Gates of the Arctic Gaunt Beauty ... Tenuous Life Historic Resource Study for Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve

In the central Brooks Range the Arctic Divide spills descending waters to Arctic Ocean and Chukchi Sea, to Yukon River and Bering Sea. Radiating from the mountain core, the rivers course through canyons and valleys verdant in summer's constant light, congealed and dim in winter's long night. South of the mountains, boreal forest covers the lowlands and probes the slopes. But toward the mountain crests north winds warp and stunt the last struggling spruce trees. They disappear, replaced by the dwarf plants of arctic tundra—a ground-hugging mat that survives winter under wind-packed snow. Beyond the continental treeline the veil of tundra vegetation cannot hide the rough structure of the land. Trending east-west, the Brooks Range blocks the farthest north drift of moist Pacific air and marks the transition to arctic deserts dominated by polar air.

The Gates of the Arctic region lies north of the Arctic Circle. Its major draining rivers trace the connections to adjacent regions—west-flowing Kobuk and Noatak, north-flowing tributaries of the Colville (Killik, Chandler, Anaktuvuk, Itkillik), southeast-flowing Chandalar, and south-flowing branches of the Koyukuk.

Passes carved by ancient glaciers and eroding rivers allow transit across mountains and through the valleys, where, in summer, lakes of glacial origin reflect crowding peaks and towering clouds.

Each spring, following the natural routes of streams, passes, and portages, herds of caribou migrate north across the mountains from forested wintering grounds in the Kobuk, Koyukuk, and Chandalar drainages. These deer of the Arctic seek the rich sustenance of upland meadows in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range. There the cows assemble to calve. After calving, the bands concentrate, then disperse to range across the Arctic Slope—even to the coast 200 miles from the mountains. Finally they congregate again in preparation for the fall migration back through the mountains.

From earliest times, for at least 10,000 years, human hunters have seasonally posted themselves in the valleys and passes to intercept migrating caribou. At hundreds of lookout sites so far discovered and thousands more yet undiscovered the evidence of their vigils can be found—cores and flakes of stone, finely knapped projectile points and blades. They worked as they watched and waited—hammering, chipping, flaking with bone, antler, and stone—repairing weapons, making spare points, constantly attending to their tool kits. In the variations of form and substance that distinguish these artifacts one from another, style from style, can be inferred a succession of cultures over the millennia. The surface scatter and mixing of artifacts at the typical hilltop lookout station would confound dating and classification were it not for a few stratified sites in neighboring valley and coastal locations. At these fortunate finds, cultural components have been laid down one over the other or in horizontal sequence to show the associations and progressions that reveal the ancient history of this land. A few names of generally accepted cultural traditions give a sense of this progression: American Paleo-Arctic, Northern Archaic, Arctic Small Tool, Northern Maritime, Athapaskan. Complexes associated with discovery or type sites add dimensions of sound and geography to the archeological abstractions: Tuktu, Denbigh, Kayuk, Ipiutak, Birnirk, Punuk, Kavik.

The people who made the artifacts, who lived and hunted at the places discovered by archeologists, were, to varying degrees, ancestral to the modern Indians and Eskimos of arctic Alaska. Precise cultural geneologies and evolutions elude modern understanding, particularly in the earlier millennia. Population movements have been tracked by the artifactual evidence—from Asia to Alaska, south to the deep interior of North America, east to Greenland. But dispersion of people and traits was not simply linear and one way. Five-thousand-year-old tools of the Northern Archaic Tradition, found at caribou hunting sites on the North Slope, could have been borrowed from Indians far to the south. Perhaps the wielders of these tools were Indians, as archeologist Douglas Anderson surmises, attracted "back" to the Arctic by the unusually mild climate of that period.

Gaps and incongruities in the archeological record hint at mysteries: people with distinct cultural traditions, seemingly unrelated to those who came before and after them—as the Old Whalers of Cape Krusenstern, who came out of nowhere and disappeared in a few decades. And the cultural dynamism of some periods indicates the explosive force of new technologies and subsistence strategies—as the Denbigh people of the Arctic Small Tool tradition, who 4,000 years ago swept from Alaska to Greenland to pioneer the eastern Arctic. Sometimes called Paleo Eskimos, the Denbigh people, Anderson states:

... developed a subsistence that allowed them to harvest both caribou in the interior and seals at the coast. Perhaps more than any other single factor, this subsistence strategy, by which both land creatures and sea mammals were hunted during times of their greatest seasonal abundance, allowed the people to inhabit most of the American Arctic and sub-Arctic. Their technology was so successful that the same tool kit was suitable for many different habitats.¹

During these thousands of years of migrations, cultural exchanges, and climatic and biotic variations, the inhabitants of northern Alaska perfected their myriad adaptations. Eventually they became the Indian and Eskimo peoples who would be discovered by Europeans two centuries ago.

Over all that time, to survive and flourish, these people had adjusted to each variable of the natural environment. They changed their habits and their habitats as necessary. If caribou failed they hunted sheep or went to the coast for seals. They spread up the rivers and became expert fisherfolk. From the materials at hand they fashioned every implement needed to carry out whatever strategies the conditions and times demanded. With neighbors, and across cultural lines, they borrowed and traded ideas, tools, and raw materials. Their tool kits, both mental and material, allowed rapid shifts from one hunting mode to another, from one place to another. Knowledge of an animal, a place, or a technique, once learned, was held in reserve for the time when it would be needed. Always there was an alternative ready, for inflexibility in the spare and unforgiving arctic world meant starving times or death, which occurred often enough despite the best calculations.

Nor did these people—so intimate with their homelands—lack spiritual vision. Rooted as their lives and cultures were in the very bedrock of natural forces and powers, they conformed their individual and social practices to the sacred order of their local landscapes. From observation and meditation they saw both the obvious and the ineffable in the natural order. They created rituals to reveal and propitiate the powers that surrounded and sustained them. Even in the mute evidence of their abandoned tools, the blending of science and artistry illustrates the balance and vigor of their lifeways.²

*****

Until the late years of the 19th Century the central Brooks Range and the upper river valleys of its near environs remained terra incognita to white men. Because the country was buffered from bordering seas by hundreds of miles of forest and tundra traversed by unmapped rivers, the Eskimos and Indians of this northern heartland experienced only indirectly the transitory effects of European explorations along Alaska's arctic coast, beginning in the late 18th Century. Location of Russian and British trading posts on the Yukon River in the 1830s and 1840s, followed by Yankee whalers and traders along the arctic coast in the 1850s, abruptly changed Native societies in these accessible regions. And although events on the Yukon and the coast reverberated toward the mountains almost immediately, a few more decades would pass before the full effects of Euro-American incursion would reach the inland peoples. Thus in 1850 and for a short while thereafter, the folk of the central mountains and upper rivers held to the old views and ways of life.³

But it would be wrong to assume cultural stasis before the arrival of white men. This was not a lost world: not to the people who lived there. Archeological evidence shows that ancient Indians occupied both faces of the Brooks Range thousands of years ago, that early Eskimos then filtered into the northern part of the range from the coasts, displacing the Indians southward. In time, cultural regionalization produced a generalized pattern of "... Eskimo life on the open tundra, mountains, and coasts, and Indian culture adapting to life in the forested region."⁴

In the past few centuries the mountain borderlands again became contested territory between Indians and Eskimos. Ethnohistorical and historical studies describe a shifting boundary that placed Athapaskan Indians on the upper Kobuk and Noatak rivers and on the north face of the mountains in valleys tributary to the Colville River. Then Eskimo expansions forced the Indians east and south.  War alternated with trade along these changing cultural boundaries. Movements across environmental boundaries produced cultural inversions in various degrees. Indians who moved into "Eskimo" terrain lived like Eskimos, and for forest-dwelling Eskimos the reverse was true.⁵

