National Park Service 

U.S. Department of the Interior 

Wrangell-St. Elias 

National Park and Preserve 

Norman Alexander Easton 

AN ETHNOHISTORY 

OF THE CHISANA RIVER BASIN
As the nation’s principal conservation agency, the Department of the Interior has 

responsibility for most of our nationally owned public lands and natural and cultural 

resources. Tis includes fostering the wisest use of our land and water resources, protecting 

our fsh and wildlife, preserving the environmental and cultural values of our national parks 

and historical places, and providing for enjoyment of life through outdoor recreation. 

Te Cultural Resource Programs of the National Park Service have responsibilities that include stewardship of 

historic buildings, museum collections, archeological sites, cultural landscapes, oral and written histories, and 

ethnographic resources. 

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understanding of these resources to the public. Congress has mandated that we preserve these resources because they 

are important components of our national and personal identity. 

Published by the United States Department of the Interior 

through the Government Printing Ofce. 

Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Preserve 

Copper Center, Alaska 

Any opinions, fndings, conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily 

refect the views of the Department of the Interior. All errors are attributable to the author. 

Design/layout by Francis Broderick, Archgraphics. 

An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Norman Alexander Easton 

2021 

Front cover photographs (top to bottom): 

Chisana Natives at Quartz Creek, Alaska, n.d. (circa 1902). Photograph by F.C. Schrader, U.S. Geological Survey. 

Chindadn biface from the Little John Site. Photograph by N. A. Easton. 

Aerial view of Teetsa Niign – Lower Chisana River Valley to the West, from Cheejiil Niign – Mirror Creek. 

Photograph by N. A. Easton. 

Te production of this document cost $33,285 including costs for editing, photo acquisition, mapmaking, and 

publication. 
AN ETHNOHISTORY 

OF THE CHISANA RIVER BASIN 

Norman Alexander Easton 

YukonU Research Centre, Yukon University 

Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada 

2021 
Indian and White, both live here on this earth. We got to share with you this place here, for 

all people, Africans, Chinese, White, and Indian. We all work together for a good life here. My 

grandchildren go to White school, learn to read, math, and I tell them my life and then together 

we gonna make this world a beautiful, beautiful place.... Then I can go on my trail to heaven. 

 —Bessie John 

Title page photograph: Chisana Valley from Cooper Pass. Photograph by F.C. Schrader, U.S. Geological Survey. 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 

List of Figures.............................................................................................................................................................. v 

List of Tables ...............................................................................................................................................................vi 

Editor’s Preface ........................................................................................................................................................vii 

Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................................. viii 

THE WORLD THAT RAVEN MADE ......................................................................................................1 

A STORY OF THE CREATION OF THE WORLD.............................................................................................. 3 

INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................................................... 5 

ENVIRONMENTAL SETTING .................................................................................................................7 

PLEISTOCENE AND HOLOCENE ENVIRONMENTAL ECOLOGY......................................................................7 

CONTEMPORARY ENVIRONMENTAL ECOLOGY....................................................................................... 11 

CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE YUKON-ALASKA BORDERLANDS 

AS REVEALED BY ARCHAEOLOGY ................................................................................................... 13 

TRADITIONAL CULTURE .................................................................................................................... 16 

LANGUAGE .......................................................................................................................................................... 19 

KINSHIP RELATIONS........................................................................................................................................ 20 

Matrilineal Descent .................................................................................................................................. 23 

Clans, Phratries, and Moieties ............................................................................................................... 24 

Kinship and the Domestic Household and Political Economies................................................... 25 

POTLATCH, RECIPROCITY, AND LEADERSHIP.......................................................................................... 27 

CLAN MIGRATION AND SETTLEMENT ....................................................................................................... 28 

PLACES..................................................................................................................................................... 30 

NAMING THE LANDSCAPE – "WISDOM SITS IN PLACES".............................................................................30 

TRAILS .................................................................................................................................................................................30 

TRADITIONAL VILLAGES OF THE CHISANA RIVER BASIN ..........................................................................31 

DWELLINGS.......................................................................................................................................................................34 

SUBSISTENCE – A LIFE OF RHYTHMS ............................................................................................ 41 

SUBSISTENCE AND TRAPPING SEASONAL ROUNDS ......................................................................................41 

TRAVEL................................................................................................................................................................................42 

HUNTING ............................................................................................................................................................................45 

Hunting in the Chisana River Basin................................................................................................................48 

FISHING ...............................................................................................................................................................................49 

COLLECTING .....................................................................................................................................................................52 
iv An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

HISTORY.....................................................................................................................................................53 

ABORIGINAL DEMOGRAPHY AND HISTORICAL EPIDEMICS .........................................................................54 

THE EARLY PERIOD OF EUROPEAN TRADE ..........................................................................................................57 

EARLY EUROPEAN EXPLORERS...................................................................................................................................59 

THE INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY COMMISSION SURVEY IN UPPER T ANANA LAND.......................60 

First Attempts to Establish the 141st Meridian...........................................................................................62 

Official Accounts of the International Boundary Commission Survey..........................................63 

Oral History Accounts of the Border Survey .................................................................................................65 

Mrs. Bessie John’s Account of the Border Survey............................................................................65 

Mr. Andy Frank’s Account of the Border Survey..............................................................................66 

PROSPECTORS AND THE CHISANA GOLD RUSH..................................................................................................67 

MINERS, MISSIONARIES, TRADERS, AND THE STATE IN THE CHISANA RIVER BASIN 

AFTER THE GOLD R USH .................................................................................................................................................71 

Traders and Trappers in the Chisana Basin ..................................................................................................72 

The Nabesna Gold Mine .........................................................................................................................................80 

Missionaries ................................................................................................................................................................82 

The State and the Dineh of the Chisana Basin Between the Wars........................................................85 

The Bureau of Education ...................................................................................................................................86 

Land and Political Organization .....................................................................................................................90 

Conclusion................................................................................................................................................................91 

THE ALASKA HIGHWAY AND THE CHISANA RIVER DINEH...........................................................................92 

The Construction of the Alaska Highway ..............................................................................................94 

Social Relations with the Highway Builders.........................................................................................98 

Effects on Native Subsistence...................................................................................................................99 

Wage Labor in a Hinterland Boom-Bust Economy................................................................................. 102 

Effects on Native Health.......................................................................................................................... 103 

Alcohol ..................................................................................................................................................... 103 

Disease and Illness ............................................................................................................................... 104 

The Consolidation of State Authority in the Chisana River Basin ............................................... 106 

CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................................... 114 

References Cited....................................................................................................................................................116 

Appendix 1 – Census Records of the Upper Tanana Basin.......................................................................... 130 

1A – Census of Upper Tanana, Collected by Robert McKennan, winter of 1929/30........................... 131 

1B – List of Residents of Nabesna and Scottie Creek, 1937, by the Episcopal Church ....................... 132 

1C – Elder's Birthdays and Indian Names Collected by the Episcopal Church..................................... 138 

1D – Census 1937-38 for Scottie Creek, Nabesna, Tetlin, and Last Tetlin, 1938.................................. 141 

Appendix 2 – Walter Northway’s Account of His Clan History................................................................... 146 
List of Figures v 

List of Figures 

Figure 1. Chisana River Basin Study Area ............................................................................................................................ 6 

Figure 2. Upper Chisana River Valley, to Southeast.......................................................................................................... 7 

Figure 3. Middle Chisana River Valley, to Southeast ........................................................................................................ 8 

Figure 4. Lower Chisana River Valley, to Southwest ........................................................................................................ 8 

Figure 5. Late Pleistocene ice extents showing locations of archaeological sites mentioned 

in the text: Swan Point (Shaw Creek), Little John, Linda’s Point, and NAB-00533............................................... 9 

Figure 6. Distribution of the White River ash deposits, c. 1,900 and 1,250 years ago....................................11 

Figure 7. Eldred Johnny (Grandson of Little John) holding Chindadn biface (right); 

Chindadn bifaces from the Little John Site (left).....................................................................................................13 

Figure 8. Wearing traditional decorated moosehide coats.........................................................................................16 

Figure 9. Aboriginal languages of the Yukon-Alaska borderlands...........................................................................18 

Figure 10. Three Alaska Native Women, including Mother Northway (R), 

Lower Nabesna 1930 ..........................................................................................................................................................21 

Figure 11. Bertha and Ada, Lower Nabesna, 1930 .........................................................................................................23 

Figure 12. Upper Tanana polygamous marriage form ..................................................................................................26 

Figure 13. Villages of the Chisana River Basin .................................................................................................................32 

Figure 14. Cross Creek Village, c. 1915................................................................................................................................33 

Figure 15. Domed Mooseskin Tent and High Cache on Middle Fork of the 

Fortymile River, 1901............................................................................................................................................................35 

Figure 16. Section View of Upper Tanana Semi-subterranean Bark House ........................................................36 

Figure 17. Upper Tanana Semi-subterranean Bark House .........................................................................................37 

Figure 18. Plan and Section of Upper Tanana Dome Skin Tent .................................................................................38 

Figure 19. Upper Tanana Domed Skin Tent and High Cache......................................................................................39 

Figure 20. Upper Tanana Log Pole House...........................................................................................................................39 

Figure 21. Matthew Paul at camp at Dog Lake (near Northway), 1936 ................................................................40 

Figure 22. Paddling a boat on George Lake .......................................................................................................................43 

Figure 23. Frank Luke and his dog team, Healy Lake, circa 1940 ............................................................................44 

Figure 24. Women and children with pack dogs, Lower Nabesna 1930...............................................................45 

Figure 25. Women and children fishing from a log platform at a fish weir .........................................................50 

Figure 26. Women and children fishing with dip net from log platform at fishing weir ...............................50 

Figure 27. Chisana City Streetscape, 1914.........................................................................................................................53 

Figure 28. Cross Creek Village Cemetery, 1939 ...............................................................................................................54 

Figure 29. Surveyor on mountain peak from the Alaska Canada boundary survey 

from 1910 to 1913 ...............................................................................................................................................................61 

Figure 30. Survey activity from the Alaska Canada boundary survey from 

1910 to 1913...........................................................................................................................................................................62 

Figure 31. Surveyor looking up a small tributary glacier, 141st Meridian, 

Kluane Glacier, Y.T.................................................................................................................................................................63 

Figure 32. Chief Joe, Jack Ray, John Healy, John Hadjudovich [Hajdukovich]......................................................73 

Figure 33. Lee Jennis and students at Northway School, 1943.................................................................................88 

Figure 34. Ferry across Big Scotty Creek in birch bark canoe, June 13, 1942 ....................................................95 

Figure 35. Walter Mason’s A Company 97th Engineer Regiment building a pioneer bridge.......................97 

Figure 36. Duesenberg Construction Workers with a Catch of Fish ....................................................................101 

Figure 37. Bessie John trimming Spruce Root, Beaver Creek, Yukon, 2004 .....................................................114 
vi An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

List of Tables 

Table 1. Clans of the Upper Tanana according to Roy Sam .........................................................................................24 

Table 2. Epidemic Diseases of Note in Northwestern North America....................................................................55 

Table 3. Upper Tanana Population by "Band," Winter 1929.......................................................................................56 

Table 4. Winter Camps of the 97th Engineers, Winter 1942-43...............................................................................98 

Table 5. Tubercular Death Rates per 100,000, 1940-1945......................................................................................105 

Table 6. Mortality Statistics, Alaska, 1943 ......................................................................................................................105 
 Preface vii 

Editor’s Preface 

The Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin is the result of collaboration between 

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve and what was then called the Northern 

Research Institute at Yukon College (now the YukonU Research Centre at Yukon 

University) in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. The purpose of the project is to 

identify and document the early Native inhabitants of the Chisana area. 

The original technical report was completed by Norm Easton in 2005 for the 

purpose of public education and for integration into the park’s management plans 

and interpretive programs. We are grateful to Norm for working with park staff on 

producing an updated and edited version of the original manuscript to release as a 

park publication. Archeologist Lee Reininghaus and I took the lead on editing the 

manuscript. Museum Specialist Desiree Ramirez worked – undaunted by pandemicrelated archive closures – on obtaining permission from archives and individuals to 

reproduce illustrations, and Archeologist Allyson Pease prepared new maps. We also 

thank the Upper Tanana people – past and present – and the early researchers and 

explorers of the region whose knowledge helped to inform this publication. 

—Barbara Cellarius 

Cultural Anthropologist 

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve 

October 2020 
 

viii An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Acknowledgements 

Primary financial support for the writing of this document was provided by the US 

National Park Service (NPS), administered initially by Anne Worthington and later 

by Barbara Cellarius of that agency. Dean Paul Driscoll granted release time from 

teaching duties at then Yukon College’s Arts and Sciences Division. Clint Sawicki and 

Elaine Austin of The Northern Research Institute at Yukon College administered the 

cooperative agreement with NPS. 

It should be abundantly clear, however, that the principal acknowledgement for 

support of this document must go to the many Dineh people who have shared with 

me their time, memories, and knowledge of Dineh Ku – The Dineh Way, the set of 

beliefs, practices, and history that together comprise the culture and identity of the 

aboriginal people of the Upper Tanana region. They are too many to mention them all, 

but I would be remiss not to attempt to do so. Foremost have been the siblings Mrs. 

Bessie John and Mr. Joseph Tommy Johnny, both of whom welcomed me into their 

worlds for extended periods of time, transforming my status from one of outside 

researcher to one of internal kinfolk, and changed my life for the better as a result. 

Additionally I would like to acknowledge the following Dineh for also having 

contributed greatly to my ability to develop this document: Andy Frank, Mary Tyone, 

Titus David, Jenny Sanford, Robert Johnny, Teddy and Darlene Northway, Ada Gallen, 

Charlie Eikland Sr., William Peter, Jimmy and Lena Enoch, Louis Frank, Fred Demit, 

Laura Sanford, David and Ruth Johnny, Polly Hyslop, Doris Johns, Lu Johns-Penikett, 

Agnes Winzer, Margaret Neiman, Kenny Thomas, Jerry and Arlene Isaac, Wilson 

Justin, Steven John, Johnny and Cherry Nicolai, Rose Blair, Sid Vandermeer Jr. and 

Rickie Johns. There are, of course, dozens more who have shared their time and 

knowledge with me who are not listed here, but to whom I owe great gratitude. 

Professional colleagues and friends have also contributed both information and 

support to this project, including John Ritter of the Yukon Native Language Centre 

and Jim Kari of the Alaska Native Language Center, previous ethnographers of the 

Upper Tanana Robert McKennan and Marie Francoise Guédon, and anthropologists 

Richard Lee, Paul Nadasdy, Glen MacKay, Julie Cruikshank, Catherine McClellan, 

Frederica de Laguna, Bill Simeone, Greg Hare, and Ruth Gotthardt. 

A variety of additional agencies have provided financial and logistical support for the 

collection of information contained in this report. They have included The Northern 

Research Institute at Yukon College, the Arts and Sciences Division at Yukon College, 

the White River First Nation, Aboriginal Language Services, Government of Yukon, 

the Departments of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and the George 

Washington University in D.C., the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council 

of Canada, the Canada-US Fulbright Foundation, The Yukon News, and my Royal Bank 

Visa. 

—Norman Alexander Easton 
The World that Raven Made 1 

The World that Raven Made 

In our world Raven had something to do with making this earth. He is a complicated 

character – he is both good and bad, helpful and trouble-making (Jerry Isaac, 

Tanacross, 10 Aug. 1996). 

Like many indigenous people, the Dineh of the upper Tanana River basin of the YukonAlaska borderlands in which the Chisana River lies conceive of themselves as having occupied the 

region in which they live “since time immemorial.” Their existence as Dineh – People – attests to 

this belief; it was anthropologists that named them the Upper Tanana based on the region in which 

they lived and the distinct Athabascan language they spoke (see Easton 2020). To Dineh it is selfevident that they have been present in the region, if not at any precise location, since the settling of 

the world by human beings. Within their own accounting, the world that Dineh occupy was created 

in the distant past by the Creator and molded into its present form through the activities of Taatsan 

– Raven.1 This origin belief is a variation of the widespread “earth diver motif” found throughout 

North America, in which the earth is made by mud brought up from the bottom of a body of water 

(Boas 1914; Thomson 1929). 

