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

¹Douglas D. Anderson, "Ancient Peoples of the Kotzebue Basin," Alaska Geographic, 8(3), 1981, 55, 56.

²This scan of natural and cultural history was derived from various sources, including these most helpful: Howell Williams, ed., Landscapes of Alaska (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1958);Olaus J. Murie, "Alaska-Yukon Caribou," North American Fauna, No. 54, Bureau of Biological Survey (Washington, D.C., June 1935); Douglas D. Anderson, "Ancient Peoples of the Kotzebue Basin," Alaska Geographic, 8(3), 1981, 52-59; Ernest S. Burch, Jr., "The Caribou/Wild Reindeer as a Human Resource," American Antiquity, 37(3), 1972, 339-68; Barry Lopez, "Story at Anaktuvuk Pass," Harper's Magazine, December 1984, 49-52; Robert Gal and Edwin S. Hall, Jr., "Provisional Culture History (National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska)," Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, 20(1-2), September 1982, 3-5.

³Wendell H. Oswalt, Eskimos and Explorers (Chandler & Sharp Publishers, Inc., Novato, California, 1979), 204-207; Annette McFadyen Clark, Koyukuk River Culture (National Museums of Canada, Ottawa, 1974), 78-83; Ernest S. Burch, Jr., Eskimo Kinsmen, Changing Family Relationships in Northwest Alaska (West Publishing Co., St. Paul, 1975), 9-10.

⁴Michael Kunz, "Athapaskan/Eskimo Interfaces in the Central Brooks Range, Alaska," The Athapaskan Question (The Archeological Association of the University of Calgary, 1977), 140.

⁵Ibid., 136, 137.

⁶Calvin Martin, "Subarctic Indians and Wildlife," American Indian Environments (Syracuse University Press, 1980), 38, quoting Frederica de Laguna.

⁷Christopher Vecsey, "American Indian Environmental Religions," in Ibid., 21.

⁸"Subarctic Indians and Wildlife," 44.

⁹Julie Cruikshank, "Legend and Landscape: Convergence of Oral and Scientific Traditions in the Yukon Territory," Arctic Anthropology, 8(2), 1981, 72.

¹⁰ Vecsey, "American Indian Environmental Religions," 1. For the general tenor of these last paragraphs and the concept of Distant Time, I owe much to Richard K. Nelson's counsel and various works (see bibliography).

¹¹Ernest S. Burch, Jr., "Indians and Eskimos in North Alaska, 1816-1977: A Study in Changing Ethnic Relations," Arctic Anthropology, 16(2), 1979, 123-134.

¹²"The 'Nunamiut' Concept and the Standardization of Error," Contributions to Anthropology: The Interior Peoples of Northern Alaska National Museums of Canada, Ottawa, 1976, 85.

¹³Ibid.

¹⁴Richard K. Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven, A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest (University of Chicago Press, 1983 , 33.

¹⁵Ibid.

¹⁶Joseph E. Senungetuk, Give or Take a Century, An Eskimo Chronicle (The Indian Historian Press, San Francisco, 1971), 24.

¹⁷Burch, Eskimo Kinsmen, chapter 6; James W. Vanstone, Athapaskan Adaptations, Hunters and Fishermen of the Subarctic Forests AHM Publishing Corp., Arlington Heights, Ill., 1974 , chapter 3.

¹⁸Senungetuk, Give or Take a Century, 25.

¹⁹Edwin S. Hall, Jr., "A Clear and Present Danger: The Use of Ethnohistoric Data for Interpreting Mound 44 at the Utqiagvik Site," Arctic Anthropology, 21(1), 1984, 137; see also Kunz, "Athapaskan/Eskimo Interfaces," 143, 144; Burch, "The Nunamint Concept," 66, 67; Burch. "Studies of Native History as a Contribution to Alaska's Future," typescript lecture paper, 32nd Alaska Science Conference, Fairbanks, 1981.