In 1850 the indigenes of the central Brooks Range—both Eskimo and Indian—shared even more basic traits than those occasioned by mutual borrowings and transgressions across the forest-tundra line. They were hunters-and-gatherers all. And all of them, with variations of detail, looked back to some Distant Time as source for the oral traditions of their memory cultures. In those first days, as Native historians described it, " ... all creatures appeared as human beings, speaking and living like men, yet mysteriously possessing some distinctive animal qualities or occasionally donning animal guises."⁶ In time the animal masks became permanent. But the differentiation of humans from the other animals left unbroken the bonds between them. In such a cosmology, animals had souls, power, and the ability to suffer. Yet the hunter must kill the animal to feed and clothe himself and his family. The spiritual content of evolving human cultures arose from the need to alleviate the tension between these soul mates—the hunters and the hunted. Thus developed elaborate systems of taboo, intricate ceremonies to assure the animal's gift of itself to the hunter, and forms of courtesy to ease the suffering of and show respect for the taken animal. In this way its power would not turn malevolent, and its soul would come back in the guise of another animal, which in turn could be hunted. Disharmony and disease occurred when humans failed in their ethical duties, for example, by killing too many animals or failing to show proper respect. At such times, in one tradition, plants had pity on the hunters and offered cures.⁷

For these hunter-gatherers, then, the relationships between humans and the animals, plants, landscapes, and waters of their homelands composed a world view essentially spiritual in nature. The centrality of hunting in this scheme, its meaning far transcending mere subsistence economy, is described by Calvin Martin:

Hunting, writ large, lends meaning and inspiration to life; as a way of living it gives participants their sense of identity. A proper, cordial relationship with animals becomes vital in maintaining that sense of identity—that sense of how the world functions and how humans are to conduct themselves within this larger sphere of existence. Animals instruct human beings ... in the mysteries of life: by giving heed to animals and their ways—by making themselves receptive to their counsel—hunters learn how they must behave.⁸

Embedded in the rituals and old history of these lifeways were the knowledges and techniques of survival. Tradition set social structures that divided labor and assured the sharing of its products. Stories—both mythic and experiential—contained the science of place, season, and animal behavior. They described techniques of hunting, travel, cold-weather shelter, and the thousands more necessities of people living on the land. Languages geared to infinite descriptive detail conveyed every nuance of dynamic and dangerous environments.

Thus did accurately transmitted knowledge of the ever-accumulating oral tradition become the critical technology of light-traveling nomadic tribes and bands constantly adapting to changing conditions.⁹ Thus did the functional and the scientific blend with the spiritual. One anthropologist saw the light in discussions with a Native elder, not of this place but of its spirit:

... almost all he said was phrased in terms involving animals and natural phenomena. I naively wished that he would begin to talk about religious matters, until I finally realized that he was, in fact, explaining his religion.¹⁰

The traditional societies of the central mountains and upper rivers in 1850 included mountain- and tundra-dwelling Eskimos, who ranged across the northern part of the Brooks Range and through the foothills and valleys bordering the Colville River; the forest-dwelling Kobuk River Eskimos; and the groups of Athapaskan Indians living in the upper Koyukuk and Chandalar drainages. The origins, subdivisions, demographies, and territories of these various tribal and band groups are the subjects of a large bibliography replete with the controversies of a rapidly evolving science. The complexity of this academic terrain reflects both the dynamic realities of the cultures studied and the surge of data that has expanded the theoretical frame of northern anthropology since World War II.¹¹ One example of evolving understandings is explored in depth below, both for accuracy of usage in this study and for insight into cultural nuances that intrigue and frustrate students in the field.

Anthropologists of the 1940s and 1950s established a cultural distinction between coastal Eskimos (tareumiut) and inland/riverine Eskimos (nunamiut). Aside from location, the distinction was based upon the different life-ways and social arrangements resulting from primary dependence upon marine resources on the one hand and terrestrial/aquatic resources on the other. In standard literature references the Brooks Range Eskimos—both traditional and contemporary—are called Nunamiut. Ernest S. Burch, Jr., cites a multitude of reasons for dropping these terms as cultural distinctions and group names, maintaining that the Eskimos themselves use the words solely in a relative-location sense, i.e., any group farther inland than another group would be nunamiut, or, going the other way, tareumiut. This is somewhat comparable to our saying, a person is from the East, with all the relativities implicit in that usage. Burch makes the further point that the imposed nunamiut/tareumiut dichotomy " ... contravenes the Eskimo notion of an inland/coastal continuum ...."¹² This continuum comprehends both geography and culture, for the Brooks Range Eskimos of this study, as will be seen, could move to the coast and hunt sea mammals when caribou failed to support them in the mountains. Conversely, people based on the coast forayed inland to hunt caribou as a regular part of their subsistence strategy and in emergency when sea mammals were scarce.¹³

Heeding Burch's plea that error should not be perpetuated, in this study the traditional Eskimos of the northern Brooks Range-Colville River area will be described simply as mountain or inland Eskimos (except in contexts and quotations determined by the established usage). References to more recent groups will use the specific designations based on home territories coined by the people themselves, e.g., the Ulumiut (People of the Ulu valley).

One final caution about cultural perceptions. Most visitors from temperate regions have described the homelands of northern Indians and Eskimos as cruel and barren wastelands. The people themselves were seen as enduring stoics, constantly at the margins of bare survival, socially undeveloped, and too primitive and isolated to know enough to choose a better place and way of life. Students who have lived long enough with these people to share their celebrations of life on the land, to enter at least the foyers of their respective societies, have found a different reality. A burgeoning Native literature in recent decades has made this reality available to all.

The "hard and forceful" northern environments do indeed dominate and structure human behavior¹⁴ —an unrelieved truth in traditional times before the advent of modern imports and air transport. But this is also a world of great beauty, at times "nurturing and easy,"¹⁵ in summer flowing with life, throbbing with excitement, color, and rhythm.¹⁶ The very demands of its difficult seasons forged compensatory social systems distinguished by intricate kinship ties, visiting, and seasonal rounds of ceremonies, feasts, games, and dances. Trading fairs and potlatches combined all of these, serving as reunions that brought relatives and friends together from across the length and breadth of the country.¹⁷

This northern world was no lotus land, but neither was it a scene of relentless travail and hardship occupied by some ". ..type of subhuman arctic being."¹⁸

*****

For modern students, the 1850 cultural horizon is a long way back in this part of Alaska. It delimits a culturescape full of hidden valleys containing whole chapters of life and movement dimly perceived if perceived at all. Ancestors of present inhabitants may not have lived where the people now live; thus memory culture may contain old history of places and events far removed from modern locales and patterns of life. Ethnologists and historians, looking back with the aid of elders' memories, compare the traditions and patterns of modern culture groups to the mute evidence of archeology. Often the people and even the recent artifacts of a given place don't match. For at least several hundred years, the central mountains and upper rivers have been places of shifting cultural frontiers between Indians and Eskimos. The long-term cultural evolution of a given group in a given place cannot be assumed. Acceleration of population movements during the last century of white-Native contact so compounded traditional dynamics that one student has declared " ... the general ethnography of northern Alaska ... has been irreparably homogenized by time and circumstances."¹⁹

Despite these qualifications, the ties of memory and material remains do allow an approximate reconstruction of traditional societies, locations, and lifeways in 1850. Though there were territorial surges and retreats by various groups of mountain Eskimos and Athapaskans, the broad pattern of recent centuries indicates a demarcation based on the Brooks Range divide, " ... Indians seldom caring to travel farther north than the forested southern slopes and the Nunamiut seldom venturing far south of the continental divide."²⁰

The situation is somewhat different on the upper Kobuk River, particularly above the Pah River junction and around Walker Lake. Here, Eskimos adapted to inland/riverine life penetrated the fringe of the forest environment and mingled frequently with Koyukon Indians from the upper Koyukuk. Early visitors recorded a bilingual people in this area who blended Eskimo and Indian life ways, as was appropriate in a cultural and biological ecotone.²¹

Annette McFadyen Clark, in Koyukuk River Culture,²² compares the pre contact habitats and lifeways of the Koyukuk, Kobuk, and mountain peoples. Her comparative study, with emphasis on the Koyukon Athapaskan Indians, provides a starting point for the discussion that follows. The works of J.L. Giddings (Kobuk River Eskimos), Nicholas J. Gubser (Nunamiut Eskimos), and Robert A. McKennan (Chandalar Kutchin Athapaskans) provide similar depth for their respective subjects.²³ The upper Noatak people are subsumed in the treatment of mountain, or Nunamiut, Eskimos.²⁴

The similar environments of upper Kobuk and upper Koyukuk (as well as neighboring Chandalar country) contain a mix of swampy, lake-dotted lowlands and meandering, forest-lined rivers that head as swift mountain streams flowing out of constricted canyons and valleys. In the higher reaches of the streams, spruce-and-birch forest, tundra, and rock faces intermix depending on exposure and degree of slope. As elevation increases the trees fade into brush, then tundra interspersed with bare ground. Rising above all, craggy alpine peaks overlook mountain lakes and V-shaped valleys carved by the glaciers that dominated these highlands not so long ago. Generalized life zones break down into intricate vegetative mosaics in the lowlands, terraces, and valley slopes, reflecting such factors as permafrost and soil conditions, wind exposure, and successional stages in the active flood-plains and on the burned areas left by summer storms. Tundra prairies cover large expanses of exposed lowland~ open muskeg bogs punctuated by stunted black spruce occupy poorly drained areas over shallow permafrost. Larger white spruce and birch grow on well-drained slopes and on natural levees that parallel the rivers. Willows and alders pioneer disturbed areas, both upcountry burns and river bars and beaches, and cottonwoods colonize the more stable streamsides.

