deerberry is tłhéeť, ‘circular.’

[5] Boas (1891) lists the following berries, as rendered into more modern orthography: early blueberry, Vaccinium ovalifolium, kanaťa’; bog blueberry, V. uliginosum, tika’xkw; mountain cranberry, V. vitis-idea, negu’n; crowberry, Empetrum nigrum, xitłte. The latter, of course, is found only on higher slopes. Highbush cranberry, Viburnum acerifolium, kwAwe’. This last is probably V. edule.

Harrington calls the highbush cranberry (V. pauciflorum i.e., V. edule) the “white currant” (cwax); and also mentions the swamp cranberry, Occycoccus microcarpus (cétck khatłhéekuu).

[6] According to Harrington, the leaves of both Rumex fenestratus and R. occidentalis (tł’aak‘wat) were boiled and eaten.

[7] This word sounds suspiciously like the name for skunk cabbage (atł’). Harrington recorded tchuukhán for ‘grass’ in general. Boas (1917, p. 126, from Swanton) gives tcuAn for ‘brush’ and for ‘grass.’

[8] This section is based on Dufresne, 1946; Rhode and Barker, 1953; Logier and Toner, 1961; and above all upon Hall and Kelson, 1959, whose classifications and distributions have been followed as closely as possible.

[9] This section is based primarily upon Gabrielson and Lincoln, 1959, plus the observations published by Shortt, 1939. Peterson, 1941, was consulted in the field, and valuable information was secured later from Rhode and Barker, 1953, and Lincoln, 1950.

[10] Boas, (1917, p. 129) renders the heron as łá; and (1891) the loon as cuwa’n, and “Colymbus qlacialis,” evidently a grebe, Podice-ps sp., as qAë’it (to modernize the orthography).

Naish and Story (1963, p. 21) give the words kugéet (kAit) and yeekugaxee (yikAài) for the loon, and cháx (tcá) for grebe or “diving bird.”

[11] Naish and Story (1963, p. 21) identify kin (qin) simply as “brant (small grouse).”

[12] My identification of this bird as the hooded merganser proved wrong since Naish and Story (1963, p. 20) give the name hinyik l’eixee (hinyik ł‘ei) to the water ouzel.

Naish and Story (1963, p. 20) give the following terms for ducks: the forms, as written in my orthography, are in parentheses. Duck, in general, is simply gáxw (gáxw). Bufflehead is hintuk x’wús’gee (hintAk wÁi); flathead duck, s’elusheesh (EłAcic, or perhaps EłAC-’ic); goldeneye, hinyik gáxoo (hinyik gáxu); harlequin duck, s’ós’ (u); mallard, kinduchoonèit (kindA-tcunét); old squaw, ya.a.oonéh (ya’a’unE); scoter, wukkuls’ 6ox’ gáxw (wAqkAłú gáxw) or luk‘eech'wóh (łAkitwÚ).

[13] Naish and Story (1963, pp. 21–22) call the “owl with ear tufts” tsísw (tsÍsw) or dzÍsk’w (dzÍsw); the owl “without ear tufts” k’úkw (Ákw); and a “small owl” tlénx’ sh-x‘unèit (tłÉn c-Anet) or xéex (í). The first two names correspond to those recorded by Boas.

[14] Krause (1956, pp. 257, 259) gives this name (ss-kantschádschi) to the brown creeper (see p. 48), and calls the waxwing hunk, which is evidently the same name as ‘moving on the north wind,’ and which I tentatively suggest might be the name for thrush. Unfortunately, Naish and Story (1963, p. 23) apply the name usx’àn shách‘ee (‘Asà cáti) to an unidentified “green bird.”

[15] I was able to make recordings, May 23–27, 1954, of the varied thrush, song sparrow, yellow-crowned sparrow, yellow warbler, and robin, after they had been silent during a spell of rainy weather. The tape, 54 Reel 6, Side 1, is deposited in the Folklore Division of the Library of Congress, as well as in the American Philosophical Society Library.

[16] Material in this section is based upon Clemens and Wilby (1961), Rhode and Barker (1953), and Dufresne (1946).