²⁰Kunz, "Athapaskan/Eskimo Interfaces," 136.

²¹Don Charles Foote, "Human Geographical Studies in Northwestern Arctic Alaska, The Upper Kobuk River Project, 1965" (typescript report), Montreal, 1966, 15.

²²Clark, Koyukuk River Culture, chapters 1 and 3.

²³J.L. Giddings, The Arctic Woodland Culture of the Kobuk River (The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1952); J.L. Giddings, Kobuk River People (University of Alaska, Fairbanks, 1961); J.L. Giddings, Ancient Men of the Arctic (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1967); Nicholas J. Gubser, The Nunamiut Eskimos, Hunters of Caribou (W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1954); Robert A. McKennan, The Chandalar Kutchin (Arctic Institute of North America, Montreal, 1965).

²⁴See Edwin S. Hall, Jr., "Known Archeological Resources of the Noatak River Basin, Northern Alaska, as of January 1973" (typescript report for National Park Service), 12-18, for summary discussion of traditional Noatak life.

²⁵Koyukuk River Culture, 24, 25. Other sources for the south-flankforest environment include Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven, 254-260; McKennan, The Chandalar Kutchin, 17, 18; Giddings, The Arctic Woodland Culture of the Kobuk River, 3, 4. The above description applies ingeneral to neighboring Chandalar country, with the major difference that salmon do not enter the upper forks of Chandalar River (Alaska's Fisheries Atlas, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 1978, I, Map 126-1). McKennan (p. 17) states that lack of this food source sets off the mountain-dwelling Chandalar Kutchin from their more riverine neighbors to the south.

²⁶Clark, Koyukuk River Culture, 27-29.

²⁷Burch, "The Caribou/Wild Reindeer as a Human Resource," 346.

²⁸Ibid.

²⁹Clark, Koyukuk River Culture, 29.

³⁰Ibid., 30, 31.

³¹Herbert R. Melchior, ed., Biological Survey of the Proposed Kobuk valley National Monument (typescript report for National Park Service, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, 1976), 203.

³²Burch, Eskimo Kinsmen, 9.

³³Burch, "Indians and Eskimos in North Alaska, 1816-1977," 124-129.

³⁴Ibid., 123-132. This paragraph greatly simplifies Burch's discussion. In the decades before 1850, Eskimo expansion from the Colville River into the Endicott Mountains resulted in retreat of the Dihai Kutchin and their absorption into Netsi Kutchin society. The Dihai had earlier extended their range as far west as the upper Noatak and had been gradually staging back eastward. Moreover, a large section of the Endicott Mountains, shifting with the above movements, but centered around the headwaters of the major rivers, was unclaimed territory visited by both Athapaskans and Eskimos.

³⁵This description of Tulugagmiut life paraphrases in part Grant Spearman's, Land Use Values Through Time in the Anaktuvuk Pass Area (Cooperative Park Studies Unit, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, 1979), 33-47. Spearman summarized previous studies and the results of his own field work with traditional members of the Anaktuvuk Pass community.

³⁶Ibid.

³⁷Helge Ingstad, Nunamiut, Among Alaska's Inland Eskimos (W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1954), 59-63.

³⁸These recollections by three elders of the Colville River-Endicott Mountains area were published ca. 1980 by the North Slope Borough Commission on History and Culture in Qiniqtuagaksrat Utuqqanaat Inuuniagninisiqun, The Traditional Land Use Inventory for the Mid-Beaufort Sea, I: Bessie Ericklook, 126-128: Elijah Kakinya, 148-151:Pete Suvaliq, 97. David Libbey and Grant Spearman assisted the author in place-name identifications: personal communications March 7, 1985.