Significant fauna in the lowlands and foothills include primary and secondary subsistence species such as caribou, moose, brown and black bear, porcupine, beaver, muskrat, and snowshoe hare. The white sheep of the northlands seldom stray from the high mountains, thus forcing extended hunting trips. Predatory fur-bearers include wolf, lynx, fox, mink, marten, and otter. Resident ptarmigan and grouse provide variety and emergency food, and migratory ducks and geese arrive just in time to eke out failing winter food supplies. Salmon and salmonlike fishes run or reside in the lakes and rivers.

Despite the fact that all of this forested upriver country is north of the Arctic Circle, the climatic regime is Interior Alaskan, more subarctic than arctic, except in the higher elevations. The Brooks Range blocks excessive north winds, producing a seasonal rhythm characteristic of the Interior: short, relatively warm summers and still, cold winters verging on eight months long.

Rapid transitions between the two main seasons bring breakup of frozen waterbodies in May, freezeup in October.

Clark sums up both similarities and distinctions between upper Kobuk and upper Koyukuk in this paragraph:

The similarities in natural habitat of these two drainage systems in the region near the Arctic Circle are so striking that I believe we may be justified in considering them but two contiguous foci of the Arctic woodland zone of northern Alaska. However three relative differences characterize the faunal assemblages of the two regions: (1) the Kobuk has a far larger supply of salmon than does the Koyukuk, (2) until recently the Kobuk has had fewer caribou in the immediate valley although both areas are favorably situated to the caribou migration routes through the southern Brooks Range; and (3) the Koyukuk also apparently has had more moose than the Kobuk, at least since the time of contact. These differences appear to have been sufficient to result in the development of slightly different subsistence patterns in earlier times, with Kobuk Eskimo subsistence based upon salmon fishing, supplemented by caribou, and Koyukuk Indian based nearly equally upon salmon, moose, and caribou. Both of course, were further supplemented by small game and berries.²⁵

By contrast, except for occasional forays south of the divide to hunt, trade, and gather wood, the mountain Eskimos lived in an environment treeless and seemingly barren. Arctic storms lash the exposed mountains at any month in the year, and the membrane of life spreads thin. Mobile in search of caribou—their main source of food, clothing, and shelter—these people variously occupied the high valleys of the Brooks Range divide and the descending valleys of rivers flowing north through foothills to the Colville River. Sedges, heathmoors, and lichens sparsely cover the high country, with willow and dwarf birch along the streams. Wet-tundra meadow plants, with dense willow thickets in floodplains, dominate the lowlands of the Arctic Slope.

Sheep, bear, marmot, and ground squirrels, along with migratory birds and lake fish, supplemented the mountain-Eskimo diet, but caribou provided "the key to existence" for these people. When the deer failed to show or came in small numbers, starving-times loomed, and the people scattered to the forest edge south of the divide or went north and west to the coast. For only a limited time could they "...exist on the relatively poor fish and small faunal assemblage in their home region," lacking caribou.²⁶

Ernest Burch conveys a sense of the difficulties facing caribou hunters in traditional times. Given that people cannot follow the herds, for they move on migration at an average 10km/hour pace, they must be intercepted.

The problem for the hunter is to determine (well in advance) the route by which the seasonal movement is to take place. Once he has made this decision, he must move with his family and/or other hunters to the right spot and be ready and waiting when the animals arrive. During periods of peak tarandus [caribou] abundance this is not much of a problem, because fairly sizable bands of stragglers may be found at some distance from the main concentrations. During periods of low population, however, the judgment as to which "pass" is the correct one may literally be a matter of life and death.²⁷

Burch goes on to describe the stresses of making the wrong pass selection: Should the hunters go or stay? Are the caribou merely delayed, or are they moving through the next or the next valley right now? And what if the hunters miss entirely; how much time do they have to decide and move to the coast? With the stakes so high, knowledge of the prey animals and climatic conditions, and refined capabilities for timely arrival at hunting sites were essential.²⁸

*****

Meat and fat from mammals, fish, and fowl provided almost all the calories consumed by traditional hunter-gatherers of the central mountains and upper rivers. Berries, wild tubers, and green shoots of spring growth were eaten raw when gathered or used to garnish stews and pokes of meat and fat. But vegetables alone could not sustain life.²⁹

Thus, patterns of livelihood for each group of people revolved around a few key animal species. Clark summarizes these major dependencies for the three environments central to this study:

The Eskimos of the upper Kobuk River appear to have had a slight advantage over both the Koyukuk Indians and the Nunamiut Eskimos in aboriginal subsistence. The Kobuk Eskimos did have more fish than the Koyukuk Indians, although there appears to have been few caribou and practically no moose within their own valley. They were, however, close to the mountains and readily could go there to hunt caribou and sheep. Some small game such as muskrat, beaver, and fowl also was available.

To the east, the Koyukuk Indians had less fish than the Kobuk Eskimos and less caribou than the Nunamiut, but they did have some moose and more small game than did the other two. The Koyukuk Indians lived in a true marginal subsistence region, but if one source should fail, they did have the others to rely upon and during lean years they usually had enough food resources to at least sustain life for most of the members of their small bands.

The Nunamiut were at once both more and less favorably situated than were either of the two riverine people. During times when the caribou herds were large, their Brooks Range habitat offered good security to the small bands of Eskimos, but if the herds were small or did not come, the Nunamiut were faced with starvation because the rest of the faunal assemblage in their habitat was not sufficiently large for them to sustain life in the mountains.³⁰

In a way incomprehensible to modern people, buffered by distant agricultural bases and built environments, these traditional, living-on-the-land people were integral components of a biological system. They were top predators and carnivores within their ecosystems. Since major fish and mammal populations fluctuate in space and time, successful top predators must be opportunistic in seeking out alternate prey when primary species are absent or crash; they must be mobile, using seasonal rounds within their home territories to mesh with the annual cycles of animal concentrations—at the right times and places; and they must be prepared to migrate themselves if home territories fail to provide—often on short notice when margins are thin. In the cold and spare ecosystems of this region, human predators had to maintain a low population relative to prey populations, and corollary low density within their hunting territories where, except for migratory concentrations, animal life was spread thin. These critical strategies and constraints dictated the peoples' settlement patterns, the size of their social units, the weight and bulk of their domestic kits, and their schedules and routes of movement.³¹

Variations on these generic adaptations—reflecting both environmental differences and the infinite modes of cultural response—explain the fascination of modern people with ancestral ways of life. Here, in these remote and arduous places, lived people competent and courageous, reliant upon themselves alone—telling us, with their ancient tools and a few surviving memories, about our own past.