[17] Scientific information is based upon identifications in Johnson and Snook, 1927; upon identifications of shells at Knight Island (Laguna et al, 1964); and upon Rhode and Barker, 1953. The seaweeds marked with an asterisk (*) were collected by Catharine McClellan.

[18] Dr. Michael E. Krauss suggests that Yakutat may be an Eyak word [di.]ya’-guda’d, ‘salt-water mouth-of,’ if one allows for the queer dropping of the di.-(letter of December 20, 1966).

[19]This may be the Eyak ‘it extends across (something)’ ya-ta.s’i.‘ah (Michael Krauss, letter of December 20, 1966).

[20] Although this name is pronounced giyAg in Eyak, it is almost certainly not of Eyak origin, but is more probably Chugach, according to Michael Krauss (letter of December 20, 1966). See also the same name applied to a place on Dolgoi Island, on the upper Situk River (p. 79), and to Wingham Island (p. 103).

[21] Dr. Michael E. Krauss informs me that this word does not mean ‘burned up’ inEyak, unless the original form was qi’qu’ lAyah/lAya’ meaning ‘place where plural things are put on the fire,’ although this is not a form which he has encountered in Cordova Eyak. He suggests that the name might be derived from a garbled uu.nłayAh, ‘(something's) tooth/teeth.’

[22] Dr. Michael Krauss advises that ła’dAqAqa.ł would be the correct Eyak form for ‘is biting a glacier.’ In the name recorded the dA-is missing, the mark of a d-class noun like ła’ ‘glacier.’

[23] Dr. Krauss informs me that ‘strawberry leaf’ in Eyak is caq’Ałt’ahł.

[24] According to Dr. Krauss, di˙ya’gulA’e’d means in Eyak ‘place of salt water.’

[25] According to Dr. Krauss, qe’łAyu˙ya’an˙ means ‘women's river’ in Eyak.

[26] Swanton, 1908, pl. LI, d, shows a facial painting design representing tan teÎ’, as a crest of the Sitka T!A‘q!dentn.

[27]This expedition, and that of 1775, are summarized in Fleurieu, 1801, vol. 1, pp. LXIV–LXXI; Galiano, 1802, pp. xcii–xciii; Bancroft, 1884, vol. 1, pp. 150–166; 1886, pp. 194–202; Krause, 1956, p. 16; Wagner, 1937, vol. 1, pp. 172–179. Eberstadt, 1941, pp. 31–35, follows Bancroft.

[28]For translations of their journals, see Griffin, 1891. Gormly (1955) gives citations of many published and unpublished journals and other original documents, and of their translations, pertaining to the Spanish voyages of 1774, 1775, and later years.

[29]Dall and Baker (1883, p. 159) identify this with Salisbury Sound, named by Portlock in 1787, or the “Bay of Islands” of Cook and Lisiansky. Wagner (1937, vol. 1, p. 176) believes it is “Sea Lion Bay” (Sealion Cove), 2 miles south of the entrance to the sound.

[30]Summarized by Fleurieu, 1801, pp. LXXXIV–XC; Navarette in Galiano, 1802, pp. C–CII; Bancroft, 1884, vol. 1, pp. 172–173; 1886, pp. 217–221; Krause, 1956, pp. 17–18; Wagner, 1937, vol. 1, pp. 191–196. Although I have not consulted it, there is a MS. translation by G. F. Barwick in the Provincial Archives, Victoria, B.C., of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Cuadra, “Expeditions in the years 1775 and 1779 towards the west coast of North America,” from Annuario de la Dirección Hidrografia, Año III, 1865. For the voyage of 1779, see also the translation by Walter Thornton, S.J. (1918).

[31]Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Supplement, pp. 1–8, contains an “Extract from the Journal of the Steersman Potap Zaïkoff, kept on the ship ‘St. Alexander Nevsky’ in 1783” (Petroff's translation in the Bancroft Library from which I quote by permission of the Director). This information is summarized in Bancroft, 1886, pp. 186–191.

[32] Pallas, 1793, vol. 6, pp. 165–204; Coxe, 1803, pp. 269–301. For an account of the publication of these “Travels,” see Okun, 1951, ch. 2, note 2.