³⁹L.R. Binford, "Forty-seven Trips," in Edwin S. Hall, Jr., ed., Contributions to Anthropology: The Interior Peoples of Northern Alaska (National Museums of Canada, Ottawa, 1976), 313,

⁴⁰Burch, Eskimo Kinsmen, 17. Some people attended the fair at Sisualik one year and the fair at Niglik the next, allowing them to relay Siberian trade goods all the way to the Arctic coast. These gatherings of people from societies hundreds of miles apart spread ideas as well as goods, and reaffirmed social bonds between members of different societies, Ibid., 21.

⁴¹Ibid., 17-19.

⁴²"Noatak Eskimo Tool Bag," Alaska Journal, 6(4), Autumn 1976, 230-234.

⁴³Burch, Eskimo Kinsmen, 19, 20.

⁴⁴Don Charles Foote, "Human Geographical Studies in Northwestern Arctic Alaska, The Upper Kobuk River Project, 1965," (typescript report, Montreal, 1966), 15, 16.

⁴⁵J.L. Giddings, Ancient Men of the Arctic (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1973), 302, 303.

⁴⁶Foote, "The Upper Kobuk River project," Appendix C, Robert Cleveland's Account of Traditional Eskimo Life.

⁴⁷Ibid., Story 9.

⁴⁸Richard K. Nelson, Kathleen H. Mautner, G. Ray Bane, Tracks in the Wildland, A portrayal of Koyukon and Nunamiut Subsistence (Cooperative Park Studies Unit, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, 1982), chapters 2 and 10: Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven, 258-260: James W. Vanstone, Athapaskan Adaptations, Hunters and Fishermen of the Subarctic Forests (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 1974), 121-125: A. McFadyen Clark, " Koyukon " Handbook of American Indians, Vol. 6, Subarctic, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 1981), 585, 588.

⁴⁹ Nelson, et al., Tracks in the Wildland, 55.

⁵⁰Clark, Koyukuk River Culture, 90-92. This account is based almost entirely on Clark's reconstruction, with additional material from the same source, 160, 161, 237; Clark, "Koyukon," 589; and Vanstone, Athapaskan Adaptations, 34.

⁵¹Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven, 200.

⁵²Ibid., 241.

⁵³Ibid., 219.

⁵⁴Ibid., 188.

⁵⁵Vanstone, Athapaskan Adaptations, 55, 56.

⁵⁶Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven, 40.

⁵⁷Curt Madison and Yvonne Yarber, Moses Henzie, A Biography, Allakaket (Yukon-Koyukuk School District, 1979), 28.

⁵⁸Burch, "Indians and Eskimos in North Alaska," 132, 133; Edwin S. Hall, Jr., "Kutchin Athapaskan/Nunamiut Eskimo Conflict," The Alaska Journal, 5(4) 1975, 248-252; McKenna, The Chandalar Kutchin, 23-25.McKennan notes that the Chandalar Kutchin maintained trading relationships with Eskimos to the north, on the Arctic Coast, where they were seen from the time of the earliest white contact.

⁵⁹According to Eskimo elder Tishu Ulen, Dihai spirits haunted the dark and lonely places and were the bogeymen of Eskimo children until recent times. Personal communication, November 1983.

⁶⁰Richard K. Nelson, Hunters of the Northern Forest, 273-74, 281-82; see Richard A. Caulfield, Subsistence Land Use, Upper Yukon-porcupine Communities, Alaska (Alaska Department of Fish and Game, SubsistenceDivision Technical Paper, Number 16, June 1983), for a useful historical overview of western Gwich'in (Kutchin) subsistence patterns, 22-42.

⁶¹Gerald FitzGerald, Surveying and Mapping in Alaska, USGS Circular 101 (Washington, 1951), 21, 22.

⁶²This discussion of routes and modes of travel based on Ernest S. Burch, Jr., "Overland Travel Routes in Northwest Alaska," Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, 18(1), December 1976, 1-10; Ernest S. Burch, Jr., "Inter-Regional Transportation in Traditional Northwest Alaska," Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, 17(2), December 1975, 1-9.