At the beginning of creation, animals and humans could communicate, and it was largely 

through the efforts of Raven that they were differentiated. But becoming different also created 

conflict, and many accounts in Dineh mythology attempt to demonstrate ways in which humans and 

animals can get along together in a respectful way, the consequences of not doing so, or reversing/ 

inverting contemporary roles to dramatically highlight the inherent ambiguities of existence and 

knowledge. Other ancient beings played a dramatic role in setting the world in its modern form. In 

the Upper Tanana language, it was the Culture Hero Ts’awusha who established additional rules for 

proper behavior between people and animals and amongst people themselves. 

Indigenous accounts of origins are often referred to as mythology or legend, but they cannot 

be understood merely as fantastic speculative tales; rather, they are multi-functional prisms that 

reflect a variety of central cultural concerns of the people who hold them. Malinowski (1925) 

showed how myths provide a social charter, which serves to legitimate contemporary social beliefs 

and norms. Others have presented myth as a philosophical discourse examining important moral, 

ethical, and existential cultural concerns, just as biblical myths do (Frye 1982). Lévi-Strauss has 

persuasively argued in his Mythologiques that many indigenous accounts are not concerned with 

origins per se – that is, from where and at what point in chronological time people first came to 

some place – as much as they are with establishing the nature of the proper relationships that ought 

to prevail within that space (see, e.g., Lévi-Strauss 1969, 1973). In these anthropological approaches 

to myth, such accounts are seen to be seeking to understand the present more than the past.2 

In addition, the mythological figure of Taatsan is one of great depth of character. He is 

simultaneously the all-powerful Creator and the tragic Trickster, a “divine figure but deeply flawed 

and very human....[symbolizing] the frailty and human qualities of the gods and their closeness to 

humans” (Lee 1999:827), reflecting important elements of the structure of Dineh society.3 

1

 Following settler English usage, many contemporary Dineh will often use the word “crow” to reference the 

common Raven, Corvus corax. 2

 See Cruikshank (1978a) and McClellan (1975) for presentations and anthropological interpretation of a series of

Dineh myths and legends from the Yukon. 3

 McKennan (1959:175-195) records a number of stories of Taatsan and Ts’awusha. Mrs. Mary Tyone (1996) has 

published a corpus of fourteen such stories in Upper Tanana and transliterated English. Vitt (1971:175-184) presents

two moral tales, which describe the arrival of the bow and arrow and the poor boy who gains power by practicing 

discipline and sharing. In my own fieldwork, I was told an account of the initial creation of the world and several

Ts’awusha stories. 
2 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Mr. Joseph Tommy Johnny, discussing Dineh Ku – “the Dineh Way” – to 

students at the Little John cultural camp, June 2010. Photo by N. A. Easton. 
A Story of the Creation of the World 3 

A STORY OF THE CREATION OF THE WORLD 

Mr. Joseph Tommy Johnny shared the following account of the Creation of the Dineh world in 

1999. We were camping at the traditional village site of Taiy Chi, which lies in the low hills just south 

of the Chisana River on the Yukon-Alaskan border. Dinner was complete, and we drank tea and 

spoke of the time he had lived at this site during his lifetime. I asked him if he would tell me a story 

of how this world came to be and he replied: 

How did the world start up? Okay, the very beginning, okay. 

They say that this planet was just water, right? There was no ground. And so... 

You see what we see today, that swan there? That swan there – gee, it’s funny 

how things work out like that. 

Fish-woman, you know, fish-girl, like fish, but here [above the waist] like woman, 

eh? Funny how Native people know that a long time ago, the very beginning. You 

don’t see that in a book today. 

There’s that one, that Fish-woman, and a Swan. And a Crow, you see, that’s the 

main Crow. Okay? Crow. 

You see, they say Sandpiper he’s got little checkered this way [around his neck], 

he say “Let me borrow your necklace.” But Crow, tired, he’s got no place to land, eh, 

he’s Crow, like Raven, he’s got no place to land. Tired, he can’t float, he just drown. So 

he kept flying, out above the water. This earth was all covered with water.

So, he gets tired and pretty soon he sees just a little stick sticking out like that. 

He pull like this, he pull like that, Crow, you know? And then Fish-girl come up. 

“Let’s see your baby,” he said. The Fish-woman, she had a little baby, eh? There 

was no ground, just a stick sticking out like that. 

So he tell that Fish-girl, “Let me see that kid for a while,” you know, Crow. So, 

yeah, she give it to Crow and that’s a mistake, eh? That’s a mistake there, yeah, 

because that Crow he take off, eh? He hold that baby. 

That Fish-girl is got her hand out and Crow is holding the baby there. The Fishgirl say “Give me back my kid.” 

“No, I’m not giving it back. Give me a little mud, a little ground like this. Ground. 

You got to go down.” Dive? Down below, she bring up ground like that and fold it like 

that [over the stick]. “Bring some more.” 

Tired, she just going down there. Pretty soon it’s a little bit big, eh? Ground. It 

gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger, eh? See now, this is the Crow now, pretty soon he 

think, “Bring mud too, mud, you know mud? Under the water, bring that up too, mud. 

Bring this one – bring willow, you know.” 

He hold that baby. He got three feet, like that. He jump on it eh? The ground 

there? Jump on it. 

The Crow there, he’s holding the baby, eh? Pretty soon the ground is going out 

like that, right? Yup, spreading it out. 
4 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

“Bring some more, bring some more, you want your baby!” The Fish-woman just 

half crazy, eh? She was so tired, pretty soon she’s just standing there. Crow, he keep 

flattening it out, going out, going out, like that, eh?

Oh, she’s so tired. “Last time, I’m going to get you some more for me. Just go 

down and get you maybe five.”

“Bring me up the tree,” he said, “tree.” You see the tree there? You see the trees 

here? “Bring me up little ones,” you know? Bring me up the five of them.”

Oh, what else? “Go down and get the willow too. Get birch. Get poplar.” He name 

it for them, eh? 

She go down and take it off and bring it up like that, eh? 

That Crow, he don’t give baby back. He take off with that kid, eh! Crow, he 

dancing around, his three feet, the ground is growing out like that. 

Pretty soon that’s how this world is made. Crow, Crow made that! 

It’s getting so big, the ground is getting so big, it grows. 

The ground grows, did you know that? The ground there? It grows. 

You see that lake, we see. Bill Mann there? You see – we used to look from here, 

big lake, like that. You come today; you see that everything is growing together, like 

that, cover up that lake. 

You see Dakteel, I tell you border, before we took off? That was a lake. It’s just 

nothing now. That was deep down there. 

Ground grows. 

So, that time that everything just going like that, that Europe was just how it is 

today. Europe was just floating on the ocean.

Beaver. Beaver. Beaver and porcupine, they stand together like that. The one 

from Europe is Porcupine, right? “I want to go across there. How am I going to 

go across?” Because the water is just going like that [It’s wavy on top?] Yeah. So, 

Porcupine’s there. 

“You got too many quills!” He tell Porcupine, “You got too many quills! How I’m 

going to give you a ride up there?” Right? 

“Well, let’s figure it out,” he said.

So he said, Porcupine, “Oh, quills eh?” So he plucked himself like that, he plucked 

himself like that, eh? Yeah, from his belly. 

O.K., you’re not going to get no quills. So, where am I going to sit?” 

“Right on top of my back,” Beaver say. “I’ll take you across to that island there.” 

See, he’s got tough skin there, you know, fat where all Beaver is, on top there? 

Porcupine sit on top there. No Crow for him, eh? He went across. And he came back 

here, to North America. 

The world was new that time, you know. The world was new them days. Just 

Crow, the main, the main... Native people know, He made this planet! Crow. Yeah. 
Introduction 5

Introduction 

This report documents the indigenous Dineh use of the Upper Tanana River borderlands 

with a focus on the Chisana River basin. The Chisana River basin is part of the ancestral homelands 

of the indigenous Dineh – “people / human beings” in the aboriginal language of the region – who 

occupy the lands astride the Alaska-Yukon border in the area of the Alaska Highway. In Alaska the 

lower Chisana River basin is completely within the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge, while the upper 

portion lies in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. 

Who are the Indigenous people of the Chisana River basin? How did they come to be there? 

Who and where are they now? To answer to these questions is not as easy as it might seem, since the 

nature of identification with and use of the area is embedded in a complex network of relationships 

between people and place within the regional culture and society of the Dineh, a network of 

relationships developed over thousands of years of occupation and history, as the archaeological 

record shows. It is simply impossible to talk of “Chisana People” as some sort of discrete and 

distinctive group of people. It is perhaps more accurate to refer to a collection of families historically 

occupying the area in which the Chisana River basin lies who predominantly spoke the Dineh 

language designated Upper Tanana by linguists. But even this must be done with some caution, since 

the families or their individual members moved regularly throughout the seasons and their lifetimes. 

Furthermore, spouses came from other Dineh language areas to settle in the area: Ahtna speaking 

people from the Copper River valley, Tanacross speaking people from the south Dawson Range, 

and Tutchone speaking people from the Yukon all contributed to the occupation and history of the 

Chisana River region. And yet, despite these goings and comings, there is something discernable that 

we might call a Dineh Borderlands Identity, resulting from their adaptation to this specific landscape 

and shared history and cultural practices which through their long occupation has generated “a 

sense of place.” 

Figure 1 is a map of the study area, including the major drainages and settlements referred 

to throughout this report. Technically the study area encompasses the Chisana River basin from its 

headwaters to its confluence with the Nabesna River near Northway and its principal tributaries

– Mirror and Scottie Creeks – which flow into the river from Canada to the east. Note that different

authors and sources, likely reflecting the common usage of the day, have used different names to refer

to some of the villages shown on this map. Rather than standardizing the references in the pages 

that follow, the alternate names are noted here. Specifically, “Upper Nabesna” is sometimes referred

as “Cooper Creek Village,” “Lower Nabesna” is sometimes referred to as “Nabesna” or “Mouth of the 

Nabesna,” “Tetlin” is sometimes referred to as “Tetling,” and “Last Tetlin” as “Last Tetling.” 
6 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Figure 1. Chisana River Basin Study Area. Map adapted from McKennan 1981:564. 
Environmental Setting 7 

Environmental Setting 

The physical geography of the Chisana River basin is a complex combination of 

geomorphologic features and environmental ecologies, as illustrated in Figures 2, 3, and 4. There 

are no extensive geographical studies that embrace the area in full detail, however an accounting of 

its general environmental history is possible. 

PLEISTOCENE AND HOLOCENE ENVIRONMENTAL ECOLOGY 

The southwestern Yukon-Alaska borderlands represent the northeastern end of the upper 

Tanana River catchment basin, which lies within the Alaska Plateau physiographic region (Hosley 

1981a; Smith et al. 2004). The valley floor averages about 2,000 feet above sea level with hills to 

about 3,000 feet, while the higher mountains to the north rarely exceed 5,000 feet except along the 

extreme southern edge where the Nutzotin Mountains lie. Beyond these rise the 10,000 to 16,000 

feet glacier-bound, jagged peaks of the Wrangell and St. Elias Mountains. 

Despite its proximity to these contemporary icefields, the area consists of broad valleys bordered

by rounded mountains, which suggest the region north of the Nutzotin Mountains was not extensively 

glaciated during the last glacial period, known as the Wisconsin glaciation (c. 70,000 to 11,000 years ago) 

(Briner and Kaufman 2008; Pico et al. 2020; Stilwell and Kaufman 1996). As illustrated in Figure 5, the

glaciation during this time reached its greatest extent at some point between 23,000 and 18,000 years a 

Figure 2. Upper Chisana River Valley, to Southeast. Top left is the headwaters of the river and the 

Chisana Glacier, top right the mouth of Cross Creek, location of the traditional 19th century Dineh 

village. Photo by N. A. Easton. 
8 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Figure 3. Middle Chisana River Valley, to Southeast. Nutzotin Mountains and Wrangell-St. Elias 

Mountains in background, the Chisana River breaking through at center, and typical boreal spruce 

forest and karst-formed lakes on the middle valley’s glacial outwash plain. Photo by N. A. Easton. 

Figure 4. Lower Chisana River Valley, to Southwest. Eroded foothills of the Dawson Range in 

foreground, Chisana River along top right. Photo by N. A. Easton. 
Pleistocene and Holocene Environmental Ecology 9 

 

Figure 5. Late Pleistocene ice extents showing locations of archaeological sites mentioned in the 

text: Swan Point (Shaw Creek), Little John, Linda’s Point, and NAB-00533. Ice extents in radiocarbon 

years before present based on Dyke, Moore and Robertson 2003. 

go during a period known as the Last Glacial Maximum (Hughes and Gibbard 2014). It is suspected that 

dramatic environmental changes occurred after the Last Glacial Maximum, resulting in rapid decay of the 

ice sheets and dramatic rise of the global sea levels (Dixon 2013:22). 

Several paleoecological studies have been carried out in the region, which allows for 

the reconstruction of the local post-glacial environmental history of the past 16,000 years or 

so. Rampton (1971) analyzed sediments from Antifreeze Pond, just south of Beaver Creek, 

while MacIntosh (1997) examined sediments from “Daylight Coming Out” Lake (Upper Tanana 

= Yihkah Mä̀

nnʼ), just north of Beaver Creek and the uppermost lake on the Little Scottie 

Creek drainage, and “Island” Lake (Upper Tanana = Cha’atxaa Männ’), which lies just over the 

Alaska border and drains into Big Scottie Creek via Desper Creek. More recently, Vermaire and 

Cwynar (2010) resampled Antifreeze Pond and collected new cores from Eikland Lake south 

of Beaver Creek. The results of Rampton and MacIntosh are in general agreement, differing 

slightly in some aspects of dating and environmental indicators, while Vermaire and Cwynar’s 

data show how the spread of changes in the post-glacial vegetation regimes was incremental 

through time from west to east following glacial decay. In combination they present us with 

the following paleoenvironmental reconstruction: 
10 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

• Herb-Tundra Steppe Zone 

The late glacial environment of between 18,000 to 11,000 years ago was dominated by 

grasses (Gramineae), sage (Artemisia spp.), willow (Salix spp.) and sedges (Cyperaceae). 

Vermaire and Cwynar (2010) also identify flowering plants of the rose and aster families. 

All agree that this represents a predominantly open, dry, herbaceous tundra steppe zone 

in eastern Beringia at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation.4 MacIntosh (1997) estimates 

minimum July temperatures of 41 degrees Fahrenheit. 

• Birch Rise 

The period between 11,000 and 8,000 years ago is marked by a significant (up to 75 

percent of the pollen record) increase in birch (Betula spp. – predominantly dwarf birch – 

Betula pumila var. glandulifera), with a slow decline in the levels of Artemesia. These data 

suggest a continuing warming climate to at least a minimum mean July temperature of 48 

degrees Fahrenheit. A rise in aquatic plants and algae is also noticeable in the pollen record, 

suggesting increased moisture and precipitation, as well as a general reduction in erosion 

and accompanying stabilization of the landscape into open parkland with hydric (very wet) 

lowlands and mesic (moderately wet) uplands. 

• Spruce Rise 

This is a relatively short period, which is marked by the first appearance of spruce (Picea 

spp.) and alder in the region. It is also one in which different localities present different 

time depths. Rampton’s estimates for Antifreeze Pond place the onset of spruce at about 

8,700 years ago; MacIntosh’s data from Yihkah Mä̀nnʼ place it at between 7,400 and 8,400 

years ago; and Vermaire and Cwynar’s at 8,300 years ago. Birch and willows retain the high 

values of the previous period however, while other taxa are greatly reduced. The presence of 

spruce suggests a minimum mean July temperature of 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

• Spruce Zone 

After about 7,500 years ago, spruce becomes predominant within the pollen record in 

the region, with an accompanying dramatic decrease in the presence of birch and willow, 

representing a closed, mixed boreal forest. Sphagnum pollen also rises noticeably, with a 

corresponding decrease in aquatic species. These data suggest at least a maintenance of 

minimum mean July temperatures of 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

• Alder Zone 

A rise in alder (Alnus spp.) is found at about 5,400 years ago at Yihkah Mä̀nnʼ and 5,600 

years ago at Antifreeze Pond; both suggest an increase in relative moisture in the region 

at about this time to about present levels. Both Rampton (1971) and MacIntosh (1997) 

interpret their data as indicating the onset of an environment generally similar to that 

of today, with the exception of a gradual rise in mean annual July temperatures to its 

contemporary level of about 54 degrees Fahrenheit.