Burch defines the traditional period as the time when the aboriginal people of this region "... were operating in terms of an essentially indigenous system of action," beginning long ago and extending through the mid-years of the 19th Century. True, even the earliest European explorers found Russian goods, transferred by Native traders from Siberia, in common use by North Alaskans. But these luxury items, prized as they were, made little difference in basic patterns of livelihood. In all matters of substance, the people relied on themselves, their home environments, and indigenous trade networks.³²

Each traditional society in the study region comprised a homogeneous cluster of related families, separate and distinct from all other societies in the region, even from neighboring linguistic brethren. Clothing, eating habits, tool kits, and dialectical differences within the broad linguistic groups (Inupik Eskimo, Koyukon Athapaskan, Kutchin Athapaskan) allowed quick identification of strangers—who trespassed societal or ethnic boundaries at risk of life. At certain seasons and under certain circumstances travelers could cross these boundaries for trade, ceremonial, and recreational purposes. But the overriding fact of isolate societal life in traditional times was fear and suspicion of strangers. Kinship, trading partnerships between individuals of different societies, and intergroup trading fairs and invitational gatherings, at appointed times and places, relaxed these inhibitions periodically. But countering warfare when the times were not right preserved societal and ethnic boundaries over time. It must be emphasized that these rules and dangers applied between any two Eskimo groups or between any two Indian groups as well as between Indians and Eskimos.³³

Each traditional society had a distinctive annual cycle adjusted to take best advantage of local and regional hunting, fishing, and trading opportunities. In sequence, from the west, these societies, within the study region, were: Upper Noatak Eskimo, Upper Kobuk Eskimo, Colville River-Endicott Mountains Eskimo, two Kutchin Athapaskan groups (Dihai and Netsi) in the eastern Endicotts and upper Chandalar, respectively: and, to the south, Koyukon Athapaskan groups in the upper forks and tributaries of the Koyukuk.³⁴

Descriptions of traditional patterns and movements for representative groups will illustrate the disciplines and opportunities at key locations within the region.

MOUNTAIN ESKIMOS

The Tulugagmiut (People of the Tulugak) band of mountain Eskimos headquartered around and took its name from Tulugak Lake in the upper Anaktuvuk Valley. This band of perhaps 50 people was part of a larger society whose individual bands roamed through the central Endicott Mountains from the valleys just south of the divide to the northern foothills. Except for summer trade visits via the Colville (Kuukpik) River to the Arctic Coast, the band stayed mainly in the mountains, high valleys, and foothills of its home territory.

A head man or umialik provided counsel and direction for band activities, based on his proven strength of character and sound judgment. The leadership function was most important when the band prepared for spring and fall caribou drives.

The umialik predicted and selected the best place to intercept the migration, supervised construction of the ceremonial house or qargi, and assigned tasks relating to caribou corrals and snares. After coordinating the hunt, he oversaw the butchering and distribution of meat. Then he took an active role in communal singing, dancing, and feasting. His function as political, social, and ceremonial leader extended to settlement of disputes within the band.

Following the successful outcome of the spring drive in March or April, meat was cached and the band began to disperse into family units. These smaller groups hunted and trapped as they made their ways by sleds down to the foothills and locations along the Colville River to await breakup. While waiting, they cached their sleds and refurbished their umiat (skin boats). After the rivers were clear of ice, usually in May, the families loaded their craft with children, trade goods, and food and floated downriver to Niglik at the Colville delta. There they engaged in trade, games, and feasting with coastal Eskimos. Many families spent the rest of the summer along the coast hunting and fishing.

As fall approached they began traveling back upstream to the places where they had cached their sleds the previous spring. Waiting for freeze-up, they hunted, fished, and trapped. Then they set off by sled to their home territory to prepare for the fall caribou drive. After the autumn hunt, the band once again dispersed into family units to hunt and trap until spring.

These seasonal dispersals of family hunting groups over thousands of square miles, except at times of caribou concentrations, kept the right balance between predators and prey. This necessity made the extended family the basic economic unit of mountain Eskimo society. Most often headed by the wife's father or grandfather, the family functioned as a unit, sharing food, tools, and other goods with all of its members. It was the context for the education and socialization process that taught children the basic skills and responsibilities of their society.

The seasonal round tapped all essential resources on schedule. Caribou—killed in large numbers during migration drives and occasionally after dispersal—provided the basic sustenance: not only meat and fat for food; but also bone, antler, and sinew for tools; and hides for clothing, footwear, bedding, and shelter. Pelts of wolves, wolverine, and fox became ruffs and trim. The thick fleece of sheep made warm parkas, as did the skins of squirrels and birds.

Trade between inland and coastal Eskimos centered on furs and hides from the mountains for oil, blubber, and skins from sea mammals. These transactions represented an essential division of labor across environmental lines: the pure energy of seal oil stoked the inner frame; the superior mountain hides kept the heat in.³⁵

Nearly constant movement through difficult and seasonally opposite terrains (wet in summer, frozen in winter); spasmodic kills of many animals whose meat had to be saved for gameless times; occupation of different kinds of places, in varying numbers, with extremes of weather the rule; split-second readiness for any prey, from large mammal to small, from fish to fowl—these things and many more led to finely tuned adjustments combining sufficiency with absolute economy of means.³⁶ Imagine the care, the endless shuffling and refining that shaped the substance and form of domestic gear, hunting weapons, clothing, food processing, and gradations of dwelling styles and equipage appropriate across the spectra of seasons and settlement patterns—from band village to the farthest family camp or individual shelter, from temperatures of 60 above to 60 below, with arctic wind blowing.

All technologies and activities derived from and worked with natural forces and supplies. Moisture does not condense and freeze on wolf and wolverine fur, thus the parka ruff of these materials. Spring-kill meat, stripped and dried for summer use. Fall-kill meat, its freezer the open air. Summer camps on well drained moraines, legacies of ancient glaciers, above the waterlogged flats. Winter camps in willow groves, for wind shelter and fuel. Near a warm spring for easy winter water and ice-free fishing hole. Warm, light caribou hides for clothes, bags, pads, and covers; can be boiled and eaten in starving times. Moss house or caribou-hide tent with willow frame, piled with insulating snow. Seal- and caribou-oil lamps for heat, light, cooking. Cold-trap tunnel to winter house; good storage space. ...

The secret of mobility in these extreme and contrasting conditions was to carry a light kit and turn to nature's commissary for everything else. Wherever they stopped, these people could make nearly everything they needed from the raw materials at hand.

Vignettes of traditional life as related by mountain Eskimos or live-in observers add substance to the bare chronicle of seasons and sustenance. Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad lived with the Tulugagmiut during the winter of 1949-50:

As I wandered into this endless mountain world, I often stumbled upon old signs of caribou hunting—traces of vanished times. Along the slopes of the valley where the caribou have their tracks, I quite often came upon rows of little stone cairns. These were to lead the caribou to the spot where the marksman lay in wait with bow and arrows. At some places the hunters had built themselves stone screens, sometimes in a square like a small house without a roof.

On one beach a mass of caribou bones, half overgrown, lay strewn around. Here the beasts must have been driven into the water and then slaughtered from kayaks, being stabbed with a spear (pana) behind the last rib, close to the spine. The Eskimos have many stories of this kind of hunting, which was formerly of great importance. Sometimes hundreds of animals were killed, and were usually divided equally between the families which took part in the drive.

At another place I found the remains of a kangiraq, i.e. a large enclosure into which caribou were driven. These were usually set up on a height near a river and might be a hundred yards or more in diameter, consisting of a number of tall willow rods driven into the earth or snow. Along the inside of this enclosure snares made of animals' skins were placed at suitable intervals and fastened to a stone or stick. There were usually several enclosures, one inside another; the maximum number was four, and then the contrivance was called a sisamailik. There were snares along each line totalling several hundreds.

The caribou found their way to the gate by following two lines of cairns which began several miles out in the open country, and which led across the river up the slope to the enclosure. Close to it there might be two snow walls. Thus a "street" was formed outside which the animals did not venture; far from the enclosure it was broad, and then gradually became narrower.

A herd of caribou had to be driven into this "street" often from a long way off; there are stories of drives which took several days. The drivers worked together, running continually. This was child's play to them, thoroughly trained as they were.