[33] Quotations from LaPérouse's account are taken from the English translation (1799), for while I have consulted the original French edition, edited by Milet-Mureau (1798), and that edited by Chinard (1937), I have felt that a contemporary translation of an 18th-century French naval officer‘s report would be more accurate than my own. Summaries of the voyage may be found in Fleurieu, 1801, vol. 1, pp. CII–CXVI; Krause, 1956, pp. 17–18; Russell, 1891 b, pp. 58–60. There are a number of careless inaccuracies in Bancroft, 1886, pp. 255–259.

[34] Dall and Baker (1883, p. 206, note) identify this as Point Manby, but it seems to be too far west. It may be a point just west of Sitkagi Bluffs, or even what then corresponded to Point Riou at Icy Bay.

[35] Summarized by Fleurieu, 1801, vol. 1, pp. CXXIX–CXXXIV; Bancroft, 1886, pp. 261–265; Krause, 1956, pp. 20–22.

[36] Summaries are in Fleurieu, 1801, vol. 1, pp. CXXXV–CXLI; Bancroft, 1884, vol. 1, pp. 182–184; Wanger, 1937, vol. 1, pp. 206–207, 213; and in the biographical notes to Menzies’ Journal, by Forsyth, 1923, pp. VIII–XV. These sources are not in complete agreement.

[37]Colnett's estimate of the distnce is excessive; perhaps he failed to see the low foreshore.

[38] Shelikhov in Pallas, 1793, vol. 6, pp. 205–249; Shelikhov in Coxe, 1803, pp. 302–343; also MS. translation of Shelikhov by Ivan Petroff in Bancroft Library, Berkeley. Summarized in Tikhmenev, 1861, vol. 1, pp. 26–27; Bancroft, 1886, pp. 226–270; Krause, 1956, pp. 28–29. In the reports of February 13 and 14, 1790, sent by Ivan Phil, Governor-General of Irkutsk, to the Tsarina (Andreyev, 1952, pp. 95–117) the Russian discoveries of 1788 are lumped together with those made by Shelikhov and Golikov in 1783.

[39]Chilkat or Sitka Tlingit? “Tschitschchanern” in Pallas, 1893, vol. 6, p. 231.

[40]Does thia refer to LaPérouse, to Europeans in Prince William Sound, or to some unreported vessels in Yakutat Bay?

[41]Sea otter, wolverine, marten, beaver (Pallas, 1793, vol. 6, p. 232).

[42] “His proper living place is on the coast on the southeast side, much farther than that near Lituya, on the great river Tschitschchat” (Pallas, 1793, vol. 6, p. 228). Is this the Chilkat River? Krause (1956, p. 28) so indicates in one passage, but in another (p. 65) renders it as “Tschitschat (Tatshenshini) River,” a tributary to the Alsek, on the overland route between Dry Bay and Chilkat country. This interpretation would make the “Tschitschat,” or “Tschitschchaner” of Pallas, the Southern Tutchone, not Chilkat or Sitka Tlingit.

[43]Summarized by Fleurieu, 1801, vol. 1, pp. CLXIII–CLXV; Martin Fernandez de Navarrete in Galiano, 1802, pp. CXII–CXXIII; Bancroft, 1886, pp. 274–275; Krause, 1956, pp. 23–24; Russell, 1891 b, pp. 62–66; pls. 5, 6; Wagner, 1937, vol. 1, pp. 225–229; see Malaspina, 1849 and 1885; Suría in Wagner, 1936, and Suría's plates in Guillén y Tato, 1932.

[44] Guillén y Tato, 1932, pls. VI, IX, XI, XIII, XIV, XV, by Suría, pertain to Yakutat.

[45] According to Gunther (1962, p. 48), “As much of the collections from the Malaspina Expedition as reached Madrid” are now in the Museo de America. She saw only the catalog, but reports that the “documentation is poor. The collection is primarily from Alaska,” i.e., from Port Mulgrave.

[46] For the reputed origin of this name, one or one, see. Episode 5 of the Raven Cycle, “Raven in the Whale,” p. 852.