During this last period the region experienced the ash fall from two major volcanic 

eruptions at Mt. Churchill near the headwaters of the White River. Figure 6 shows the limits of the 

two ash deposits. The first, smaller eruption occurred about 1,900 years ago; most of the ash was 

deposited northward from the eruption. The second, larger eruption occurred about 1,250 years 

ago; the ash fall from this eruption was carried eastward to beyond the Yukon-Northwest Territory 

4

 There is not unanimous agreement on Wisconsin Beringian environments. The position set out by Guthrie (1990), which 

argues for a productive “mammoth steppe,” is followed here. 
Contemporary Environmental Ecology 11 

border (Clague et al. 1995:1172; Lerbekmo 2008:693; Lerbekmo et al. 1975). More recent analysis 

of peat deposits has extended its distribution as far east as the shores of Great Slave Lake, 800 miles 

from the source. This expanded distribution encompasses about 200,000 square miles, representing 

a tephra volume of 35.3 billion cubic yards (27 km3

) (Robinson 2001). 

CONTEMPORARY ENVIRONMENTAL ECOLOGY 

From a contemporary perspective, the southwest Yukon and the adjacent Upper Tanana 

valley, which includes the Chisana River basin, are characterized by extensive meandering streams 

across boggy, largely permafrost muskeg. Though technically discontinuous, permafrost is extensive 

and can reach as deep as 100 feet (Rampton 1980). Loess (wind-blown) sediments and volcanic 

ash deposits, both of which can reach over 20 inches in depth, are also found throughout the region 

(Oswald and Senyk 1977). 

Today the ground is covered with sphagnum mosses, sedges, blueberry, bearberry, and 

Labrador tea, and is dotted with remnant oxbows and a plethora of small lakes ringed with willows. 

Black spruce bowers and scattered growth of dwarf birch, alder, and willow crowd any rise in the 

valley landscape, which are often elevated frost mounds, shading ground patches of cranberry and 

wild rose. The surrounding hillsides support alternating patches of white and black spruce, birch, 

Figure 6. Distribution of the White River ash deposits, c. 1,900 and 1,250 years ago. Ash extents based 

on Mulliken, Schaefer and Cameron 2018. 
12 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

alder, aspen, and poplar trees and a wide variety of shrubs, up to their low summits. Due to the near 

surface presence of permafrost, north-facing hillsides are predominantly black spruce. Many of 

these plants were used by the Upper Tanana (see Easton 2005).

Despite the abundance of water in the region, the humidity is low. This is because the 

lowland bogs are more a function of the low relief and summer solar thaw of the 20 or so inches 

of soil above the permafrost than of precipitation, which averages only about 12 inches per year. 

Seasonal variation in temperatures is extreme, ranging from -70 degrees Fahrenheit or colder in 

the winter to the mid-90s Fahrenheit in the summer. The mean low temperature is -24 degrees 

Fahrenheit in January, the mean high temperature is 54 degrees Fahrenheit in July, and the annual 

mean temperature is -6 degrees Fahrenheit. (The lowest recorded temperature for North America 

was recorded at nearby Snag, Yukon, on 3 February 1947 of -81 degrees Fahrenheit (-62.8 degrees 

Celsius).) Cloud coverage is relatively high, averaging overcast for 27 percent of the year and broken 

for 30 percent of the year (Wahl et al. 1987). 

The low mean temperatures combined with the low solar values associated with the high 

cloud cover result in long winters with lakes and streams frozen from October to mid-May (Hosley 

1981a). And while the snow is never very deep, it can come as early as September and remain 

on the ground until May. As a result, the seasons of spring and fall are short, while the difference 

between winter and summer might best be summed up as frozen or wet. 

In the present, the basin supports a wide range of fish species as well as large and small 

mammals. It is also an important component of the interior western continental flyway. Dominant 

large mammals include moose (Alces alces), black and brown (grizzly) bear (Ursus americanus 

and Ursus arctos), mountain sheep (Ovis dalli), and caribou (Rangifer tarandus) of the Chisana and 

Fortymile caribou herds. Furbearers include wolf (Canis lupus), lynx (Lynx canadensis), wolverine 

(Gulo gulo), beaver (Castor canadensis), muskrat (Ondatra zibethica), otter (Lontra canadensis), 

and the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus). Pre-eminent among the fish species are whitefish 

(Coregonus sp.), grayling (Thymallus arcticus), pike (Esox lucius), sucker (Catostomus spp.), and 

lingcod [burbot] (Lota lota). Like the plants, most all animals were integrated into Upper Tanana 

culture. All retain an important social and spiritual relationship to people. Animals are culturally 

categorized by the Dineh as non-human persons, and many were important components of the 

aboriginal technology and subsistence systems. 
Cultural History of the Yukon-Alaska Borderlands as Revealed by Archaeology 13 

Cultural History of the Yukon-Alaska Borderlands 

as Revealed by Archaeology 

Oh yeah, special places like Scottie Creek [a tributary of the lower Chisana River]. 

That’s old, old land there. My old people say that when the glaciers, you know, ice 

everywhere, all around Yukon, that place was okay. Lots of old-time animal, like 

elephant, cat. Scottie Creek had no glacier and that’s where Indian people lived that 

time. They hunted elephant for food, meat like moose. That place has got lots of 

elephant bones and other old animal bones (Bessie John, 16 July 1996, in Easton n.d.). 

The Alaska-Yukon borderland was once the easternmost extent of Beringia, a contiguous 

geography from the Yenisei River in Siberia to the eastern Yukon that existed during periods of 

Pleistocene glaciation over the past 2 million years. The vast quantities of water trapped in these 

continental glaciations resulted in lower sea levels worldwide, exposing a “land bridge” between 

northeastern Asia and northwestern America, providing trans-continental access for the movement 

of plants and animals between these land masses during glacial maximums and isolating them 

during interglacials when the sea levels rose and once more inundated the region we call the Bering 

and Chukchi Seas. It was by this means that horses and camels, which had initially evolved in the 

Americas, migrated to Eurasia and that elephants and lions moved to the Americas from Eurasia 

(Hopkins 1967; Hopkins et al. 1982). While the route of human movement to the southern reaches 

of the Americas remains disputed between a continental (Potter et al. 2018) and coastal migration 

(Easton 1992; Dixon 1999, 2015), there is consensus among archaeologists that human occupation 

of the Americas began in eastern Beringia at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, circa 17,000 to 

14,000 years ago (Goebel and Buvit 2011; Graf, Ketron, and Waters 2013). 

Currently, the earliest unequivocal archaeological evidence for human occupation in eastern 

Beringia lies in two archaeological sites along the Tanana River drainage – Swan Point on the Shaw 

Figure 7. Eldred Johnny (Grandson of Little John) holding Chindadn biface (right); Chindadn bifaces 

from the Little John Site (left). Photos by N. A. Easton. 
14 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Creek tributary of the middle Tanana River and Little John on the Mirror Creek tributary of the upper 

Tanana River, both of which date to circa 14,000 years ago (Potter, Holmes and Yesner 2013). The 

number of archaeological sites in the region increased during the following millennia of the latest 

Pleistocene. A suite of sites near Shaw Creek, such as Broken Mammoth, Mead, and Holzman, all date 

to about 13,300 years ago. Closer to the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, the Linda Point site at Healy Lake, 

Alaska, dates to 13,100 years calibrated before present (CAL BP) (Sattler et al. 2011; Younie and 

Gillispie 2016); the Moose Lake site south of Beaver Creek near White River, Yukon, dates between 

12,700 and 11,600 years CAL BP (Heffner 2002); and site NAB-00533, located in Alaska on Tanada

Creek in the northern Copper River drainage, has several late Pleistocene components that date 

between 11,200 and 13,000 years CAL BP (White et al. 2020; Reininghaus 2019). Figure 5 illustrates

the location of several of these sites in relation to ice field extents during the late Pleistocene.

Faunal remains from these early sites indicate that early inhabitants practiced a mobile 

hunter-gatherer lifestyle, with relatively broad-based diets (Goebel and Potter 2016:236), often 

with an emphasis on sheep, wapiti, and bison (Hoffecker et al. 2016:75). Evidence from the Little 

John site indicates the use of a similar subsistence strategy based on the recovered remains of bison, 

wapiti, caribou, sheep, canis, hare, and swan (Easton et al. 2011:295; Yesner et al. 2011). Broadbased diets, which use large and small game, as well as fish and birds, are indicative of seasonally 

driven land use and mobility (Hoffecker et al. 2016). 

Archaeological evidence from these early sites indicates that these early inhabitants used 

a toolkit dominated by lithic (stone) technology, with antler and bone also used for a wide variety 

of implements (Krasinski and Yesner 2008; Heppner 2017; Lanoë and Holmes 2016; Wygal 

et al. 2018). Various lithic materials were used, including obsidian, cherts, and volcanic rocks. 

Lithic materials were obtained both from known lithic sources as well as from locally available 

sources such as volcanic outcrops and cobbles found in river and stream channels (Easton et al. 

2011:299; Handley 2013; Reininghaus 2019). Extensive human knowledge of the landscape and 

available resources in the borderlands during the late Pleistocene is demonstrated by obsidian 

sourcing of lithic artifacts from various archaeological sites in Alaska and Canada (Kristensen et 

al. 2019; Reuther et al. 2011). Obsidian from Wiki Peak, located in the Nutzotin Mountains near 

Chisana, has been identified in some of the earliest archaeological sites in Eastern Beringia (Dixon 

2013:107; Reuther et al. 2011) with the earliest reported use of Wiki Peak obsidian from a location 

approximately 290 miles from Wiki Peak (Reuther et al. 2011:274-275). Another source of obsidian 

is thought to originate near the Wrangell Mountains and has also been found in many of these early 

sites (Goebel, Speakman, and Reuther 2008:89). 

Collectively, these sites indicate that early inhabitants of the borderlands practiced a mobile 

hunter-gatherer lifestyle, living in temporary camps while they moved across the landscape in 

search of resources. Although the archaeological remains at these sites are often ephemeral, they 

tend to follow a general geographical trend, with campsites often situated along natural travel 

corridors on knolls or other areas with commanding views of the surrounding landscape (Potter, 

Holmes, and Yesner 2013; Reininghaus 2019). 

Prehistoric populations in the borderlands continued to practice a mobile hunter-gatherer 

lifestyle through the ensuing Holocene epoch of the last 10,000 years. The archaeological remains 

recovered at sites on the borderlands conform with a transition to new forms of lithic technology 

about 6,000 years ago, in particular the introduction of side-notched bifaces, keeled side and end 

scrapers, and small thumbnail end scrapers representing the emergence of the Northern Archaic 

tradition, which is found widely throughout the western subarctic at this time period to about 2,000 

years ago (Anderson 1968; Workman 1979; Esdale 2008). As documented at Northern Archaic 

sites elsewhere, those on the borderlands during this time period include microblade technology, as 

represented at Little John (Esdale 2008; Easton et al. 2018).) 
Cultural History of the Yukon-Alaska Borderlands as Revealed by Archaeology 15

The period between 2,000 and 1,000 years ago is significant to the archaeology of the region as it

coincides with the two Mount Churchill volcanic eruptions that occurred at about 1,900 and 1,250 years

ago. The effect on humans living in the area over which volcanic ash fell must have been considerable, as 

it is thought that those living in close proximity to the volcano vent would have been subject to days of 

darkness followed by heavy acidic precipitation (Moodie and Catchpole 1992:161; Workman 1974, 1979). 

The impacts to plant and animal resources were also severe. This is supported by pollen cores in the 

area, which indicate that it may have taken as long as 400 years for the forest to reestablish itself (Birks 

1980:124, as cited in Mullen 2012:36). The impacts resulting from these volcanic explosions prompted 

several migrations of people residing in these affected areas, presumably to more hospitable regions 

(Mullen 2012). This is further supported by oral historical accounts of Scottie Creek and the village of 

Leekath Niik, which specifically document these places as areas of refuge during the time of “two winters,”

and further verified by archaeological evidence and overlapping and bracketing radiocarbon dates at the

Little John site (Easton et al. 2020b). Moodie and Catchpole (1992) and others (Derry 1975; Ives 1990,

2003; Matson and Magne 2007; Kristensen et al. 2019) also suggest that this may have been the impetus 

for the migration of the Athabascan speaking ancestors of the Navaho and Apachean peoples into the 

American southwest desert lands. Ives (2003:267) notes that 

the clear recognition of two separate White River events enhances the tie between 

Athapaskan language history and volcanic history. The north lobe White River event 

(ca. 1900 B.P.) corresponds in time with the intermontane and coastal migrations 

of the Pacific Coast Athapaskans that Krauss and Golla (1981) felt took place before 

1,500 B.P., while the east lobe event corresponds with the divergence of Canadian 

and Apachean Athapaskans after about 1,200 B.P. It seems unlikely that these two 

episodes of language divergence, in their correspondence with two volcanic events 

of stupendous ecological moment, would arise purely as a matter of coincidence. 

Since the last eruption about 1,200 years ago, the region’s environment has been relatively 

stable, although fluvial erosion and redeposition of sediments as well as localized mass wasting of 

hillsides continued to occur. Archaeological remains dating to this time are designated Athabascan 

and represent the material culture of contemporary Dineh ancestors. Much of the technology is 

similar to past cultures but includes the introduction of copper technology, stemmed projectile 

points, and the increased use of bone and antler arrowheads (although it is likely that this is largely 

a function of better preservation of more recent organic material). 

The onset of the introduction of Eurasian technologies about 200 years ago marks an 

interesting archaeological period, as the Dineh of the region began to receive items from their Tlingit 

trade partners obtained from Russian, British, and American maritime traders in the late 18th 

century and then more directly from Hudson’s Bay and American Commercial Company traders in 

the middle to late 19th century (Easton et al. 2013). Examples include a Chinese coin recovered in 

association with lithic debris at KbVo-1, located along the Alaska Highway overlooking Enger Creek, 

Yukon (Mooney et al. 2012), and beads, lithic debris, and two lead musket balls recovered at Taiy 

Suul Sha (KeVo-2) along middle Scottie Creek, Yukon (Easton 2002). 

Finally, numerous historic archaeological site remains have been found throughout the 

region. These include early independent trading posts, such as William Rupe’s (KeVo-5) on Scottie 

Creek, John Hadjukovich’s on the Nabesna River near Northway, and Jack Dolan’s at Snag, none of 

which have been excavated. Scores of historic Native villages, camps, and trapline cabins have been 

identified as well, some of which are discussed below, along with the short-lived mining settlements 

of Euroamericans such as those found in the vicinity of Chisana and Nabesna mines, and camps 

associated with the building of the Alaska Highway in the early 1940s. 
16 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Figure 8. Wearing traditional decorated moosehide coats. Left to Right: David Paul, Titus Issac [sic], 

Sam Abraham, Peter Thomas, Tanacross, circa 1920s. Jeany Healy Photograph Collection, UAF-2000-

181-177. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

Traditional Culture 

The culture of a people is comprised of their shared beliefs, values, and knowledge, which 

guide their personal and social action in the world. In this aspect, the Upper Tanana of the Chisana 

River basin share much in common with their other Dineh neighbors and cognates across the 

subarctic, a fact that helps inform the discussion that follows about some features of their culture. 

The 19th and early 20th century society and culture of the Upper Tanana has been documented 

anthropologically in only a few cases, the earliest resulting from Robert McKennan’s fieldwork in the area

in 1929-30, which formed the basis for his ethnography The Upper Tanana Indians, published by Yale 

University Press in 1959. McKennan arrived at Chisana on 22 September 1929, observing and working

with Native collaborators from Cross Creek, Upper Nabesna, Batzulnetas, Mentasta, Last Tetlin, Tetlin, 

and Lower Nabesna, before leaving the region on 9 June 1930. Mishler and Simeone (2006) provides an 

edited collection of his field journals from this trip. McKennan spent his first months in the region living

at the Chisana village of the day. McKennan also served in the US Army Air Forces in Alaska during World 

War II, during which he had the opportunity to collect additional data, and subsequently returned to the 

Upper Tanana region several times in the 1950s and 1960s to conduct further demographic, land use, and

archaeological studies (McKennan 1964, 1969a, 1969b, 1981). 

Since that time additional anthropological work has been completed in the region, notably 

Guédon’s (1974) analysis of kinship and potlatch reciprocity in Tetlin and Northway, Vitt’s (1971) study 

of hunting practices, Pitts’ (1972) thesis on changing settlement patterns and housing types, and a 

series of resource exploitation and management studies (Haynes et al. 1984; Case 1984; Halpin 1987). 