When the caribou had at last been driven up the slope towards the enclosure, people ran up from both sides, clapping their hands, hooting, and yelling. The beasts rushed in panic through the opening and into the inner enclosure. A number went straight into the snares; others broke through the willows into the other enclosures and were snared there. Some of the hunters sent a rain of arrows at the beasts trying to escape, while others were busy with their flint spears. There was sometimes a large bag, which was divided equally among the families participating.³⁷

Bessie Ericklook, an elder from the Colville River, remembers the early years:³⁸

We did find artifacts from these old house sites. These people who lived in them ... didn't have white man's tools. They were all made by them. Like the ones we found. ... If these old houses weren't dug out of ground, and were built on top, we would never have found them. ...They had houses like that long ago because they didn't have stoves for heat. My father told us that his folks ... used to have a fire by their window on top of the house. They would heat rocks by the fire and when they were red hot, they put them in the middle of the house and would keep warm all night from them. That was how they kept warm. They also had water dripping into a water bucket made out of bark sewn together. And they had one dipper for all, made out of sheep's horn. ... They used these for drinking because they didn't have cups. ...

They would winter inland and return shoreward in the spring. Their tents would be made of caribou skins sewed together when still wet. ...

The people who lived in these old house sites used braided caribou sinew for fish nets. ... They used moose and caribou skin ropes. They would slice them after they rotted the hair off and it would dry in a day. My father used that for ropes too. We all had snow shoes that he made us using skin ropes. ...

My father told us long ago when people used to fight among themselves they used to build their houses in out of the way places where they wouldn't be found so easily.

Anaktuvuk Pass elder Elijah Kakinya remembers hard times:

My father used to say that that winter [when Elijah was a child] there weren't too many animals. People would walk hunting but they never saw too many animals. Once in a while they would get caribou. When it was freezing up, my father started mentioning going east towards Hula Hula [River, near the Canadian border], saying that there might be more animals there. He kept talking about moving there but no one wanted to go along with him. He had relatives already there so in November my parents left to go there, following the edge of the mountains. They had seven dogs when they started but they lost some because of starvation. Pretty soon they only had two dogs. Once in a while my father would kill a ptarmigan. When we woke up one day, the pup we kept in the house also had died. I hated to leave it but we had to go on. While they were traveling, my mother said that she saw caribou tracks. They hadn't traveled very far, when they saw a man's tracks. My father told my mother to make camp there while he went on to look for people. While we were making camp, we saw ptarmigan but my mother missed shooting them. She put up camp in no time. They say she was a strong woman. She could hold down five strong dogs from running off. By then we only had one dog. When it got warm in our shelter, I went to sleep and I hadn't slept very long when my father woke me up to eat. He had found people not too far from where we camped and found out that there were lots of caribou around. My mother also gave our one dog some broth and some meat later on. While I was eating frozen meat, we heard something outside. When my mother looked out she saw that the dog we had just left earlier had followed us so they gave it some broth then meat later on. The next morning, someone from the village came for us with dogs. We found out that my mother's father was there also with my father's many relatives. We spent one winter there and in the spring returned to Sagvagniqtuuq [River, south of Prudhoe Bay].When we returned, we saw that people had starved that winter because there were hardly any animals. Wherever we stopped we saw them.

Pete Suvaliq was a young man when his father told explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson about Shamanism:

When my father killed a wolf he wouldn't drink any broth from cooked caribou meat for 5 days. That was what the shamans believed in and practiced. They believed that the animal's spirit is still within the body. It follows whoever has killed it to his home. I've seen the people who believed in this. There was Nutaqsirauq, Kunagrak and others. Also, when a hunter brought home a male fox, he would hang up his knife on the wall. At first light, he would take his catch outside. That's how the spirit would leave. The spirit follows the hunter out the door and in that way cleanses the knife which is hanging on the wall. ...

I also know that when Kunagrak brought home a fox he would put a piece of caribou fat in its mouth. I don't know the meaning of that one. These were the ways of shamans those days. My father once tried a song he was taught on a wolf. The wolf was in a wide open area and he decided to try it out. The wolf had sat down on a small knoll and there was no way it could get out of his sight. He was watching it through his binoculars. He sang a song that was supposed to put the animal to sleep. After he sang it he started walking toward it to see if the song would really work. When he reached it, the wolf almost woke up, but my father shot it. My father told me about it himself. He would also tell me a story about the people from inland which had several songs to go with it. One of the songs with two parts to it was to call the caribou to come to you. The other was to not miss when you shoot at the animal. This was during the time when the shamans still practiced and some of the inland people used these songs when they were hunting caribou. Not all the people knew these songs and just the few who knew them used them. I learned these songs because my father told them to me many times. There's no power to them though because I'm not a shaman. Long ago when the shamans wanted someone to become one they would kill the person. With their powers they would bring him back to life and at the same time give him powers to perform shamanism. That was the only way a person could become a shaman.

Anthropologist Lewis R. Binford documented hunting trips at Anaktuvuk Pass in 1971.³⁹ A significant food tradition was even then maintained by older hunters:

Customarily, there are three basic kinds of trail foods: dried meats, akutuk, and marrow bones. Hunters generally preferred dried meat which had bones, such as dried rib slabs or a scapula. This preference is directly related to the versatility of bone use. Once the meat had been consumed, the bones could be used as fuel, or pounded up into small chips and boiled to yield a "bone juice." This was the only drink besides pure water which hunters customarily consumed in the field. Akutuk was carried as small cakes. These were manufactured by the women from bone marrow and rendered bone grease, sometimes with berries or small strips of dry meat mixed into the marrow. Akutuk cakes are still carried by the men, but their manufacture has dropped off considerably since commercial grease has been readily available (after 1953). Marrow bones were carried for the same reason that dried meat containing bones was preferred. They were a ready source of fat and once the marrow was consumed the bones could be pounded up to produce "bone juice," or used as fuel.

The Upper Noatak people followed an annual cycle similar to that of the Tulugagmiut and other Endicott Mountain Eskimos—spring and fall caribou hunts, dispersal in the winter. But their summer float to the coast via the Noatak River took them to Kotzebue Sound, where they and other coastal and riverine societies hunted beluga whales, using skin-covered umiaks and kayaks. Later, in separate encampments lining the beach, the various groups joined in the trade fair at Sisualik (Sheshalik), a sand spit north of present-day Kotzebue. Eskimos from as far away as Siberia came to this great fair, "... a major occasion devoted to inter-societal trade, athletic competition, feasting, and alliance making."⁴⁰ In contrast to the quick downriver journey, the return up the Noatak with tons of dried meat and muktuk (beluga skin with blubber attached) took time and hard work. Storms or early freeze-up might catch the families laboring up the river, forcing them to relay their sea mammal products later, by sled. If this happened they might miss the fall caribou hunt and a tough winter loomed.⁴¹ Barring such mishaps, access to the small beluga whales, which gathered by the thousands in Kotzebue Sound for calving, gave the Upper Noatak people a better balance of marine and terrestrial resources than that enjoyed by their mountain brethren to the east.

Anthropologist Edwin S. Hall, Jr., got help from a Noatak elder, Carl Luther, in assembling a tool kit typical of those used by his 19th-century ancestors.⁴² Carl's wife, Ellen, made a traditional tool bag of wolf, wolverine, seal, and caribou skins, sewn with caribou sinew. Measuring 10 by 21 inches, the ample bag held a mix of tools reflecting the historic combination of indigenous forms and materials with scraps of metal acquired through the Siberian trade. Cutting, drilling, and engraving tools, lashed or set in antler, bone, or wood handles allowed working of softer materials. Hammers and flakers shaped stone and jadeite. Shuttles and gauges aided net manufacture. Webbing and cordage from bark, baleen, hide, and sinew made snowshoes and lashings. The bag contained examples of manufactures in progress (lure, arrowhead, spear prong) as well as bits of ivory and other raw materials for future use. Substitution of metal cutting edges and points in place of slate, jadeite, or flint illustrated early stages of the 19th-Century transition to European goods, but sparely and selectively, given the high value of metal in those Gays. Such tool kits, with cultural variations, combined with ingenuity and local raw materials, enabled Eskimos and Indians of northern Alaska to fashion all implements needed for daily life.