[47] McClellan, 1954, p. 96, has pointed out the similarity between the helmet and the crest hat. Perhaps the latter is derived from the former.

[48] Or July 1 (Malaspina, 1885, pp. 345, 346).

[49] The chief indicated that the male slave was obtained from the same tribe that had sent the canoes on July 1 (or June 30) Malaspina, 1885, p. 347, note 1).

[50] Suría's handwriting was almost indecipherable, owing to his failing eyesight. he evidently wrote cabrónes, “goats,” instead of calzones, “trousers.”

[51] Not only do the dates vary in different parts of the report, but the visitors are said to have come both from the west and from the east.

[52] Vancouver, 1801; summarized in Bancroft, 1886, pp. 276–281; Krause, 1956, pp. 24–27; Wagner, 1937, vol. 1, pp. 239–250. Vancouver's account should be compared to that of Purtov and Kulikalov, whom Lieutenant Puget met in Yakutat Bay. Their report to Baranov, summarized on pages 161–166 differs in many respects from Vancouver's version. This may be due in part to Lieutenant Puget's difficulities in understanding Purtov, and to the fact that he did not witness all the doings of the Russians, but in part because the Russians were anxious to report what would please their superiors.

[53] See Bancroft, 1886, pp. 334–344 for a summary of the struggle between these companies, 1791–94. He reports (p. 335, note 3) that Shelikhov was a partner of both companies!

[54] Bancroft, 1886, pp. 331, 344–350; Letter of Baranov, July 24, 1793 in Tikhmenev, 1863, vol. 2, Suppl., pp. 40–44. Tikhmenev, 1963, vol. 1, pp. 40–41, confuses this expedition of 1793 with that made by Purtov in 1794.

[55] This is apparently not Cenotaph Island, which is “Yaohoi” or “Egg Island” on Tebenkov‘s chart. The Russian text reads , which may be a bay, not an island, and it seems to be nearer than Lituya Bay.

[56] Khliebnikov (1861 b, p. 42) specified that the party consisted of 550 baidarkas of “Aleuts from Kodiak,” the Ekaterina under Podgat, the Orel and the Olga commanded by Baranov himself.

[57] Khliebnikov, 1861 b, pp. 45–54; Tikhmenev, 1861, vol. 1, pp. 88–92; Bancroft, 1886, pp. 401–413.

[58] , i.e., “Sea Otter Bay.” Probably Meares’ “Sea Otter Harbour,” which is either Meares Passage, north of Dall Island, or Sea Otter Harbor on Dall Island, both of which are in Henya territory.

[59] This sounds like the Sitka village KAstaxē’xda-n, settled by KIksAdi from the south (Swanton, 1908, p. 409, note); but Kaniagit was almost certainly a Henya man.

[60] Swanton, 1908, p. 397.

[61] See Bancroft, 1886, pp. 426–432, 441 note 38, for an account of this action and a discussion of the historical sources.

[62] Compare with the native account, p. 243.

[63] Petroff, in the Tenth Census (1884, p. 35), reproduces this census but ascribes it to the year 1835, although Veniaminov makes clear that it reflects the devastation of the 1836–40 small-pox epidemic.

[64] I am indebted to Dr. Michael Krauss, Department of Linguistics, University of Alaska, for bringing this to my attention.

[65] The masks, rattles, and bracelets illustrated by Seton-Karr (1887, pl. opp. p. 56) are inferior in style to those objects known to have come from this grave. I believe that they represent the stock-in-trade of some curio dealer in Sitka.

[66] Identified as Jimmy Jackson (1861–1948), a Kwacqwan man known as “Kook-sook-eish,” i.e., KusAXwKw-’ic or QuAkw-‘ic (Frank Johnson, letter of January 1, 1965).

[67] Is this George Dick, “Don-Nah-icth,” or DAna-’ic, ‘Dollar Father,’ who was a song leader at the Sitka potlatch of December 9, 1904? (Cf. pl. 210d and pl. 211l).