A selection of Walter Northway’s recollections on his long life (he was born about 1876 in Scottie Creek 
Traditional Culture 17 

 

valley) was published in 1987 (Yarber and Madison 1987). Friend et al. (2008) present a comprehensive 

traditional knowledge study of Upper Tanana subsistence fisheries. A series of papers by Easton examine

contemporary ethnicity and culture (2001a, 2001b, 2007a, 2007b, 2008), while Easton, Kennedy, and 

Bouchard (2013) provides an ethnohistory of the eastern and northern Canadian territories of Upper 

Tanana and Northern Tutchone members of the White River First Nation. 

Considerable place name and genealogical research has also been done. Much of this material 

remains unpublished, but see Tyone (1996), J. Kari (1996), and John and Yukon Native Language 

Centre (1994). Finally, in recent years, an increasing number of aboriginal people have been recording 

stories of their Elders. Currently there is an Upper Tanana glossary in the Scottie Creek dialect (John 

and Tlen 1997) with a specific volume on bird names and knowledge in production.

All these efforts have contributed to our understanding of the past lifeways of the Upper 

Tanana Dineh, yet many significant gaps in the documentation of their culture and social history

remain. This section presents an understanding of the society of the Chisana Basin Dineh from the 

late 19th through middle 20th century. It is necessarily incomplete since many of the members of that 

society have now walked their Trail to Heaven, but much can be ascertained specifically of the Upper

Tanana Dineh from a compilation of the documentary sources, archival records, and oral history in 

conjunction with similar records from neighboring Upper Tanana and Athabascan-speaking groups. 

Like written historical sources, oral history present similar and unique issues in terms of 

the cultural context, authority, and perspective on the past by the author. Contemporary sources of 

oral history may differ in their remembrance of the past. In particular, the specific dating of events 

between one recollection and another may be different. In addition, the primary actor(s) within 

a historical anecdote may change according to the teller and the locations of the historic action 

may shift across the landscape. Indeed, such embellishment in storytelling is a highly regarded 

skill within Dineh culture. As McClellan and Denniston (1981:385-86) have observed for western 

subarctic Dineh generally, “a good raconteur was much appreciated, and creative variation was 

condoned.... but all oral traditions were believed to be basically true.” 

These are common problems experienced by anyone working with memory and history, but 

they are not without solutions or at least accommodations (Vansina 1985; Portelli 1991). In the end, such

inconsistencies are less problematic than they seem, since it is the general flow of events that have historic

value to both the Upper Tanana Dineh and our attempts to come to some understanding of their historic 

experience. In other words, despite differences in detail there remain many consistencies in general; it is 

less important, it seems to me, that we are able to determine whether it was person X or Y who was the 

central actor to the event, or whether the event took place in 1898 or 1902 or 1907, as much as the fact 

that the event occurred, to someone, somewhere, about that time, within their collective social past, and 

that the event retains historical and contemporary resonance to those that remember today. 

Some of the material presented here is reconstruction based on the assumption that the 

documentation of traditional culture that is available for the Upper Tanana generally holds as well for 

the borderlands region specifically. This extrapolation seems defensible, since differences between

northwestern Dineh were mainly a function of their specific environments. For example, the Tanana near

Fairbanks exploited salmon runs, while the Upper Tanana relied more on land mammals and lake fish,

as VanStone (1974) and others (McClellan 1964; Shinkwin and Aigner 1979; Shinkwin et al. 1979) have 

documented. Outside of these differences, there are tremendous continuities between Dineh groups in 

world view (Nelson 1983), a base technology, which relied more on artifice than artifacts (Ridington

1982, 1983), and an extensive cross-regional social network, which circulated goods, people, and ideas 

(McClellan 1964), resulting, as we will see with the Athabascan language, in a general homogenization 

of many aspects of Dineh culture. McKennan (1969b:98) described the result of this social network in 

the western subarctic as a “a cultural continuum carried by a series of interlocking local bands whose 

microcultures differ in only small ways from those of their immediate neighbours.” 
18 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Figure 9. Aboriginal languages of the Yukon-Alaska borderlands. Language areas based on Krauss et 

al. 2011. Note that boundaries are approximate and permeable. 
Langueage 19 

 

LANGUAGE 

Historically, the aboriginal people of the Chisana River basin spoke several dialects of the 

Upper Tanana linguistic continuum, a distinctive language within the Athabascan language family 

and one of twenty-seven (mostly) contiguous languages spoken in the northwestern subarctic from 

the Bering Sea to Hudson’s Bay (see Figure 9). 

The Athabascan language family can be linked by historical linguistics to the Eyak and Tlingit 

languages of the Pacific coast to form the Na-Dene language phylum. Vayda (2010a, 2010b) has put

forward the hypothesis that Na-Dene is in turn historically related to the eastern Siberian Yeniseian 

language family as represented by the Ket language. A multi-authored assessment and examination 

of the implications of this genealogical relationship evidences a consensus among linguists that if not 

proven the hypothesis is certainly robust and the best (perhaps only) evidence of a shared linguistic 

heritage between a New World and Old World population (Kari and Potter 2010). The archaeological 

implications of this possibility are explored by Potter (2010) and critiqued by Dumond (2010). 

The Tanacross language, spoken to the east of Tetlin, and the Lower Tanana language 

(sometimes called simply Tanana), spoken yet further downstream along the Tanana River, are 

mutually distinct, though closely related, languages which combined with Upper Tanana constitute 

the Tanana linguistic group proper. The relatively slight differences between the Upper Tanana 

language and its linguistic neighbors reflect considerable interchange of speakers across language

boundaries within the region. This lack of extensive linguistic differentiation reflects an important

social-cultural characteristic of northern Athabascan speaking peoples in general, namely that: 

Intergroup communication has ordinarily been constant, and no Northern 

Athapaskan language or dialect was ever completely isolated from the others for 

long. The most important differences among Athapaskan languages are generally the 

result of areal diffusion of separate innovations from different points of origin, each 

language – each community – being a unique conglomerate .... Between Northern 

Athapaskan as a whole and the band or community dialects that are its fundamental 

sociolinguistic units the only useful larger categories are languages, and even 

these are sometimes arbitrary.... Whatever the language boundaries, the network 

of communication in the Northern Athapaskan dialect complex is open-ended.... 

People from adjacent communities usually expect to be able to understand one 

another’s speech, if not immediately then surely after some practice. Local dialects 

and languages are important as symbols of social identity, but the native expectation 

that these differences, even across relatively vast distances, will not be barriers to 

communication gives the Northern Athapaskan speaker a distinctively open and 

flexible perception his social world (Krauss and Golla 1981:68-69).

The Upper Tanana language is no different in this regard. While it is a distinct language, it 

nevertheless shares similar features with Tanacross, Gwich’in, Northern and Southern Tutchone, 

Lower Tanana, and Han. This indicates considerable linguistic and hence social exchanges over an 

area stretching from east of Fairbanks north to the Old Crow flats and east to the upper Yukon River,

exchanges which the evidence suggest have been going on for thousands of years. As McKennan notes: 

The Athapaskans on the Tanana and Yukon rivers, from the Tutchone to the Ingalik, 

do not fall easily into a number of discrete cultural or linguistic blocks; rather, they 

constitute a continuum of local bands whose respective microcultures and dialects 

differ only slightly from those of their immediate neighbors. Over a span of several 

bands the linguistic differences are compounded, with mutual intelligibility 
 

20 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

diminishing in rough proportion to the intervening distance .... it is hard to say 

whether the linguistic jumps from the Minto dialect (of Lower Tanana) to Upper 

Koyukon and from Upper Tanana to Southern Tutchone are greater than the 

jump from Minto to Upper Tanana (Michael E. Krauss, communication to editors 

1978). Indeed, both Tanacross and Upper Tanana speakers told McKennan that 

they are able to converse with Lower Tanana speakers less easily than with 

speakers of Han, Ahtna, and Southern Tutchone, although it is not clear whether 

or not this is because they have acquired some degree of competence in these 

languages through extensive and often intimate contact (McKennan 1981:563).

A multilingual capacity was the traditional norm amongst the western subarctic Athabascans. 

Bessie John, at a language workshop in Whitehorse, told how, “In the old days we were sent to another 

village to learn their language, when we were little we would just stay there and speak their language; 

then we know it.” She herself learned Northern Tutchone as a young girl from her years living at Fort 

Selkirk, where her maternal grandmother was from, and Coffee Creek, which was shared by speakers of 

both Upper Tanana and Northern Tutchone (John 1997). For the neighboring Ahtna, Kari has observed 

that: 

The Upper Ahtna have an impressive tradition of multilingualism. Most Upper Ahtna 

Elders can speak the two distinct languages of the Tanana drainage – Upper Tanana 

and Tanacross – and they are familiar with the other dialects of Ahtna spoken down 

the Copper River and to the west. The Upper Ahtna often sing and dance with the 

Tanacross, Tetlin, and Northway people at Copper River potlatches.... The ... Dena’ina 

or (Tanaina) of Cook Inlet, and the Western Ahtna had a tradition of speaking and 

understanding each other’s languages. Early in the period of Russian occupation the 

Russians employed Dena’ina as agents and interpreters as they contacted the Ahtnas 

and other Athapabaskans in interior Alaska (P. Kari 1985:16, and footnote 3, pp. 16-17).

Based on genealogical connections, the dialects spoken in the Chisana River basin certainly 

included Northway Upper Tanana and Scottie Creek Upper Tanana. There were also some speakers 

of the Tetlin dialect of Upper Tanana, and of the Tanacross, Ahtna, Han, and Northern Tutchone 

Athabascan languages who had married into the area. Although never formally documented by 

linguists, there is some evidence in support of an Upper Tanana dialect (Nabesna) distinct to the upper 

Chisana and Nabesna Rivers. 

In 1979, there were an estimated 250 fluent speakers of the Upper Tanana language, a figure

that has declined with the passing of Elders over the recent decades. Tuttle et al. (2011) identified

about 95 speakers in the late 2000s. There are a considerable number in the current middle-aged

generation who can understand and speak the language to some extent. While it is certain that many of 

the more subtle features of the language associated with indigenous pre-contact culture has been lost 

as the Upper Tanana have adapted to non-aboriginal cultural practices within hunting, spiritual beliefs 

and behavior, and technology, considerable effort is being made at the community level to revitalize 

language competency. 

KINSHIP RELATIONS 

Since the Upper Tanana bands are small, every member of the group normally enjoys 

at least one, and often several, relationships with each of the other members.... The 

present [1929] Upper Nabesna-Chisana band offers a splendid example of such 
Kinship Relations 21 

 

Figure 10. Three Alaska Native Women, including Mother Northway (R), Lower Nabesna 1930. 

Robert Addison McKennan Papers, UAF-1985-98-997. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, 

University of Alaska Fairbanks. 
22 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

interrelationship. The group consists of four families, those of Chisana Joe, Nabesna 

John, Scottie Creek Titus, and Andy Toby. Joe, John, and Corinne, the wife of Titus, are 

brothers and sister. Andy’s dead father, Tobey Charley, was the maternal uncle of the 

three just named. Andy’s wife is Corinne’s daughter by a former marriage. Corinne’s 

young son, Little Ed, is regarded as the future husband of Joe’s little girl, Ed’s crosscousin. Thus each family is related to the other three; and Andy is related to his wife, 

whose mother is his paternal cross-cousin; Corinne’s son is to marry her brother’s 

daughter; and further to complicate the picture the band contains Old Mama, the 

mother of Joe, John, and Corinne, who is related by blood or marriage to everyone 

(McKennan 1959:121).

Like all other Dineh peoples, the aboriginal society of the Upper Tanana revolved 

around relations between kin. These relations between consanguines (relations by blood) 

and affines (relations by marriage) were the primary mechanism by which most social 

relationships were organized and acted upon. This included primary socialization and 

education of children, the formation of domestic, local, and regional residential units, 

subsistence and other economic activities including trade relations and potlatch ceremonies, 

and spiritualism. The dominance of these relations among Dineh is so strong that we may 

say that they live within a kin-based society. By this we mean that for nearly all people the 

family is the dominant arena of social relations throughout their lives. However, the nature 

of the family among the Upper Tanana was quite a bit different from the normative family in 

contemporary North America. 

The primary difference is cultural and is derived from several factors that are distinct from 

western cultural standards. Among the Dineh of the Chisana basin, these differences include the 

following: 

• the assignment of descent based on one’s mother (matrilineal descent); 

• the existence of clans, phratries, and moieties; 

• the primacy of the extended family, rather than the natal family, in the formation 

of the domestic economic unit of the household; and 

• the equivalency of the domestic economy with the public economy, in so far 

as groups of related households that lived together (the band) cooperatively 

created both the personal subsistence and public political economies – indeed 

their categorical distinction makes little sense from the Native point of view. 

Beyond these distinctions, however, several factors make it difficult to specify the finer

details of the aboriginal kinship system of the Upper Tanana. Most importantly, the introduction of 

epidemic and endemic European diseases, such as measles and tuberculosis, resulted in a dramatic 

decline in the regional population. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people died, decimating 

villages, destroying whole families, and reducing some lineages and clans to unsustainable levels. 

The survivors were incorporated into living families for the purposes of maintaining a social 

identity and role within this reconstituted society. A second factor is the general assimilation 

of Upper Tanana to western mores, particularly Christianity and western ideals of “love,” which 

further reduced understandings of and familiarity with the aboriginal kinship system. As a result, 

there is considerable range between individual accounts of the nature of kinship relations as a 

reading of the most comprehensive attempt to elucidate it reveals (Guédon 1974). Nevertheless, 

we can describe briefly what seem to be enduring features of the kinship system agreed upon by

most Dineh. 
Matrilineal Descent 23 

 

Figure 11. Bertha and Ada, Lower Nabesna, 1930. Robert Addison McKennan Papers, UAF-1985-98-998.

Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

Matrilineal Descent 

Matrilineal descent is the practice of tracing one’s ancestry through the female line. 

Children look to their mother and her blood relatives as their consanguineal relations from 

whom they are descended and to whom they are most closely related. Yet not all Dineh observed 

matrilineal descent. In the Mackenzie district, for example, they are generally patrilineal, and 

the northern Gwich’in follow bilateral descent, while most Dineh in Alaska and Yukon follow 

matrilineal lines. 

Anthropologists have documented several correlates generally found accompanying 

matrilineal descent, some of which are found among the Upper Tanana. These include similarly 

structured terminologies for kin,5 a preference for classificatory cross-cousin marriage, the sororate 

and levirate, and special relationships between children and their maternal uncles and aunts (their 

mother’s brothers and sisters) and their maternal cousins. It is important to emphasize, however, 

5

 The kinship terminology “is bifurcate collateral for the parental generation. For ego's own generation siblings and 

parallel cousins were called by the same term, while cross-cousins were terminologically differentiated from siblings 

and parallel cousins, but not from each other – the so-called Iroquois system” (McKennan 1981:572, 574). The

important feature is the distinction between maternal and paternal cousins from ego's perspective; the former being 

regarded as close “siblings,” the latter as potential marriage partners. 
24 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

that matrilineal descent does not alienate fathers from their offspring. On the contrary, close, loving 

relationships between parents and children is the norm. 

Clans, Phratries, and Moieties 

Within most of the western subarctic Dineh communities, people were held to be related to 

one another less as individuals, and more as representatives of groups of kin variously organized 

as “clans,” “phratries,” and “moieties.” Earlier we noted that the composition of these larger social 

categories has been obscured by demographic collapse due to epidemic death rates during much of 

the 19th and 20th centuries and that, as a result, it is difficult to reconstruct the aboriginal system 

in operation prior to contact due to these changes in population.6

 Evidence does seem to suggest 

that the aboriginal system was a phratry organization of three sibs (Guédon 1974). Today nearly 

everybody, even older Dineh, recognize two principal clans (comprised of a number of sub-clans) 

within a moiety social organization, although clan identification does vary among contemporary 

individuals and between villages. One enumeration, provided by Roy Sam (2004) of Northway, 

identifies eight clans among the Upper Tanana, divided into two moieties. They are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Clans of the Upper Tanana according to Roy Sam 

Name Association 

CROW MOIETY 

Naltsiin (marten) 

Alts’a’dinee (crow) 

Niisuu (?) 