KOBUK ESKIMOS

Ernest Burch has succinctly described the annual round of Kobuk River Eskimos:

The people spent the fall and winter in comparatively large settlements distributed along the Kobuk, most of them located at or near the mouths of major tributaries. They preferred moss and sod-covered houses, of which as many as ten or fifteen might be situated in a single settlement. The Kobuk people had a diverse and rich resource base in the mid-19th Century. In the fall, they hunted caribou, bears, and several species of small game, and fished through the still thin river ice with weirs and hooks. Lean winters were uncommon, and they were usually able to enjoy themselves during the short days, as could their counterparts on Kotzebue Sound and in the Noatak Valley.

In the spring, usually just before breakup, the Kobuk River people would leave their winter quarters, and spread out among spring camps comprised of perhaps three or four closely related families. Here they hunted muskrats and fished while the ice in the rivers and streams broke up. A few people shifted camps again for the summer fishing, but most remained right where they were throughout most of the open water season. A few families on the upper river specialized in inter-societal trade, and they, like the people from the Upper Noatak, would follow the spring flood to Sisualik to hunt for sea mammals and to trade, but the bulk of the membership remained inland. In late July, the men would leave the fishing to the women, and walk north into the Baird and Schwatka Mountains to hunt caribou while the skins were prime for clothing. They would stay in the mountains for much of August, returning to the fishing camps in early September. By that time the women had normally caught and dried hundreds of pounds of whitefish and salmon, and the people were more than ready for the coming winter. Just before, or sometimes just after, freezeup, the people would move again to their fall/winter villages, and the cycle would resume once again.⁴³

Explorers in the 1880s noted that the people living near the Kobuk headwaters around Walker Lake spoke both Eskimo and Athapaskan. Their lifeway combined elements of both cultures, and both Indian and Eskimo place names mark the area. Location of the upper Kobuk people placed them astride traditional trade routes connecting Kotzebue Sound, the Koyukuk River, and the central Brooks Range. Using such well travelled routes as the Alatna Portage, these people acted as middlemen for exchange of goods throughout inland arctic Alaska. Before 1840, most European items came from Russian sources. After midcentury extended trade links with Hudson's Bay posts to the east brought flintlock muskets and metal traps to the upper rivers country.⁴⁴

In the summer of 1940 archeologist J. Louis Giddings flew from Fairbanks to Allakaket on the Koyukuk River, then walked across the mosquito-infested muskeg of the Alatna Portage to the headwaters of the Kobuk River, whence he floated by raft and kayak to Long Beach, near the present village of Kobuk. Here, at a Kobuk Eskimo fish camp, he recorded a scene reminiscent of the 19th century: for even in 1940 these upriver folk still responded to the salmon migration in essentially traditional manner:

The women of Long Beach were in the midst of their salmon-fishing season. Formerly, I was told by one of the two or three very old men who remained in the village at that time of year, all the able-bodied men and older boys would leave the womenfolk early in the summer and climb up into the mountains where, in passes and on rocky plateaus, they would hunt both caribou and sheep for their pelts, eating well the while but staying away from their families until the salmon season was over. Meanwhile, the women, who alone were thought to attract salmon all the way up the river, worked as a team. Though times had changed, even now I was allowed to watch only if I kept my distance and stayed well out of the way.

All the women sat in front of their separate tents (in earlier days these would have been hemispherical, bark-covered huts) and waited for a signal from their lookout, a gnarled little old woman who stood on a sandhill with her eyes turned downstream. Then I saw her give the signal. Raising an arm and shouting commands, she galvanized the community into feverish activity. Two women dashed down to a light wooden boat in the bottom of which lay a folded net. (Earlier, birch-bark canoes would have been used.) Quickly launching the craft, one woman paddled swiftly toward the middle of the stream as the net paid out upstream. Her partner held the wooden stretcher against the shore. As the boat and far end of the net began to drop swiftly downstream with the current, forming a large arc to the end on shore, all the other women placed themselves along the near shore at short intervals to receive the net. Now I could see frothy ripples rising from the water nearly encompassed by the net.

The women in the boat reached the ... [downriver] shore, jumped out to secure their craft, and at the same time pulled shoreward on the stretcher at their end of the net. As the net surrounded the churning mass of fish, all the women not holding onto its ends waded as far as possible into the river, plunging a hand and arm in the water shoulder deep to catch the weighted bottom of the net. With their other hand, each grasped the top of the net with its bobbing floats and, pulling together, dragged the net and its contents slowly to the shore. At this point, all the younger girls dashed into the edge of the water, catching salmon by the tails and throwing them on the beach as high as they could. It was not until this time that the old man, my informant, picked up his short-handled wooden club and rushed down to do his part along with the women and children. Their job was to strike each salmon's head, dispatching it, or, at any rate, preventing it from flapping back into the stream. I estimated that hundreds of three-foot-long salmon had been caught in this one haul.

Of course, great numbers of fish must have been swimming upstream every hour of the day, but neither the aged lookout nor any of the others glanced again at the river. I learned that they would fish no more until the whole of this catch had been properly cut and strung on rows of fish fences to dry in the sun and wind. The fish were soon apportioned to the women of different households and thrown, heads inward, into pits previously dug and lined with fresh, full-leaved willow twigs. Then the cutting began. Each woman knelt beside her pit and deftly wielded a wide, half-moonshaped knife called an ulu. After chopping off the head with a powerful blow and tossing it into a container, she freed the orange meat from the backbone with two long slices. Chopping swiftly but lightly she divided the flesh into short segments, each held firmly to the skin. Girls now took the fish and hung them to dry over a rail of the long, willow-poled fence. Nothing was discarded. Clusters of roe were also dried in the sun, and the intestines were thrown into a metal pot to be boiled for their oil. Still later, the half-cooked intestines were taken across the river and fed to the dogs straining at chains that held them to their posts.⁴⁵

An old man of the upper Kobuk, Robert Cleveland, has told of traditional life when he was a child, about 1890, before the changes came:

This is the way people lived when I first remembered. When the ice went out in the spring the people moved to the river sloughs where they could catch fish. The boats used then had birch bark covers and in those days we used nothing made by the white man. There were no cups, plates, tents or canvas. We used only birch bark and our plates were wooden.

During the summer months the women did all the fishing. The families would travel down river and then the men would travel inland to the hunting grounds on the Noatak River, for their supplies of meat and skins for winter clothing. ...

The men dried the meat and then wrapped and placed it in skins to be used for winter clothing. Several meat filled skins made one load. The load was carried with the use of a tump line and a strap across the chest. It was not unusual for a man to have two or three loads which he moved in relays. Normally a man would take dogs to help carry the loads.

The men returned from hunting and were re-united with their wives some time in September, before the river froze up. The men came home on rafts along the creeks with good supplies of meat, bear, moose, sheep, caribou, marmot. This was added to what the women had gathered, black berries, blue berries, salmon berries, cranberries and masu [Eskimo potato]. ...

After the freeze up the people made traps for ling [cod] and when the ice started to form on the river they started to think about building a winter house. This was done by digging down into the ground about four feet, and putting in posts of spruce. The walls were also made of spruce timbers standing upright. Moss was then put on the walls and sand about 1 foot thick spread over it. The fireplace was in the centre of the house and made with a ring of rocks. The house was heated by these warmed rocks. This winter house was called a Sollik. These houses could accommodate 1-3 families. ... Once the winter house was built, it was kept in good repair and used year after year. ...

When I first became conscious of a way of living, this is the way we lived. If the fishing was not good in the summer we did not eat, because in those days there was just nothing else to eat. There were very few rifles. Only the rich people could afford them. The rifles were muzzle loaders (su pu di pak) with either a single or double barrel. They made bullets by rolling foil lead and rounding it out with their teeth. But a lot of the people still used the bow and arrow in those days.

The bow and arrow was used for hunting ptarmigan and rabbits. The muzzle loaders were used for big game only, caribou, bear, moose. When I was young enough to remember the rifle being used, I can also remember we had no cups, spoons or plates. We did have knives and olos (metal) and one kind of single blade axe. There were no double bladed axes.⁴⁶

Robert Cleveland also told the story of how the Kobukmiut and the Koyukuk Indians finally made peace:

Long ago there was always fighting between the Indians and the Kobuk people. They were only on good terms for a short time, then they would start to fight again. Both Indians and Eskimos gave names to the land.