[68] The Atna moieties should more properly be called “Seagull” and “Crow,” from their “grandfathers,” although they are actually unnamed. The Tcicqwedi are the Tcicyu, ‘red-paint people.’ But while there are several sibs in each moiety, we have been unable to identify the GIneqwan (de Laguna and McClellan, field notes, 1954, 1958, 1960).

[69] He joined Lieutenant Allen's expedition to the Copper River in 1885, and had previously been the first White man to live among the Atna. His diary was published by Seton-Karr (1887, pp. 200–201).

The informant had some doubt as to which Bremner River was called GIne. It might have been the Little Bremner, since the name ŁdaEn was suggested for the Big Bremner (September 2, 1952).

[70] This is a well-known name at Chitina, being now Anglicized as. Goodlataw

[71] Qa-tłen is a Dry Bay TłukwaAdi name, which could indeed have been that of the Kagwantan's father. This means that the boy was a Raven.

[72] I am indebted to Professor Donald Baird of Princeton University (letter of February 27, 1965) and to Howard I. Chapelle, Curator, Division of Transportation, U.S. National Museum (letter of September 2, 1965) for explanations of some of the terms used by Captain Colnett.

[73] According to the Wrangell narrator of Tale 31 (Swanton, 1909, pp. 138 and 139), high-class people were not supposed to become gamblers, i.e., become crazy over the game, so that they cannot stop when losing. When one wins one is supposed to give a feast with the proceeds.

[74] The terms implying fatigue, WUSA and SAkA nagu, may be derived from tA, recorded by Boas, 1917, p. 139, as meaning ‘to overdo.’

[75] Olson (1962, p. 208) defines beach food as “things derived from salt water which are not motile. This seems to be a category of things called Tlene di [łen-’Adi ? ‘things of low tide’] and includes seaweed, clams, mussels, and the like, but does not included fish or sea mammals.”

[76] This is probably patterned twined weaving, not tapestry or needlework.

[77] Cf. facial painting worn originally by a Wrangell man and adopted by his Kagwantan slayer (Swanton, 1908, pl. LV, h).

[78] “Once the L!ūk!naXA’dÎ did not give away enough food to satisfy some of their guests, so the latter took three or four high names from them by way of retaliation” (Swanton, 1908, p. 435).

[79] The speeches recorded by Swanton at Wrangell (1909, pp. 372–389) are illuninating. Thus, one guest chief asks another guest chief, his rival, to overlook any displeasure which his words might cause for the sake of their host (p. 377). Or, one chief says; “I thank you very much that through these words of yours you have placed yourselves below me” (p. 381). Or again, a guest gives up his turn to speak to his rival,“because, having been the first to dance, they do not wish to be selfish” (p. 382). The host invites his guest to eat the metaphorical codfish head of the pauper:”…have pity on me and eat what I give you, even if it not good enough” (p. 388).

[80] Swanton (1908, pl. LVI, a) illustrates a face painting representing the Sun, used by KIksAdi men at Wrangell. The design includes orange or golden spots on the cheeks. The Sun spirit is one belonging to KIksAdi shamans (ibid., p. 466). Since the woman who married the Sun was, according to Yakutat informants, CAnkuqedi or Teqwedi, it is logical that Sun symbolism and prerogatives should belong to the Raven moiety, and those of the Sun's Children to the Eagle-Wolf moiety. For Yakutat versions of the myth, see pp. 873–875.

[81] Such designs could be acquired by killing the owner (Swanton, 1908, pl. LV, h). A carved cane, used as a crest object, was acquired in war from Tsimshian (ibid., p. 417).

[82] Swanton (1908, p. 435) refers to the use of sib personal names in such a case.

[83] Durlach (1929, pp. 36 f.), reports that Louis Shotridge, her Chilkat informant, and his mother-in-law used to communicate with each other in the same manner as that described for the father and son-in-law.

[84] This occurred long before the use of fetus-deforming drugs.

[85] Boas, 1917, p. 141, łI-tcAn, ‘(to have a) stench.’

[86] Harrington was told by the Reverend Axelson that in the early days when a person died they at once put a little stick, the size of one's thumb, in the mouth, to keep the jaws open.