WOLF MOIETY 

Ts’iik’aayuu (cottonwood seed in air) 

Tisyuu (red ochre) 

Ch’ich’e yuu (fishtail)

Ch’yaa (seagull) 

Udzih yuu (caribou) 

Source: Interview of Roy Sam by N. A. Easton, 16 May 2004, Northway, AK. 

Moiety systems composed of exogamous, matrilineal lineages are fairly common among hunting 

and gathering peoples. Within such kinship systems, it is an almost regular occurrence to find that one’s

preferred marriage mate is one’s cross-cousin, that is one’s father’s sister’s or mother’s brother’s child of 

the opposite sex, and this too is the case amongst the Upper Tanana (McKennan 1981). Parallel cousins 

(father’s brother’s or mother’s sister’s children) are forbidden marriage partners in a matrilineal descent 

system; to marry one would break the rule of clan exogamy, since they would necessarily belong to the 

same clan. Conversely, cross-cousins must perforce belong to the opposite moiety and are therefore 

eligible marriage partners. In the modern age, the breaking of this restriction has also contributed to 

further social confusion regarding clan and moiety membership, particularly for children of same-moiety 

parents. A good number of theoretical explanations for the preference for cross-cousin marriages in 

such systems have been put forward over the years, but here we will just accept the fact that in smaller 

populations typical of foraging societies, marriage to a relative of some sort is inevitable, and to maintain 

moiety exogamy within a matrilineal descent system cross-cousin marriage is a viable option. 

6

 In her summary examination of matrilineal kin groups across northwest America, de Laguna (1975) suggests that

rather easy and frequent clan re-alignments are a feature of matrilineal clans across the western subarctic as a whole. 
Kinship and the Domestic Household and Political Economies 25

Moieties also hold ritual reciprocal obligations to each other, most expressively manifest in 

the care of each other’s dead and the potlatch ceremony. 

Kinship and the Domestic Household and Political Economies 

The household economy of the Dineh was formed through the alliance of two or more 

related families who co-operated in the work required to sustain and reproduce this extended 

family household. Several such households living at the same locality formed a village, and several 

such villages whose members regularly worked with each other formed the band. (To an important 

extent this is still true in the early 21st century.) 

The importance of filial ties – that is, affectionate relations between parents and children – 

within the immediate nuclear family are often noted, but it is also clear that the minimal domestic 

or co-residential unit was some form of extended family. 

These domestic units seem to have taken three principal forms: 

1. two adult siblings of the same or opposite sex and their families, 

2. parents and their married children, and 

3. two hunting partners, who may be only distant classificatory kin. 

According to McClellan and Denniston (1981:384), “in the course of its existence, 

any nuclear family or any other segment of a domestic group might leave to join another 

household unit. The system was extremely flexible, and arrangements of many kinds were 

worked out in terms of general expedience and personal preference.” This constant fission 

and fusion of local groups resulted in wide variation in the size of the group at any particular 

year or season, from a single extended family, to two or three families camping and hunting 

together, to a hundred or more people gathering for summer fishing, fall caribou hunting, or 

the mid-winter potlatch and gambling season. These larger aggregations might be designated 

“by the areas which they habitually exploited, for they were held together by their territorial 

as well as kinship ties” (McClellan and Denniston (1981:384), such as the Scottie Creek, 

Nabesna, or Chisana “bands” of the Upper Tanana. But their actual composition, that is, the 

specific people who made up the group at any given point in time, fluctuated widely according 

to the residence choices made by individuals during their life history. A single Upper Tanana 

individual, for example, was a member of the Chisana “band” in the 1920s, of the Scottie Creek 

“band” in the 1930s, of the Snag “band” in the 1940s, and of the Northway “band” in the 1950s

(Easton n.d.). 

What endured was the territorial range used by those living at a particular village or camp 

location, even though the membership of the occupants of that location was in regular flux. Thus, to 

ask “Who were the Chisana People?” we are faced with a task that makes little sense within Dineh 

society. And although the territorial range was roughly coeval with a linguistic form (in the case 

above, a distinctive dialect, it could be a distinctive language as well such as Burwash Southern 

Tutchone), the existence of a multilingual norm by most individuals along with their kin ties also 

served to facilitate “identity switching” as they moved about the landscape as circumstances and 

their personal proclivities ordained (Easton 2001a). 

Overlap between territories was everywhere acknowledged by reciprocal access for the 

purposes of subsistence, facilitated by clan, cognate, or affinal relationships. Nowhere, it seems, did 

“large social units predicated on formal territorial claims” – that is to say, tribal political units – exist 

prior to European settlement. Groups recognized “a commonality of linked dialects, shared customs, 

and contiguous territory, but it was the Whites who gave them the overall ‘tribal’ names” (McClellan 

and Denniston 1981:384; see also Easton 2020; Nadasdy 2002). 
Indeed, we need to recognize the formation of the tribe as one that emerged late in the 

historic period as a bureaucratic category of administrative convenience, whose function was to 

organize the extremely fluid on-the-ground reality of the politically egalitarian foraging Dineh into 

defined, circumscribed units for the purpose of their domination by the State. Subsequently, in 

the late 20th century, these “tribal” categories have become increasingly reified among the Dineh 

themselves, since they are the primary vector through which they negotiate their communal and 

personal relations with the encompassing State (Easton 2020; Nadasdy 2004, 2017). 

At marriage a man would ideally live with his in-laws or affines for a period of a year or 

more, performing services for his parents-in-law to demonstrate his ability to care properly for 

their daughter and to meet his obligations to them as affines. McKennan observed that:

The Upper Tanana marry outside the band as often as they do within it, nor is there 

any marked tendency for a couple to settle in the district of the wife’s band or vice 

versa. A tabulation of the present location of the couples of the Chisana – Nabesna, 

Lower Nabesna, Tetlin, and Last Tetling bands gives the following results: 

 Number Percent 

Alien husband and local wife 9 34.6 

Local husband and alien wife 7 27.0 

Local husband and local wife 5 19.2

Alien husband and alien wife 5 19.2

 26 100.0 

It should be remembered that the residence of none of these couples is permanent, 

for a pair that wintered at the head of the Nabesna in 1929 might spend the 

following year at Scottie Creek or at Last Tetling. The table, however, does illustrate 

the impermanence of matrilocal residence as well as the fluidity of the Upper Tanana 

bands (McKennan 1959:119-120).

In the past a man might also marry more than one woman and when they did it was usually in the 

form of sororal polygyny – a man marrying two classificatory cross-cousin sisters. A particular polygamous

marriage form documented in three examples in Upper Tanana genealogies is shown in Figure 12. It is 

uncertain to what extent this form is normative, as it may also be a response to the collapsing demographics 

of the late 19th and early 20th centuries due to increased mortality by epidemic diseases. 

26 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Figure 12. Upper Tanana polygamous marriage form. 
Potlatch, Reciprocity and Leadership 27 

As well, men often formed “partnerships” with the brother of their wife. Partners and their 

families often formed the nucleus of a local co-residential group, a grouping that was strengthened 

by the presence of “both sides” – both moieties – each of which had social, economic, and ritual 

obligations to the other. These included sharing game and other material resources and obligations 

to care for the dead of the opposite moiety. Forming bands, which combined affinal, partnership, 

and moiety obligations into the same unit, served to consolidate reciprocity with people one was 

socially close to and create a more resilient local social unit. 

Genealogical records of the Upper Tanana Dineh provide examples of all of the above. 

Although polygyny is no longer practiced, I was told of several Chisana River basin men who had 

two wives earlier in the century. As well, even within the more concentrated sedentism of the 

contemporary villages of Beaver Creek and Northway, cross-cousin marriage occurs and, although 

non-exogamous moiety marriage has increased dramatically, it is still frowned upon socially and 

most people believe it is best to marry into your father’s clan. To some extent, the exogamy rule 

seems to have been adapted to the sedentary nucleation of permanent villages in the 20th century 

through the practice of village exogamy in which people from Beaver Creek seek mates in other 

nearby communities, such as Northway or Mentasta, and vice versa. At least two instances of the 

sororate, men marrying the widow of a close clan member were noted. And almost all community 

members we spoke to continue to trace their descent through their mothers’ lineage, despite the 

imposition of a patrilineal descent system by the State for its own administrative purposes. 

POTLATCH, RECIPROCITY AND LEADERSHIP 

Dineh culture is rich in traditions of intense sociality, occasions on which kin and friend 

come together to share in singing, dancing, telling stories, and speechmaking. While these activities 

occur almost daily in less formal gatherings, the social ritual of these activities is most intense in the 

potlatch, when people from all over the region will aggregate to provide social recognition of and 

support to their relatives and friends at times of celebration, such as graduations and marriage, and 

crisis, such as birth and death. Smaller social gatherings recognizing the coming of age of children or 

a brush with misfortune avoided, or honoring a living spouse, for example, bring the local residents 

together for an evening of feasting, singing, and dancing. Such gatherings are often announced as “a 

tea” to distinguish them from the longer, usually three-day, potlatch gatherings (McKennan 1959; 

Guédon 1974; Simeone 1995). 

It is important to note that the social activity we know as potlatch among the western 

interior Dineh is both similar to and different from the ritual known as potlatch on the north Pacific 

coast. Both are occasions at which social status is enhanced by the generosity of the hosts to their 

guests, but the intensity of competition for self-aggrandizement is considerably reduced among the 

interior Dineh, being replaced with a sense of meeting one’s social obligation to honor members of 

the opposite moiety for the services they have rendered your clan. 

In this sense, the Dineh potlatch is better understood within the overarching moral value 

that Dineh place on generosity towards others as a measure of a person’s good character and virtue, 

rather than the more competitive “fighting with property” subtext of the coastal potlatch (Codere 

1950). In this respect, potlatch distributions are a component of the more general principal of 

reciprocity, which structures much of their social relations on a day-to-day basis; this is as true 

today as it was in the past. 

Two forms of reciprocity are commonly practiced within Dineh communities between 

Dineh and their friends: generalized reciprocity and balanced reciprocity. Generalized reciprocity is 

characterized by the giving and taking of resources and services within a social group without any 

immediate expectation of return, but a general expectation that the giver will, in turn, sometime 

receive, from someone in the group, some thing or service they need (Sahlins 1965). This is typified 
28 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

in Dineh culture by the borrowing of tools, the sharing of food, and the assistance of labor in 

some task such as building a residence, and in local social gambling.7 Balanced reciprocity 

is a more calculated exchange, in which the giver and the receiver keep a record (sometimes 

mental, today often written) of the nature of the gifts and the recipients, and the giver can 

legitimately expect to receive an equivalent value from the receiver, immediately or in the 

future (Sahlins 1965). The Dineh practiced this type of reciprocity during exchanges that occur 

in the potlatch ceremony.8 

It is important to note that not all aspects of these reciprocal exchanges are material. They 

can be social or spiritual as well. In particular, respect and good feelings from the receiving member 

of the exchange group can be the only return a giver can expect; often it is the only return a giver 

desires, relying on her current generosity (particularly with food) to be rewarded by Taatsaan 

and the animal spirits through further successful hunting (Easton 2001, 2008). Alternatively, 

during potlatch a guest may “give” his presence and perhaps also a dance performance or song as a 

measure of their respect to the host, for which he receives food, hospitality, and material items, such 

as blankets, gloves, or camp equipment. 

The English word “respect” holds several connotations in Dineh culture. Some of these 

meanings are discussed in the section on “Hunting.” Another use of the term is the feeling held 

for individuals who are granted leadership roles within the group. As is typical in many foraging 

societies, leadership is both contingent and transitory. It is given to individuals who demonstrate 

superior abilities in hunting, organizing communal activities, shamanic healing, generosity, 

historical and mythological knowledge, song and dance, and public oratory. Upper Tanana Dineh call 

such a person Huskeh. The Russian-derived term Tyone is also used, as well as the English language 

term Chief, however, the latter does not carry with it the English notion of hereditary authority. The 

ability to host a large potlatch is a public demonstration of these respected characteristics. 

A Huskeh’s leadership is constrained to the role of advice and opinion, not control or 

coercion, although in social practice it is easy to perceive it differently without an understanding of 

the underlying social cultural values at play. In addition, Huskeh leadership is transitory, dependent 

on the continued social demonstration of leadership skills through acts of generosity and the other 

achievements listed above. And while people may regard a Huskeh’s brother or son as a potential 

leader, they must achieve the status in their own right. Abuse of authority was generally responded 

to by personal shunning, abandonment of the Huskeh’s local group, or, in rare cases which involve 

consistent “outrages to the public conscience,” the response could be violence or even socially 

sanctioned assassination (McKennan 1959:131; Easton n.d.).

CLAN MIGRATION AND SETTLEMENT 

Historically, and quite likely deep into the past, the Upper Tanana were socially organized 

into exogamous matrilineal descent groups. These were clans to which you belonged by virtue 

of descent from your mother. In addition, you were required to choose your spouse from outside 

of this maternal group and to provide aid and support to your own clan and that into which you 

married. While this form of social organization was quite common among many western subarctic 

Athabascan language groups, among the Upper Tanana its form may have been a three-group 

Phratry system, rather than the more common two-group Moiety system. 

7

 It was in a conversation with Paul Nadasdy that we recognized village gambling as a form of generalized 

reciprocity. Paul confirmed that in Burwash the attitude within the regular group of local players is one that what

you lose, you eventually get back, and there are no hard feelings amongst the players whether they win or lose. The 

exception to this is the player who attends irregularly, wins, and does not return for some time. This is seen as 

greedy. For the regular gamblers, the poker game is only the social context for their sustained discussions on a wide 

variety of contemporary village issues. 

8

 A third form of exchange – negative reciprocity, in which each side is attempting to get more value out of the 

exchange then they put in – is also practiced by Dineh in their commercial exchanges with merchants of the external 

capitalist economy. 
Clan Migration and Settlement 29 

Moiety systems are “dual organizations,” so-called because they allow the division of every 

member of society into either one or the other of two complimentary groups. In many Athabascan 

communities these two groups are associated with and named Wolf and Crow. In contrast, 

there appeared to be three major descent groups among the Upper Tanana in the past; social 

organizations of more than two exogamous descent groups are called Phratry systems. 

A group called Na’ltsiin, commonly referred to as “Crow” in English, and another group 

referred to as “Seagull” seem to have been the two dominant phratries. Each of these, in turn, 

was comprised of a number of subsidiary matrilineal clans. These two groups were expected to 

marry and maintain ritual services, such as caring for each other’s dead. However, many accounts 

also mention a smaller third group, most often referred to as Niisu and/or Tsuuk – “Marten” 

people, which stood “in between” the former two, as “almost a cousin to us all.” In the historic 

period, however, this third phratry seems to have been absorbed into the Na’ltsiin, resulting in the 

contemporary formation of a dual or moiety organization of Crow and Seagull people, each of which 

contains a number of named clans (McKennan 1969a, 1969b; Guédon 1974). The social role of these 

matrilineal descent groups and moieties is discussed more fully in the section on “Kinship.” 

Many of the clans hold stories of their origins, some versions of which are presented in 

Guédon (1974:67-77), collected both during her own research and from publications by McKennan 

and others. Yarber and Madison (1987) present a recording of the origins and movements of several 

clans as recalled by Walter Northway (see Appendix 2). 
30 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Places 

The life and culture of the Dineh of the Chisana River basin are fundamentally connected to 

the landscape of the region, a landscape shaped by ancient and ongoing geological processes, and 

a long history of occupation by their ancestors. This connection is demonstrated in their intimate 

knowledge of their environment, the ecological subsystems it contains, how to navigate from place 

to place along ancient pathways, and a truly astounding repertoire of geographical place names in 

the Upper Tanana language. Their settlements and camps were scattered about the land, providing 

them with places at which to secure the resources – animals, plants, water, and minerals – on which 

they depended for their survival. Well-used trails ran between these settlements, facilitating travel 

between them, but also providing a physical metaphor for the interconnectedness of Dineh to each 

other, the land they were embedded in, and the spirit world that watched over them. 

Western physical geographers often emphasize the oscillating extremes of the subarctic 

environment: from freezing winters to sweltering summers, animal abundance cycling into 

population crashes, boggy lowlands and windswept highlands, pretty to look at from afar but a harsh 

and unforgiving land. 