The Kobuk men hunted away from the Kobuk in summer. They came home by raft in autumn, sometimes four men on one raft. Every year they were frightened that Indians might come into the summer camp to throw rocks. The women ran away if they thought it was an Indian raiding party.

Once, in late fall, the hunters were coming home. There was thick fog. The mouth of the Maneluk River [a mountain tributary of the Kobuk] was very foggy. They could not see the river banks. There was deep water and a good beach just up from the mouth of the Maneluk. They came close to the beach and saw a kayak coming upstream. One man had a hook made from a willow branch on the end of a pole. Sometimes in rapids they used the hook to steady the raft.

That kayak near the mouth of the Maneluk was so close that they hooked it and pulled it to the raft. They knew the man. He was an Indian named Katoleelauk. He jumped on the raft. His partner also came near but could not be hooked. He went around and around. Finally he was hooked, pulled to the raft and he jumped on.

The Kobuk men took Katoleelauk home. He had frightened the women so much that summer that they had collected very little food. They said to him, "Katoleelauk, you are a foxy trickster." He answered, "Oh yes." They guarded him all fall until freeze-up. Then the Kobuk people spoke to him, "Now we meet together. You stay with us this fall. We will give you everything, clothes, boots, snowshoes. In winter you shall go home. Tell your people that you stayed with us. Tell them that the Kobuk people want to come over to the Indian people around Koyuk somewhere."

Katoleelauk stayed all fall. Then they fitted him out and let him go home. When he got home he told the Indian people that the Kobuk people wanted to meet with them.

In the long days of March and April, many sleds set out. They came to Pah River [a lowland tributary of the Kobuk] and along the river the Indians and Eskimos met. One man was in front of his sled. He took a spear and put it in the trail, point down. That man stood right there. The Indians could not come by. They waited. The Kobuk people watched them. For many hours they waited. They were cold. The man who held them back had lost many brothers and neighbours, killed by Indians. One woman carrying a baby also had lost many brothers and neighbours. She went after the man with the spear. She came to him and asked, "Why do you hold back these people?" She grabbed the spear. She took him home dragging his spear.

Then the Indian teams came into the village. Each team went to a different Kobuk house. This is the way they met. Every year they met. The Indians came down. The Kobuk people went to them. After that there was no more fighting.⁴⁷

KOYUKON INDIANS

The Koyukon Athapaskans of the upper Koyukuk River are termed upland hunters of big game. In traditional times they and their Kutchin Athapaskan neighbors on the upper Chandalar followed a lifeway dictated by a marginal forest-and-mountain environment deficient in the fishery resources that made more bountiful the lives of river-valley Indians to the south. Big game—caribou, bear, moose—wandered as solitaries or dispersed bands through these boreal territories, and so did the people who preyed upon them. Two-household families and small groups of families were the rule; only occasionally, during communal caribou drives or at feasts and potlatches when food was accumulated beforehand, could the people come together in larger groups. Local "bosses" guided communal efforts during caribou hunts and fishing seasons. Salmon fishing provided significant food for Koyukon bands of the Hogatza and Kanuti river areas, at the southern margin of the study region; but for the Indians of the Koyukuk's upper forks and tributaries, fish were secondary resources, with such species as whitefish, grayling, and pike more important than the much diminished salmon of the upper reaches. When caribou were few, and before moose moved in large numbers into Koyukuk country in the last century, the smaller forest animals—hare, beaver, muskrat, porcupine, squirrel—might combine as principal food resources. Migratory ducks and geese, and resident grouse and ptarmigan supplemented the hunters' diets.⁴⁸

Before firearms and mechanical transportation become available to the Natives of the northern interior of Alaska, their effective killing range was extremely limited. To overcome this limitation, they ... learned to harvest wildlife with such devices as deadfalls and snares. These devices, coupled with a thorough knowledge of the behavior patterns of the target animals, allowed men to hunt in absentia and thus extend their predatory effectiveness. It is likely that remote harvesting techniques produced as much or more food and furs than did the activities limited to men and their hand weapons.⁴⁹

The dominant food quest, the changing seasons, and the unpredictability of animal populations and distributions prevented settled village life for these upriver Indians. Despite a wandering lifestyle, members of a given family stayed together through most of the year. They combined or divided their labors as custom and circumstance demanded to accomplish the tasks of hunting and gathering, processing food, and producing clothes, shelter, and tools.

In summer, except for periodic hunting and trading trips, the people lived along major rivers, camping near stream junctions where the men fished with traps at stream entrances, the women with nets in eddies and sloughs. As berries ripened, they were gathered and stored in birchbark baskets for transport to the next camp. Meat and fish in excess of daily needs was air dried and stored.

Approaching fall meant relocation to upland lakes where lake and stream fishing took place and, after freeze-up, fishing through the ice. Winter house construction or repair anticipated the deep cold to come. These structures—partly sunk in the ground, walled and roofed with spruce logs and poles, covered with moss, sod, and dirt—were occupied on and off through the winter whenever the families returned from hunting trips. Group caribou hunts took place in late October, with several families joining together. Hide tents on willow frames, piled with insulating snow, provided shelter during these outings. Also, during this season, some hunters journeyed north to the mountains to hunt sheep. Through the winter, based in the winter dwellings, women hunted small game and fished through the ice. Men hunted caribou and moose, and took denning bears in the surrounding hill country.

During the darkest, coldest days of winter, game went to ground and thick ice inhibited fishing. This break in the hunting imperative allowed time for visiting and festivals with nearby Indian groups.

As sunlight returned in late winter, some families traveled to the Brooks Range or to the Kobuk for messenger feasts with their Eskimo trading partners; or Eskimos might visit the Indian encampments. These gatherings, the invitations carried by runners called messengers, were based on established intertribal partnerships. They fostered exchange of material goods as well as sharing of ideas and techniques. These institutionalized truces broke the prevailing atmosphere of hostility and suspicion in favor of festivity and friendship.

Springtime brought light, the first flights of returning birds, and a break in the weather. But in years of game scarcity and exhausted food stocks, this was the most difficult season. Families scattered and moved about constantly. Some went to muskrat camps near the rivers. Hunting parties began looking for returning caribou now gathering for spring migration. Parties of hunters posted themselves near caribou fences and surrounds. Caribou driven into these extensive barriers and flared enclosures, which were fitted with snares, could be killed easily with spears. Old people, left at winter camp to fend for themselves, trapped and snared any small game available; sometimes they hungered and died.

As late-May break-up approached, the Indians moved to spring fish camps on creeks between the lakes and major rivers. Easy cross-country travel ended as the landscape thawed and became wet ground. Now the birds came in large numbers and the men spent most of their time hunting them in the marshes. In June the annual cycle closed with return to summer camps along the big rivers.⁵⁰

Richard K. Nelson has captured many Athapaskan perspectives and boreal-forest insights from living with Indian people, both Koyukon and Kutchin:

I sat for many hours one midwinter night, listening to an older Koyukon couple. They spoke in vivid detail about their lives, especially about their many experiences hunting and trapping in a broad territory east of Huslia. At one point the man said, "My father trapped that country before me, and I trapped there all my life. But if you go there now it's still good ground—still lots of beaver in there, plenty of mink and otter, marten; good bear country. I took care of it, see. You have to do that; don't take too much out of it right now or you'll get nothing later on."

His wife listened and nodded agreement. She was the more philosophical of the two, and she had a habit of ending his stories with something general or instructive. This time she talked for a few minutes about periods of scarcity, then she concluded: "People never kill animals for no reason, because they know there's times when they'll really need to kill anything they can find."⁵¹

The country knows. If you do wrong things to it, the whole country knows. It feels what's happening to it. I guess everything is connected together somehow, under the ground.⁵²

A Koyukon elder once explained to me that all animals can communicate with each other and that they treat one another properly. This is why animals do not kill each other senselessly or without purpose. Wolves hunt with care, he said, checking the animals "to see which one they want." If they leave a kill behind they usually come back to feed on it again and again, until nothing remains except the bones.⁵³

When a brown bear has been killed, none of its meat should be brought into the village for some days or weeks; it is too fresh and potent with easily affronted spiritual energy. During earlier years, in fact, it was left in a cache at the kill site until the midwinter potlatch memorializing people who had died in the previous year.⁵⁴

Amongst traditional Athapaskans, the potlatch was the central ceremonial of the year, permeating every phase of social life. "On the surface, it was simply a feast for the dead. Indians explain that a family is overwhelmed by sorrow after a death and that its headman, in order to forget his grief, holds a potlatch at which there is much feasting, dancing, and merrymaking, climaxed by a distribution of gifts." The festivities rejuvenated the spirits of the participants and provided an honorific farewell to the deceased. But more than this, the potlatch affirmed its giver's prestige and wealth. Distribution of food, blankets, and other gifts was important ceremonially and functionally as a means of sharing that wealth with other members of the band. Finally, the potlatch offered a rare opportunity for people normally dispersed to come together as a group to entertain one another and renew their social ties.⁵⁵

As a live-in anthropologist, Nelson became familiar with Alaskan Interior weather and the Koyukon response to it:

Considering its power over people's lives and emotions, it is not surprising that weather is the most fully personified element in the Koyukon physical world. The interchange between people and these conscious entities is fairly elaborate and intense. Oncoming weather is announced by signs, it is received as a communion of awareness, and it is sometimes manipulated by people who have learned its few points of vulnerability.

Formerly ... people recognized a benign spirit of heat and a malicious antagonist, the spirit of cold. The two struggled for supremacy at different seasons and the weather of the moment showed who had the upper hand. ... The temperature is perceived as much more than a physical condition of inert air—it is a thing, an essence, as if a wild and moody animal controlled its own living heat.

But at least its moods can be anticipated. When deep cold approaches, the sun often has a bright spot, or "false sun," on either side. Koyukon people say, "The sun is building fires beside her ears," and if it is midwinter it may soon be -30° to -50°. This sign is caused, outsiders would say, by ice crystals precipitating from chilling air aloft—it is a very reliable one. ...

In the Far North, cold can take people away with it—those who are caught outside with the wrong clothing or who become lost or venture onto bad ice. Cold comes with a dense and heavy calm that leans upon the land. If dogs are put in harness, they whine and lift their paws alternately: pulling the sled, they are hidden in fog from their own breath. Cold presses like liquid against clothing, pinches exposed flesh, and flows painfully into the vulnerable recesses of nose and throat.⁵⁶

Moses Henzie, a Koyukon elder of Allakaket, showed the persistence of old ways when he talked of them in 1978:

We depend on our animals to make our living in this country. We have to treat them with respect. Like when I find a wolverine or wolf in my trap. After I shoot 'em, I rub a little piece of moose fat on his nose. Then I make a little fire and burn that fat. Just like feeding them. I always carry that piece of fat in my sled bag.

We give respect to animals but not just animals, either. People lived in this country long time. We find their graveyards. They didn't live in one place like we do now. They would have fish trap in the creek, and spring camp and fall camp. Live all over. And when they die they just bury each other any place in the country. So Marie and me when we travel, we don't camp just any place. We have to look for where people cut trees or something. We look for someplace people used to camp long ago.

Marie and I we're worse, other people camp anywhere. But if other people are in a bad place, bad ground, you know, it's like they can't sleep. Stay awake all night. We always watch. ... If we find a human bone on the trail, we stop right there and make a little fire. We get all kinds of little food and throw it in the fire. And we tell that person we're just traveling around trying to make our living. We wouldn't bother anything. We're just making our living, that's all. That's what we'd say. Throw that food in the fire. That's our old ways.⁵⁷

KUTCHIN INDIANS

Just before contact with Europeans, the northwesternmost bands of Kutchin Athapaskans—Dihai and Netsi—centered on the mountain forks of the Koyukuk and Chandalar rivers respectively. In their spare mountain environments, which seasonally included both slopes of the Brooks Range, these big-game hunters depended mainly on caribou, with a limited winter fishery in upland lakes. By 1850, under pressure from expanding mountain Eskimos, the Dihai were fading eastward, where eventually they would assimilate with the Netsi along the Chandalar's East Fork, thus ending their influence within the study region. Previously, the Dihai had roamed throughout the Endicott Mountains as far west as Kobuk and Noatak headwaters.

In contrast to the enduring trading partnerships that encouraged peaceful Koyukon-Eskimo relations, increasing competition between the Dihai and Eskimos over caribou hunting sites in the mountains led to war. Old battlegrounds and stories tell of bloody encounters and raids throughout the central mountains as the Eskimos pushed eastward and southward. About 1850 an epic battle near Anaktuvuk Pass ended in defeat for the Dihai. The Endicott Mountains became Eskimo territory. Burch attributes the movements of Eskimos east from the Kotzubue Sound drainage and south from the Meade and Colville rivers to the decline of caribou around the mountain periphery. This shift of Eskimo populations to the rich mountain hunting grounds not only forced the retreat of the isolated Dihai Kutchin back to core Kutchin territory, it was also "... the primary source of the so-called 'Nunamiut' population of the late 19th century."⁵⁸

The Dihai and Chandalar Kutchin played more a memory than an active role in the post-1850 history of the study region.⁵⁹ These mountain Indians, far removed from the relative riches of their riverine brethren to the south, lived a hard life of constant movement in search of food. Elders who were children in traditional times recalled only hunting, periodic hunger, and hurrying on to the next place. A single family might cover hundreds of miles in a season, carrying only a skin tent for shelter. During the worst times, even the luxury of visiting was denied them; hunting took all their energy. Until the advent of white trading posts and the fur trade, even the steady occupation of vaguely defined band territories was subject to the vagaries of the resource base. People might have to spend a season or a year in another territory hundreds of miles from home hunting grounds. Dispersal of families was the rule; aggregations were rare; settled villages could not exist. Even today the highly individualistic or autonomous-family lifestyles of Kutchin villages is contrasted to the greater sociability and cohesion of Eskimo villages.⁶⁰

*****

The mountain core of northern Alaska foiled Anglo-European mapmakers until the l880s — in fact, the more remote reaches of this forbidding geography remained incompletely mapped until the advent of airplanes and the strategic focus on the region forced by World War II and its Cold War aftermath.⁶¹ But traditional peoples knew the mountains and their riverine environs intimately. Their travel routes by river and portage, through the passes and along the mountain spine numbered in the scores—each route mapped in detail in the travelers' minds; each classified as to appropriate travel technology, seasonality, advantages and dangers, and the necessities of shelter, fuel, water, and food.

A steep, short pass might be chosen for a summer hunting party's trek to high country for sheep hunting. On the return, loaded with meat and skins, the hunters chose a broad river valley, sacrificing distance for the convenience of a raft float back home. The steep pass might be avoided in winter because of avalanche danger; as might the river because of hidden overflow that could quickly kill. Other passes could not be negotiated during windy seasons; at sub-zero temperatures a person could freeze to death in minutes in the hurricane-force winds that roared through these wind gaps. Snow and ice cover, with enough but not deep snow, encouraged winter overland travel. In summer, boat travel on the rivers avoided bogs and swamps. High water during spring runoff carried whole societies seaward in their family umiaks; return upriver awaited the low water of late summer. The seasonal round nicely paired winter-overland and summer-river travel, with established caches for sleds and boats at the seasonal exchange points. Skin-covered boats had to be dried periodically to avert water-logging and rot. Summer rains and windstorms might delay or abort upriver travel, forcing abandonment of boats and their loads of trade goods and meat. Then the people foot-slogged to the sled cache, returning to the boats after freeze-up to haul their supplies home on the sleds.

The combinations of travel technology and strategy—adjusted for season and terrain to accommodate light-traveling hunters, loaded hunters, family trading and festive parties, communal hunting groups—were infinite and artful. These understandings of landscapes and modes of movement—complemented by sophisticated sciences of shelter, clothing, and provisioning in spare environments marked by extreme and deadly weather—must be viewed as triumphs of cultural adaptation. They allowed these traditional people, in the full panoply of generations, to move rapidly with large quantities of goods over long distances, year-round, through country that today is inaccessible (short of helicopter landings) to all but the most resolute trekkers geared for adventurous struggle.⁶²

Beginning in the 1880s, these perfected skills and knowledges would be shared, enabling the first white men to penetrate an ancient homeland, a new wilderness.