While no Dineh would deny the hard work required to survive in this landscape, many 

would say that the subarctic world is not an unforgiving hostile wilderness, but instead a giving 

environment, one which nurtures and provides for Dineh in return for their respectful behavior. 

Indeed, it can be said that they hold their land with love and the land in turn shows its love for Dineh 

by the provision of its bounty (see Bird-David 1990). 

NamiNg the LaNdscape – “Wisdom sits iN pLaces”

A place that is named carries a complex symbolic capacity. Its name may arise from an 

historical event, but the name may be remembered less for the event itself as for its contemporary 

meaning in the construction of local identity and sense of place. 

Place names can evoke not only history but complex moral positions, as the stories related 

to space are embodied in the name itself (Basso 1984). This observation has also been made 

among the western subarctic Dineh proper (Cruikshank 1978b, 1984; Easton n.d.). Thus, for people 

educated in the names of the landscape and the stories associated with them, a place name can be a 

powerful metaphorical tool in their communications with each other. The naming of places has prosaic 

value too, such as in providing navigational markers for moving across or talking about the landscape. 

TRAILS 

The existence of trails on the landscape provides a visceral reminder of the pathways of our 

lives, physically and spiritually, threading together earth and heaven, our friends and neighbors, the 

past, present, and future. Trails are the threads that tie together the land and the animals and the 

people who live on it. There are many types of trails to be found all around the Dineh. Some you can 

see quite clearly, even today, such as the trail between High Cache on Desper Creek and Big Scottie 

Creek village at the confluence of Scottie Creek and the Chisana River.

Other trails have been destroyed by the construction of the Alaska Highway and other 

modern roads, which were built over the old trails because they were the best ways across the land. 

Still other trails have become almost impossible to see, made obscure by lack of use, erosion by 

wind and rain, and the cover of plant growth. 

But even these obscure trail remnants might be followed if one has some knowledge of their 

path and pays close attention to the signs left behind by the tens of thousands of Dineh travelers 

over thousands of years who have walked upon them. Blazes upon trees are commonly found along 

a trail’s path, for example. New growth in old forests can often show the way. And attention to the 
Traditional Villages of the Chisana River Valley 31 

ground beneath your feet will warn you when you stray from the trail; the ground surfaces of trails, 

even when covered with sphagnum moss, are harder than the ground off the trail. And, the ground 

is often lower than the surrounding landscape as well. 

However, some trails are always difficult to see – the trails of heaven, which parallel the 

trails of the earth and carry the spirits of the non-human persons of animals and the ancestors of 

Dineh. You need to develop your special “awareness” to see these trails which lie always close to 

your earthly pathways (Easton 2001b). 

Trails are important for many reasons. They were the means by which Dineh stayed in 

contact with each other between their many villages and camps. They are still the best places to 

travel along to find animals, which will give themselves to you to share with your people if you are 

kind in action and generous in spirit. And all along the trails are places with Dineh names, which 

commemorate many important occurrences in their history. 

When we listen to Dineh Elders speak of their life on the land, they often emphasize the 

importance of trails by beginning their speech with a recitation of the trails they know of and the 

places they will take us. These accounts demonstrate that even without maps, Dineh knew their land 

far beyond the region in which they lived their lives. They learned this landscape without an atlas 

or writing, but by listening carefully to their own Elders when they were children. Some of the trails 

they can recite they have not even physically walked, but they know where they go. 

The existence of these earthly trails is paralleled in the other world, Heaven, as well. 

Furthermore, there are “trails to heaven,” which link this world with the other world. Stories such 

as “The Girls Who Married Stars” tell of humans who have traveled these ephemeral trails, and a 

person’s entire life can be summed up as “walking their trail to heaven,” the ultimate destination of 

their life’s journey (Ridington 1988). 

Among the Upper Tanana, when you are walking a trail on the earth you can see that it is 

intersected by the trails of others, such as rabbit, muskrat, beaver, and moose; these trails intersect with 

the trails to heaven as well. We can see them best when we find a spider’s web across the trail with the sun

ahead of you. For some Dineh, the intricate lattice construction of the spider’s web mimics the intricate 

lattice of intersecting trails of earth and heaven. It is especially good luck to peer through such a web, and 

then carefully step around it and allow the sunshine to pass over your shoulder and through the web. 

One should attempt to avoid walking through such webs; to do so is disrespectful to the life and work of 

spiders and neglects the importance of being careful during our passage through time and space. 

In an address at the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge interpretation center, Wilson Justin, a 

Chisana area descendent, explained that across many parts of the landscape there were two parallel 

trails. Local residents used one and visitors from other areas followed the other. And the path of some 

trails were always closely guarded; these were the trails to places of special spiritual power, where 

dream doctors would go to sleep and travel into the other world in order to do battle with evil, retrieve 

souls to heal the sick, see the future, or gain new powers (Wilson Justin, 3 June 1999, in Easton n.d.). 

TRADITIONAL VILLAGES OF THE CHISANA RIVER BASIN 

A surprising number of Native villages in the region of the Upper Tanana has been documented 

given the presumed low population densities that most scholars attribute to a general foraging economy 

in the subarctic. Part of the explanation for the many locations at which people were known to have lived 

lies in the required mobility of foraging populations, both seasonally and over longer cycles of time, a topic 

discussed below in the section on “Subsistence and Trapping Seasonal Rounds.” 

Yet Native consultants have consistently impressed upon western subarctic researchers, 

such Robert McKennan in 1929, that “formerly their number was much greater. They said that 

previous to the coming of the white man great numbers of them suddenly died from disease. The 

earliest explorers on the Yukon all met with a similar story” (McKennan 1959:19). Thus, it may be 
32 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Figure 13. Villages of the Chisana River Basin. 
Traditional Villages of the Chisana River Valley 33 

Figure 14. Cross Creek Village, c. 1915, showing “spirit houses” constructed above graves. Lewis V. 

Stanley Collection, Tacoma Public Library. 

that the aboriginal population levels of the region were much greater than we currently imagine, 

and this might also be part of the explanation for the large number of documented village sites. 

The following list of documented villages and camps of the Chisana River basin, including the 

Scottie and Mirror Creek valleys, is keyed to the numbered locations shown in Figure 13: 

1 Niìduu Tsʼinehdayh / lynx shot with arrow / a village at the head of the Scottie Creek 

valley on the flanks of Ch’ohtl’aa – Wienerwurst Mountain; possibly the village which Old 

Northway came from 

2 Tayh Sẖiìt ̱ / hill in / younger of two villages of the same name north of Pepper (Paper) Lake 

3 Tayh S̱ẖiìt / hill in / older of two villages of the same name north of Pepper Lake 

4 Ruup S̱ẖah / Rupe’s home / location of the first trade post in the Scottie Creek region 

opened by Bill Rupe at the turn of the 19th century 

5 Nàhtsią̀ ̨̀ chʼihchuut / wolverine grab something / Pepper Lake Village on the lake of the 

same name 

6 Enuuk S̱ẖa / Enuk’s home / the home of one of the most powerful shamans of the region 

7 a currently un-named village location 

8 Tuu Tüh Tąy / water across trail / village along the trail up Scottie Creek valley 

9 Łèekʼä̀th Níik / muddy creek / village on the middle reach of the Scottie Creek valley, east 

side; according to oral history, the location at which Dineh of the region grouped together to 

survive after the ash fall of the White River volcanic eruption, about 1,900 years ago 

10 Taiy Suul Shah / Joseph Tommy Johnny’s great-grand father’s house / on the southern 

bank of Marilyn Lake 

11&12 Łįį Thìitthʼä̀nn Mä̀nnʼ / dog head bone lake / two villages at the lake of the same 

name, in the middle reach of Scottie Creek valley, occupied at different periods 

13 Naagät Ką̀yyʼ / fox den / historic and prehistoric village, in the middle reach of Big 

Scottie Creek valley, west side 
 

34 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

14 ̈ Tahʼaa Mànnʼ / ? / two villages at the lake of the same name, occupied at different periods 

15 Diah Kàteè̱łąy̱ / sandpiper / village at the confluence of the creek of the same name with 

Scottie Creek 

16 Tayh Chiįʼ̨̀ / hill point / village in the foothills of the Dawson Range overlooking the 

Chisana valley 

17 Bill Mä̀nnʼ / Bill (John) lake / seasonal camp on Big Scottie Creek near the border 

18 Tsʼoogot Gaay / ? small / Little Scottie Creek Village, on the shore of Ts’oogot Gaiy Mä̀nnʼ, 

right on the International border below the Alcan custom station 

19 Chʼatxą̀ ̈

̀ ̱ ̈ąʼ Mannʼ / ? / Island Lake seasonal camp at the head of Desper Creek 

20 Tayh Tsälh / hill small / High Cache Village at the confluence of Big Scottie Creek and the 

mouth of Desper Creek 

21 Tahmìil Kʼèet / fishnet place / seasonal fishing camp, between Big Scottie Creek Village 

and High Cache 

22 Tthee Kʼät / rock weir / Big Scottie Creek Village, at the confluence of the Chisana River 

and the mouth of Big Scottie Creek 

23 Chinshìit / meat cache / seasonal camp at the mouth of Mirror Creek 

24 Haa Tuuh Tayh / end of the hill / ‘1216’ seasonal hunting camp; also a significant multicomponent archaeological site (the Little John site) dating to circa 14,000 years ago, and 

perhaps earlier based on the presence of a Chindadn Complex component 

25 Yihkah Mä̀nnʼ / daylight [comes out/reflects] lake / an often-used campsite on the trail 

from the Snag to Scottie Creek drainages, at the head of Little Scottie Creek 

26 Niįʼį̀ įʼ̨̀ / lookout [away from] / village, also known more recently as Sourdough; 

archaeological deposits located here date to the mid-Holocene (Northern Archaic tradition) 

27 Taatsàan / raven or crow / village on the right bank of Snag Creek, near where it crosses 

the International border 

28 Taacheeg / stream mouth / King City on the Chisana River prior to its entrance into the 

Wrangell Mountain foothills 

29 Tsay Niig Cheeg / ochre stream / historic Cross Creek Village on the headwaters of the 

Chisana River 

30 Chisana Indian Village / an earlier, pre-contact village upstream of Cross Creek, nearer 

the historic Chisana townsite 

DWELLINGS 

The Upper Tanana used a variety of house forms adapted to the circumstances of their 

residence. Roger Pitts produced a thesis titled The Changing Settlement Patterns and Housing 

Types of the Upper Tanana in 1972, which provides considerable detail on these forms and their 

construction. In this section we will briefly illustrate this variety.

Pitts (1972:179-193) lists the following forms of structures: 

• Summer Bark House

• Winter Semi-Subterranean Bark House

• Winter Lodge-Pole House

• Winter Semispherical Skin Tent

• Conical Skin / Bark Tent

• Lean-To and Emergency Shelters

• High Caches

• Log Cabins

Descriptions and drawings of the principle structures are provided below. 
Dwellings 35

Figure 15. Domed Mooseskin Tent and High Cache on Middle Fork of the Fortymile River, 1901. C. S. 

Farnsworth Collection, UAF-1972-175-00266. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska

Fairbanks. (See Figures 18 and 19.) 

According to Pitts (1972), the semi-subterranean bark house (Figure 16) was built and 

occupied by the Huskeh, a man of respect and leadership whose authority was derived from his 

success at hunting, curing, and predicting the future. Sunk three to four feet into the ground, 

this dwelling could reach lengths of 20 to 40 feet and 10 to 25 feet in width. A sleeping quarters 

and sweathouse were located at one end and the entrance at the other (see Figure 17). Most of 

the interior was used for gatherings for shamanic work, dancing, storytelling, and potlatching 

associated with the wintertime. A smaller, above-ground structure, built similarly in other 

architectural aspects, was used by the general population and often housed two related families. 

The domed skin tent (see Figures 18 and 19) was used by families while living at seasonal 

camps away from the winter village, particularly at winter hunting camps, but it could also be found 

within villages. One of these structures is pictured in Figure 15 above . Pitts gives dimensions of 18 

feet by 8 feet by 9 feet, while McKennan suggests they averaged about 14 feet in diameter, requiring 

some 15 to 20 moose skins to cover one. Two families generally shared a single dwelling, usually 

connected through the men’s “hunting partner” relationship, or brothers-in-law, or a couple and 

their daughter’s husband and family. 

Early in the 20th century, the skin-covered lodge was replaced by the rectangular canvas 

“wall tent,” such as the one shown in the Figure 21. Both Pitts and McKennan report on the 

construction of a log pole house of the type illustrated in Figure 20. Pitts and McKennan also 

suggest that this form is a late prehistoric development, likely as a diffused form (from the coast via 

the Copper River?) not long before European contact. 

The notched corner log cabin was introduced to the Scottie Creek drainage in 1902 by the 

prospector/trader Bill Rupe, and by the 1940s most of the aboriginal forms had given way to the 
 

GEOMETRIC DESIGNS 

BARK 

MOSS DIRT 

BENT WALL POLES 

GROUND 

LEVEL 

L-SECTIONED 

LOG JOINTS 

SPLIT SPRUCE ROOT BARK 

36 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Figure 16. Section View of Upper Tanana Semi-subterranean Bark House. 

Pitts (1972:115). Reproduced with permission of the artist, Robert Banghart.

new style as new settlements were built and older, conservative members of the community who 

favored the traditional style passed on. The log cabin continues to dominate most Native villages 

in the region today, and log cabins are the most consistent architectural remains found during the 

course of archaeological survey in the Chisana Basin. 

Reports on such features are available in survey reports by the Bureau of Indian Affairs 

(BIA) for Nach’etay Cheeg – Cross Creek village on the Upper Chisana River (BIA 1993), Tthiixaa’ 

Cheeg – Nabesna or Cooper Creek village (BIA 1996a), and Dehsoon’ Cheeg – Nabesna Bar village 

(BIA 1996b). The latter two are both on the upper Nabesna River. Similar remains have been found 

downstream at a number of locations, including Big Scottie Creek, High Cache, Tsʼoogot Gaay, Taiy 

Chi, Naagat Kaiy, Niįʼį̀ įʼ̨̀ , and Snag village sites (Easton 2002). At Tsʼoogot Gaay and Niįʼį̀ įʼ̨̀ round 

clearings identified as former locations of domed-skinned tents are also found. The last known use 

of this traditional structure was by “Chief” Johnson at Niįʼį̀ įʼ̨̀ in the early 1940s (Easton n.d., 2002a). 

Three other structural forms are worthy of note. The first is a simple sweat bath, used 

for both physical and spiritual cleansing. The second is the “high cache,” a raised storage space 

traditionally placed in trees and historically built as a small cabin structure on poles. The last is 

the “ground cache” used for the storage of a variety of foodstuffs. All three of these features are 

commonly found at both historic and prehistoric sites throughout the region. 
BEAR INTESTINE WINDOW 

SWEAT HOUSE 

RIDGE POLE 

ENTRANCE WAY SMOKE HOLE 

TOP VIEW 

Figure 17. Upper Tanana Semi-subterranean 

Bark House. Pitts (1972:114). Reproduced 

with permission of the artist, Robert 

Banghart. 

SIDE VIEW FRONT VIEW 

BENCHES 

GROUND LEVEL 

SLEEPING AREA 

Dwellings 37 
38 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

3’ TO 5’ UPRIGHTS 

PRE-FORMED ROOF POLES 

SUPPORT POLE 

ENTRANCE 

2’ BANKED SNOW 

SPRUCE BOUGHS TO HEIGHT OF 

OUTSIDE SNOW 

Figure 18. Plan and Section of Upper Tanana Dome Skin Tent. Pitts (1972:143). Reproduced with 

permission of the artist, Robert Banghart. 
Dwellings 39 

Figure 19. Upper Tanana Domed Skin Tent and High Cache. Pitts (1972:144). Reproduced with 

permission of the artist, Robert Banghart. See Figure 15.

Figure 20. Upper Tanana Log 

Pole House. Pitts (1972:125). 

Reproduced with permission of 

the artist, Robert Banghart. 
40 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Figure 21. Matthew Paul at camp at Dog Lake (near Northway), 1936. Canvas wall tent in 

background. Jeany Healy Photograph Collection. UAF-2000-181-159. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson 

Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 
Subsistence - A Life of Rhythms 41 

Subsistence – A Life of Rhythms 

The northern Dineh traditionally practiced a hunting and gathering subsistence pattern, 

which made use of virtually every edible item in their environment. Though not as extensive or 

all-encompassing as in the past, this pattern continues in the present to a greater or lesser degree 

in most communities, in the form of caribou and moose hunts, snaring of small game, fishing and 

fowling, and collection of wild berries and herbs (Friend et al. 2008; Halpin 1987; Nadasdy 2003; 

Reckord 1983; Usher and Staples 1988). 

An important and enduring feature of the hunting and gathering patterns of subsistence is 

generalized reciprocity – the general sharing of food and resources with other members of one’s living 

group, as well as one’s in-law (affinal) and blood (consanguineal) relations residing in other areas. In this

way disparities in hunting success due to good fortune or greater skills and regional ecological diversity in 

subsistence resources were overcome to ensure that everyone received what they needed to survive. 

Another feature of the Northern Athabascan hunting and gathering adaptation was regular 

mobility between different micro-environments in order to take advantage of seasonal fluctuations 

in food and material resources, compounded by a careful assessment of the micro-environment’s 

renewable status (Nelson 1983). Subsequently, while we generally describe this mobility as a 

seasonal “round” it is important to realize that this does not imply the yearly return to a specific 

place on the landscape so much as the regular use of a similar micro-environment with the 

appropriate seasonal resources in exploitable condition. 

While some areas, such as fishing sites, were so productive that they were returned to

on a yearly basis, some seasonal camps might not be used for several years or more as the group 

allowed it to “lay fallow” and regenerate its resources, traveling to other similar environments 

within the region in the interim. Upper Tanana Elder Walter Northway’s account of his ancestors 

and his own history with the landscape as presented in Yarber and Madison (1987) is a good 

example of this lifestyle. 

SUBSISTENCE AND TRAPPING SEASONAL ROUNDS 

Beginning in late August people moved into upland villages and smaller camps, comprised 

of skin-covered domed lodges, to hunt the southerly migrating caribou, most often through the 

construction of barriers or fences that would either concentrate a group of animals for easy 

dispatch or lead them into snares. The meat was dried and stored and formed the major part of 

their winter food, supplemented by fish, smoked and stored from the summer and fall and caught 

through the winter lake-ice, and moose. Caribou skins were used for clothing and shelter, and their 

bones for various implements, such as skin scrapers, needles, awls, and hunting points. 

Thus, people from the lower Chisana River moved upstream to hunting camps in the 

mountains, such as at the mouth the Chisana River canyon (Upper Tanana – Taacheeg – “King City”) 

and the headwaters of the Beaver Creek, north of the Upper Chisana village site, or northwest to the 

caribou fences of the southern Dawson Range, such as Kechumstuk and the upper Fortymile River, 

and perhaps the Upper Ladue drainage as well.9 

In the spring, before the snow melt and the river breakup, people moved into the lowlands to 

favored fishing sites, traveling by snowshoes made of birch and babiche and hauling sleds carrying their

possessions. At the fish camps they erected bark-covered huts, and prepared their dip nets and canoes,

continuing to hunt moose, as well as muskrat and beaver. With the end of breakup, stone and willow weirs 

were repaired or constructed and intensive fishing began, principally of several varieties of whitefish.

Some of this catch was stored in ground caches for use later in the summer. 

9

 Some Upper Tanana exploited the Ladue River drainage, but specific information on its use is sparse. Oral history

accounts indicate that people including Walter Northway, Andy Frank, and White River Johnny traveled there to 

hunt and trap. 
42 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

In late July the fish camps broke up, with most of the men moving back up into the mountains

to hunt sheep with snare and bow for their meat, skins, and horns, while most of the women, children, 

and elderly remained in the lowlands snaring the large Arctic ground squirrel and marmots to eat 

and make blankets from their skins. During this phase of the seasons, both groups generally occupied 

temporary double lean-tos. As the cooler weather began to descend in late August, the people 

reconvened in the uplands to meet the caribou, and the cycle was renewed (McKennan 1959, 1981).

Upper Tanana Elder Andy Frank described a very similar seasonal round that he practiced 

most of his life during the 20th century, which illustrates both the seasonal and longer-term shifts 

in settlement patterns practiced by many Upper Tanana. During his early life he lived at a number of 

different village sites: Tsʼoogot Gaay, on Little Scottie Creek near the lakes just north of the intersection 

of the Alaska Highway with the international border; Tayh Tsälh T’aat (High Cache), at the confluence

of Desper Creek with Scottie Creek; Theek’at, “rock fishing place” (Scottie Creek Village in English),

near the confluence of Scottie Creek with the Chisana River in Alaska; and Kelt’uudn Mann’, “water lily 

lake,” and Nàhtsią̀ ̨̀ chʼihchuut, “we grabbed wolverine” (Pepper or Paper Lake in English), located about 

40 miles north of Tsʼoogot Gaay, near the headwaters of Scottie Creek in Canada. 

He and his family moved between these locations from year to year, and he recalled that 

the Kelt’uudn Mann’ village was not used for many years after the early part of the century. (This 

was also the site of the first trading post in the region, run by Bill Rupe; see below.) Tsʼoogot

Gaay and Theek’at were principally spring-summer fishing villages. Although they were occupied

in winter as well by some people, it was during the fishing season that many other families

congregated there to fish.

Migrating caribou were taken at fences near Kelt’uudn Mann’ before Andy Frank was 

born, as well as up the headwaters of the Chisana and White Rivers. During his lifetime, after the 

introduction of high caliber rifles, the use of caribou fences declined, since caribou could be hunted 

successfully without having to impound them. 

The hills of the valley of Mirror Creek (a tributary of the Chisana through which the headwaters 

of the White River could be reached), and the higher ranges of the Nutzotin Mountains to the southwest 

were used to hunt sheep in the late summer. Through the myriad lakes along the lower reaches of the 

Chisana River and Scottie Creek, moose, beaver, muskrat, duck, as well as the occasional bear were hunted. 

Through his life Andy Frank also periodically lived at other sites, including Snag village, on 

the middle White River in Canada; Taatsàan village, near the international border on Snag Creek; 

and Chisana for a winter. Yet he primarily lived at Tayh Tsälh T’aat (High Cache). Finally, in his old 

age, Andy lived at the contemporary village of Northway and in the city of Fairbanks, Alaska. 

TRAVEL 

The Upper Tanana traveled extensively in their seasonal rounds as well as to visit relatives 

and attend potlatches in other settlements. As previously discussed, a labyrinth of trail systems 

tied villages and resource localities to each other. People generally traveled by walking, although 

a variety of aboriginal watercraft were also used. But it also can be said that modern modes of 

transportation were quickly adopted by the Upper Tanana, beginning with the dog sled, canvas 

canoe, engine-driven plank boat, automobile, and the snowmobile. However, many places in their 

landscape are still accessible only by foot in summer, and many people still walk considerable 

distances in order to hunt, collect berries and plants, or simply get out onto the land. 

The Dineh made a number of aboriginal watercraft forms. Simply constructed rafts for 

crossing river channels and lakes and travelling downstream were made by lashing together four 

or six logs with three- to five-ply moose skin lines. “Cut two trees and halve them, and you’ve got a 

raft,” explained one of McClellan’s (1975:271) informants. Rafts were often abandoned at the end of 

their downstream course, the passengers returning to their origin by foot. 
Travel 43 

Figure 22. Paddling a boat on George Lake. (Left to Right: John Healy, Alex Joe, Arthur Healy, and 

Frank Luke). Jeany Healy Photograph Collection. UAF-2000-181-15. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson 

Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks 

A second form of watercraft was the rawhide skin boat. The skin most often used was moose 

hide. The details of the framework varied according to the available raw material, the need of the 

vessel, and the amount of time spent building it, but they generally all held a keel piece to which the 

ribs were lashed. They ranged from small, hastily constructed craft to large (16-foot-long) robust 

frames capable of carrying “six or seven people as well as heavy loads of meat” (McClellan and 

Denniston 1981:380). Yet even larger ones seldom took two people more than a day to build. The 

framework was often abandoned at a downstream destination, and the moose hide salvaged for 

other uses (McClellan 1975:269).

The third and most common type of watercraft was frame canoes hulled with birch bark. 

They were “the accepted mode of water travel,” although they tended to be quite small (12 to 16 

feet long) and shallow, holding two or perhaps three people. The bark was sewed to the frame with 

fine, split spruce roots, and the seams patched with prepared spruce pitch. McKennan (1959:92-

93) provides some further detail to their construction (see also McClellan 1975:267-269). Of 

interest is McKennan’s note that “Although decking is described for most Athapaskan canoes, as a 

rule it covered only the forward end [while] the Upper Tanana use of fore and aft decking seems to 

distinguish their craft from those of their neighbors” (McKennan 1959:93). Such a craft was used by 

US Army surveyors of the Alaska Highway to cross Scottie Creek in 1942 (see Figure 34). 

In general, the upper Chisana River is unsuitable for watercraft of any sort due to the 

shallow water that typifies its upper course, except during spring freshet and at mid-day when 

glacial runoff was at its peak. Thus, walking the trails in summer was the principal mode of 

transport from the lower to the upper Chisana. The walk from Big Scottie Creek to the edge of the 

Nutzotin Mountains usually took a long day, with the travelers leaving early in the morning, taking 

an extended rest through the mid-day heat, and carrying on to the base of the mountains in the late 

afternoon, arriving in the evening. Another day’s travel on foot brought them to either the Upper 

Chisana or Upper Nabesna Native settlements, although active hunting along the way might delay 
44 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

the traveler by another day or two while they processed and cached their harvest. In winter hunters 

still often walked, using snowshoes of the long, narrow sort typical of the western subarctic Dineh 

(McKennan 1959:90-91). 

The dog sled was introduced into the Upper Tanana region sometime in the middle to late 

19th century and it is said to have been introduced by the white man. Dog sleds were in common 

use by the time of McKennan’s fieldwork (McKennan 1959:92; see Figure 23). They are seldom used 

today, except in competitive racing, having been replaced by the snowmobile. However, it is not 

unusual today to see dogs being used to pack supplies during bush hunts (see Figure 24). 

The gas-powered plank or fiberglass boat and the automobile are today ubiquitous 

throughout the villages of the Upper Tanana and have been since their respective introduction. 

They are used for both gaining access to resources but, perhaps more importantly, also as the 

principal means of transportation for socializing with friends and relatives located in other 

regional villages. It is an unusual day indeed in which someone from Northway does not visit 

Beaver Creek and vice-versa, and an evening trip between Beaver Creek and Mentasta or 

Chistochina occurs every few days. 

Figure 23. Frank Luke and his dog team, Healy Lake, circa 1940. Jeany Healy Photograph Collection, 

UAF-2000-181-15. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Hunting 45

Figure 24. Women and children with pack dogs, Lower Nabesna 1930. Robert Addison 

McKennan Papers. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

HUNTING 

Like other northern Athabascans, the Upper Tanana Dineh are predominantly a hunting 

people. As Nadasdy (2003:63) has observed for the neighboring Kluane Lake Southern 

Tutchone Dineh, “hunting is life itself.” On the surface such a statement might seem selfevident – in the cold northern forests, a geography incapable of sustained agriculture and low 

floral diversity of nutritional significance, indigenous people must rely on game animals in 

order to gain the sustenance they need to survive. Within the Dineh world, however, hunting is 

much more than a means to an end – it is an activity that reaches into practically every aspect 

of their biological, social, material, intellectual, and spiritual lives. Hunting is the defining 

aspect of Dineh personal identity, social relations, and moral values, in short of their culture 

(Easton 2008). 
46 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

To fully appreciate the importance of hunting to Dineh culture, we must first understand 

that the act of hunting is not isolated from a continuum of cultural activities absolutely vital to 

the moment of the kill, without which Dineh hunting would not be possible. In the Dineh Way it is 

difficult to separate any of the following: thinking and talking about hunting; keeping aware of the 

comings and goings and particular character of animals through observation of their environment 

and behavior; going out into the bush, tracking, and killing an animal; butchering, storing, sharing, 

cooking, and eating the animal; using its non-edible portions as a material resource in making 

additional objects, such as fleshers, clothing, and ornaments; ritually offering up portions of flesh 

or skeletal elements back to the bush; feeling full, content, and thankful at the end of the day; and 

dreaming of animals in one’s sleep – all these comprise elements of Dineh hunting. This stands in 

sharp contrast to western categorizations, which normally separate most of these activities and 

feelings into something other than hunting; in the western view, hunting may be required to eat, but 

eating certainly is not hunting. 

A second aspect of hunting, which arises from this integrative view and is generally 

distinctive from western precepts, is that hunting cannot be isolated as a male gendered activity. 

In the contemporary world, and certainly in the historic past of the 20th century, are found many 

notable and skilled Dineh women who track and kill moose and caribou. To what extent this reflects 

a shift from pre-contact practices is difficult to say. Although men clearly predominated in this 

activity during precontact times, there are accounts from descendants of Upper Tanana of Dineh 

women who hunted in the 19th century. Women certainly were engaged in intensive hunting of 

small game and fishing both in pre- and post-contact Dineh society. They played a role in butchering, 

storing, dividing, and cooking the meat.10 Women also promoted success in hunting by the 

observation of taboos against offending animals, such as touching a man’s rifle, a practice thought 

to make the animal jealous and reject the hunters attempt to seduce it in a kill. As seamstresses, 

women were responsible for the skilled preparation of skins in ways that would please their animal 

owners. As Chaussonnet (1988:212) has observed: 

Animal skin, transformed into a second skin for humans by the work of the 

seamstresses, still maintained its animal identity. From the killing of an animal, 

through the tanning, cutting, and sewing of its skin into a piece of clothing, the 

qualities and characteristics attributed to it in life were maintained and passed on to 

the wearer of the finished garment. This important spiritual principle linked animals, 

hunters, and seamstresses together in an intricate and circular set of relationships.... 

[which] helped reconcile humans and animals... by reinforcing the transformational 

relationship between them in the clothing that she made. 

Other means by which hunting permeates Dineh social life are the practices of reciprocity 

and demand sharing among relatives, co-residents (in the past generally the same people), and 

“hunting partners.” In 1929 McKennan observed that the “slayer of a large animal such as a moose 

or caribou does not acquire the entire carcass but receives only a hind quarter. The ribs and hide go 

to his partner (kla), while the remainder of the animal is distributed among the other members of 

the camp” (McKennan 1959:50). This remains a common and essential practice with many of the 

residents in the Upper Tanana communities of today. 

For example, based on my experience living with and visiting Mr. Joseph Tommy 

Johnny from the mid-1990s to his death in 2013, it was a rare moment when there was an 

10 McKennan (1959:45) notes that, “among the Upper Tanana the cooking was formerly done by the men.... Today [1929] 

the former custom is falling into disuse, especially among the young people.” It has generally been my observation over the 

past twelve years of fieldwork that men still do much of the cooking, both of country foods and store-bought foods.
Hunting 47 

abundance of meat at his borderline cabin, although he was a skilled and very successful 

hunter. The meat of each moose carcass, averaging about 900 pounds each, was largely 

distributed to others within a few days of each kill, at times leaving him with no meat at 

all in his camp. While the majority of the meat was taken by consanguineal relatives, some 

travelling from Whitehorse and Copper Center (both about 250 miles distant), a notable

proportion of about 20 percent is given to more distantly related Natives who visit his camp 

once word of the kill is transmitted. 

At first Mr. Johnny explained his generosity as an expression of how the failure of 

others to obtain meat through their own efforts made him feel sorry for them – “Those guys 

down in Northway are starving, man. They don’t get nothing.” Later he expressed his sharing 

in metaphorical terms; “When I eat my own meat, it tastes funny, like rags, but when I eat 

someone else’s, boy, that’s good.” Later, in the dark over tea one evening, he spoke at length on 

his relationship to the animals that he kills, how he dreams their presence and respects their 

offering to him by sharing the meat with others. “If you don’t do that, they [animals] know. 

They’re not gonna come back to you, boy, no way. If you don’t share that’ll be the last one you 

ever get.” 

This leads us to another essential component of Dineh hunting – the complex of paradoxical 

concepts regarding the active role hunter and prey take in the hunt (Hallowell 1960; Tanner 1979; 

Nelson 1983; Brightman 1993; Nadasdy 2003). Brightman has typified this as a paradox between

a benefactive and adversarial model of the hunt. On the one hand, Dineh conceive of a successful 

hunt to reflect the desire of the animal to give itself to a hunter who has shown the animal proper

“respect” (a term itself laden with multiple meanings – see Nadasdy 2003:79-94), an act of 

reciprocal exchange – respect for meat. Animals also give themselves out of “pity” for the hunger 

of humans, as well as “love” for humans. These two impulses also imply a form of reciprocity. The 

poor hungry human is a supplicant for a gift of meat from the animal. The would-be lover attempts 

to gain favor through gifts and compliments, including the wearing of beautiful articles of clothing 

prepared by women, and care and decoration of hunting implements. In addition, the killing of an 

animal simultaneously gives renewal to its life, as its spirit is reincarnated within the newborn. 

“Hunter and prey successively renew each other’s lives,” writes Brightman (1993:188), “and, 

indeed, each seems to realize its innate nature in the transaction, the hunter as supplicant and the 

animal as benefactor.” 

In addition, as Mauss (1967) notes in The Gift, every act of giving has an element of 

compulsion on the recipient to make a return gift. This is what Brightman (1993:189) refers to as 

innate “coercive and exploitative modalities that may be inimical to the creation of friendly feelings.” 

The experience of skillful hunters failing to kill a prey demonstrates the animal’s reluctance to die. 

The use of hunting fetishes, songs and spells, and divination of the whereabouts of animals, are 

actions independent of, and are attempting to dominate the animal’s will. Alternatively, “animals 

that bite, struggle, and lead their hunters on exhausting chases cannot readily be defined as 

voluntary benefactors” (Brightman 1993:201). 

These paradoxical ambiguities of killing animals reflect important concerns of Dineh 

thought-worlds. In some respect, their opposition is complimentary and mediated by the existence 

of contingent uncertainties in other aspects of life, such as evidence provided by dreams and myths 

which demonstrate the illusory nature of our external senses, which in turn informs and reflects

similar paradoxes of Dineh conceptions of Self and Other, such as the limit of personal authority 

and control. 

At this point I only hope to have exposed something of the complexities of “hunting” within 

Upper Tanana Dineh culture that extend far beyond the mere provision of calories and raw materials 

for artifacts. 
48 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Hunting in the Chisana River Basin 

Caribou were formerly the predominant source of meat for the aboriginal people of the 

Chisana River basin, but their depletion and regulation throughout the 20th century has led them 

to be replaced by moose as the principal meat by both volume and choice. Fish, which will be 

discussed in the next section, are probably the second most important source of food. Important 

subsidiary meat was and is still obtained from sheep, porcupine, muskrat, rabbits, ducks, and 

grouse, and formerly bear and lynx as well. 

McKennan noted at the time of his fieldwork, “the economic life of the Upper Tanana centers 

around the caribou. Not only does the animal constitute the source of food for the Natives and their 

dogs, but also it supplies the material for their clothing, shelters, and boats as well as netting for 

their snowshoes and babiche and sinew for their snares, cords, and lashing” (McKennan 1959:47). 

During his stay at Upper Nabesna village in November and December of 1929 he observed the 

passage of some sixty or seventy thousand caribou. McKennan’s field diary records a number of 

individual and accompanied hunts, in every case using rifles.

This area is traversed by two distinctive caribou herds: the Nelchina and the Chisana. 

The latter was considerably reduced in the winter of 1913-14 during the occupation of miners 

engaged in the short-lived “Chisana Gold Rush” of that year. Before this time both herds 

were hunted all along the Chisana basin during their migrations in early winter and early 

summer, the principal aggregations occurring in late November and mid-May. Caribou were 

also hunted in their summer range in the valley of the White River watershed. Caribou were 

hunted by individual tracking, capture in surrounds, and snares along fences. Surrounds and 

fences required considerable labor to erect and maintain and were the focal point for regular 

aggregations of normally separated residential groups on the Upper White River and the 

Yukon-Tanana Uplands. This technology was largely abandoned after the introduction of the 

high-powered rifle in the 1920s. 

Moose were hunted individually and with snares throughout the region and the year and 

were essential during the intervals between the end of the whitefish fishery and the arrival of

the caribou in late summer/early fall. Moose was also important between the consumption of the 

last winter caribou and the possibility of hunting muskrat and duck in the spring. Similar to the 

caribou, non-edible portions of the moose were used for raw material for a variety of secondary 

artifacts. 

Mountain sheep were hunted in the summer and fall in the Upper Chisana basin, prior to the 

November rut and snowfall, which inhibited access to the hills. Snares were the principal means of 

capture before the rifle.

Bear meat and fat were more prized in the past than today, because they provided the major 

source of grease for consumption and other uses, such as preventing guns and other metals from 

rusting. Bear were generally hunted in or near their dens along south-facing hillsides. Prior to the 

arrival of the rifle, killing a bear brought considerable prestige to a man for his bravery, since they 

were usually dispatched at close quarters with spear or club. 

For much of the 20th century muskrat was hunted in the spring for both its meat and its 

fur, and quite likely this pattern extended into the pre-contact past as well. The myriad lakes of the 

lower Chisana basin provided an ideal environment for muskrat, as well as beaver, which was also 

trapped and shot for its fur. 

Of the smaller animals, porcupine, with its thick layer of fat, seem most favored, although 

rabbits and grouse made up more of the average diet. They were hunted and snared throughout the 

basin, throughout the year. The whistling marmot was a favored food to be found in the foothills of 

the Nutzotin Mountains, along with Arctic ground squirrels, which were snared. All these animals 

might also be dispatched by throwing sticks. 
Fishing 49 

The millions of migrating waterfowl that settle on area lakes for the summer to breed 

were hunted by blunted arrows and sometimes nets placed at the end of the lake where they were 

ensnared landing at dusk or taking off after being startled. The importance of the fowl resource is 

probably under-estimated in prehistoric subsistence and it remains a valued subsistence resource 

by many today. 

FISHING 

McKennan (1959) believed that fishing was of secondary importance to hunting, especially 

in view of a traditional lack of gill-net or handline technology by which they might practice belowice winter fishing. However, once white traders introduced them, the Upper Tanana quickly adapted 

the new technology for winter use. This ready adoption may reflect the dramatic declines in big 

game that followed the Chisana Gold Rush, or a more prosaic recognition of the gill net’s efficacy 

and ease of use. Certainly, fish are an important staple of the average Upper Tanana today (Friend et 

al. 2008). 

Prior to the widespread use of gill nets, the aboriginal method of fishing involved the use 

of conical fish traps and the construction of weirs across good spawning streams, the impounded 

fish being scooped out with willow-withe dip nets (see Figures 25 and 26). Whitefish (Coregonus 

spp.), were the principal fishery, although grayling (Thymallus arcticus), pike (Esox lucius), sucker 

(Catostomus spp.), and lingcod or burbot (Lota lota) were also caught. 

Salmon from the Yukon and Copper Rivers was also pursued as a valuable trade commodity 

or received as an act of reciprocity from Ahtna, Han, or Tutchone kin, both in the more recent past 

and the present; and it seems likely this exchange pattern extends into prehistory as well. Some 

fishing localities were very much seasonal camps with only temporary dwellings, as at the Alaskan 

Wellesley Lakes, while others were more sedentary villages with more permanent architecture as at 

Big Scottie Creek. 

High Cache is a traditional fishing site located on Desper Creek just before its 

confluence with lower Scottie Creek in the southern Chisana Basin. A wooden fish weir (in 

Upper Tanana called a Kuudn) was set here (Easton n.d. [T1999-2A-133]). Mr. Joseph Tommy 

Johnny has seen some of the old stakes still in the mud of the bottom of the creek at low 

water. Mr. Johnny described the construction of the fish weir. Begin by crossing two willow 

poles together, like an X, and then lash them together with willow line and push them in the 

water, and then another and another, until the creek was crossed. You then put willow trees up 

against the line of poles. It was easy to construct in plan, but hard work in fact, because often 

you had to often drag the trees some distance. It took a day and a half to two days to construct. 

Then you put a platform in the middle, between four poles in a square, so that you can stand 

there and work the dip net. You walked out to it along the piled-up willow brush. The High 

Cache weir was constructed in the mid-summer, say late July, and then in August the fish start 

coming downstream. 

People from all around went to High Cache to fish, including Titus John, Bell John, Andy 

Frank, Maggie John, Bessie Mason, Shorty Frank, White River Johnny, Chief Johnson, Joe John, Ernest 

Scott, and Frank Titus. People from Snag went there too. “They come down here with gas boat, from 

Tetlin, Northway, they all come here. Boat just loaded with fish. They hunt moose up that way [to 

the south, across the flats of the lower Chisana River], all over. They dry meat here fall time. And 

they stay here year round, too.... They trap up in those hills. Thaiy Shok they’re called” (Easton n.d. 

[T1999-2A-114]). 

Willow bark was the material used to construct the uh, or dip net, used to catch fish in the 

small passageway at the middle of the weir. When asked how this was made, Mr. Johnny did not 

hesitate in showing us. He explained that first you have to find a good willow tree, one which is 
50 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Figure 25. Women and children fishing from a log platform at a fish weir. Tetlin Photograph 

Collection, UAF-1987-114-10. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

Figure 26. Women and children fishing with dip net from log platform at fishing weir.

Eva Joe (woman fishing), Jenny Joe (on right), Clara Joe, and Annie Joe (far left). Tetlin Photograph 

Collection, UAF-1987-114-9. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 
Fishing 51

straight limbed and without branches along the trunk. Then you make a cut, about 1-1/2 inches 

wide, across the trunk, near the bottom, and pry this up a little with your knife. Then, grasping the 

cut bark firmly, you simply peel it away in as long a strip as you can before it breaks off the tree. 

Our efforts provided us with lengths of about 3 feet, but Mr. Johnny told us that better trees for this 

purpose are be found up on the hillside, where a person would grab the cut bark and run away from 

the tree, stripping a length as high as the tree, perhaps 13 to 16 feet long. It is best to collect this 

bark in the spring, after freezing but before it gets too hot. 

Once you have gathered a bundle of these strips, you must further prepare them by 

stripping the outer bark, which is done by running your knife along the outside while pulling the 

strip between the knife and a stabilizing surface, such as your leg or a log. You can also do this with 

your teeth. Then you are ready to begin tying the net together, which is done with the same knot 

that western fishermen use; you can gauge the size of the hole in the net to be as big or small as 

you please. A series of such knotted strips were then tied together, using the same knot, to form the 

entire net, which was then tied onto a hoop of willow with spruce root, which in turn was hafted 

onto a long pole, and the uh was ready for use. 

Later, Mr. Johnny pointed out that such willow uh were stored after the fishing season by 

removing them from the hoop, rolling up the net, and wrapping the net in birchbark, which is then 

tied with willow. The net was then cached beneath some moss in a marked location. The following 

year it would be retrieved and set into the water to soak for about a week or ten days before it was 

sewed onto the hoop for use (Easton n.d. [T1999-2B-289]). Summing up his instruction of weir and 

net construction, Mr. Johnny observed: 

We got everything. We got house here. Nature has got everything out here, but 

people don’t know how to use it. You can build a house here, make fish net, fish trap. 

You can make everything here. Nature has made it – people just don’t know how to 

use it, don’t know how to go about it. Native people lived here thousands of years; 

they didn’t need help. (Easton n.d. [JTJ, T1999-2A]). 

There are two significant observations to be made of Mr. Johnny’s description and 

demonstration of uh construction. The first is that dip net construction and use was not 

necessarily a gendered labor activity: since Mr. Johnny’s intimate knowledge extended to the 

actual construction of the uh, a notion confirmed by a subsequent query of his older sister, 

Mrs. Bessie John, who indicated that she too had made such nets in the past. The second 

observation is that the storage method of the nets suggests that traditional forms may be 

found at such fishing sites beneath the moss if they are out of the way of traffic that might 

crush them. For example, Mr. Johnny’s younger brother, David Johnny, found just such a dip net 

stored in a tree on his visit to a traditional fishing site in the upper Scottie Creek valley. It has 

been preserved and remains in the possession of the White River First Nation in Beaver Creek, 

Yukon. Continuing archaeological survey work at fish camps should thus include searching for 

such remains. 

Scattered about such fish camps you will also find rectangular excavations, 

approximately 70 inches long, by 30 inches wide and 30 inches deep. Mr. Louis Frank 

identified this as a special kind of ground cache, which was used to ripen fish to improve their 

flavor and render their fat. Such a ground cache for fish is called dinuh. Its construction is 

simple; dig the rectangular hole and line it with willow. Whitefish were then hung down into 

the hole on fireweed stalks and covered up for about thirty days to ripen them. After this time, 

they cooked it. They did this all summer long. Ripening fish is the old people’s way; they like it, 

because it makes them greasier. 
52 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Mr. Frank recalled that such fish had a “good flavour. It smells but it’s something good for 

them [old people] .... It’s like what they do for salmon; they keep it in water for one week then they 

cook it off. That’s the way you get salmon grease, you boil it off” (Easton n.d. [LF, T1999-2A]). 

A ground cache keeps everything cool. “You keep meat cool. I seen my dad and mom do that. 

You dig about six or four feet, then you hit permafrost. You clean it out and they line it with willow. 

You get branches and cover it up with branches and moss and it stays cool” (Easton n.d. [TJ, T1999-

2A-260]). A ground cache for meat is called ch’el tha’. 

COLLECTING 

The Upper Tanana made use of a wide variety of plants for food, technology, and medicine. 

Even today collecting plants to eat, to make herbs and teas for pleasure, to treat ailments, and to use 

in the continued manufacture of traditional crafts is a regular occurrence in every community. 

Spruce was the most important plant in terms of its overall use. It was a component of much 

of the traditional technology. The roots were used for lines in a variety of ways, from sewing to netmaking; the bark was used for siding and roofing of their habitations and to make containers; the 

inner cambium is chewed for medicine and food in times of shortage. The pitch is chewed as a form 

of gum; it is also used as an ointment for sores and cuts, and as a glue for canoes and arrows. Spruce 

boughs are used for bedding, and spruce needles are burned to keep away mosquitoes. Spruce wood 

is used to make “weirs, fish traps, fish racks, fish rafts, and boat poles. Boats, boat paddles, shovels, 

skin stretchers, and wedges for chopping wood are also made out of the wood” (P. Kari 1985:8). 

Most importantly, spruce provides a primary source of fuel to heat homes and bodies during the 

cold days and nights of winter and to fuel fires for cooking.

While plants do not regularly make up a large proportion of the Upper Tanana diet – meat, 

fish, and fowl dominate – they do provide additional nutrients and break up the monotony of the 

non-plant diet, especially a variety of berries. Many plants are used to treat ailments, usually in the 

form of a hot brew or poultice. At least 100 of the 300 or so vascular plants of the interior western 

subarctic have some documented use in Upper Tanana culture (Easton 2005). 
History 53

History 

For generation after generation, maybe for 300 years, the Indians have heard that 

a strange, new people were coming to kill the Indians and take away their hunting 

grounds. These new people would have yellow hair and pale skin. My father told me 

this story; his father told him; and his father told him (Peter Albert, Upper Tanana 

Elder, 1929, quoted in McKennan 1959:174).

As we have seen in the discussion of demography and disease, the arrival of Europeans 

to North America affected the northwest interior Athabascans long before any direct contact 

between the aboriginal and immigrant populations. These effects were transported along 

existing aboriginal trade networks and, although it is difficult to pinpoint in time their 

earliest occurrences, included the transmittal of material goods, such as metal and beads; 

disease, such as smallpox and influenza; and ideas, such as the use of the orthodox and 

Roman Christian crosses, and ground burial practices. At first these effects were introduced 

slowly and from afar, followed by an increase in volume as the coastal and interior fur trades 

escalated in intensity and expanded geographically in the latter half of the 19th century 

(VanStone 1974; Helm et al. 1975).

The physical penetration of the interior western subarctic by Europeans was much 

slower, hampered by the challenging environment of which they had little adaptive knowledge, 

and by shrewd Native groups who enjoyed and vigorously protected their monopoly position of 

mercantile middlemen in the fur trade. But by the end of the 19th century the indigenous position 

had been eroded by a series of forays into the interior by traders, prospectors, and government 

sponsored exploration parties through much of the Yukon River drainage (Hosley 1981b; McClellan 

1981). Yet the territories of the Upper Tanana remained largely unexplored until the first decade of

the 20th century, and access remained extremely difficult until the building of the Alaska Highway.

As a result, with the exception of additional depopulation brought on by continued epidemic disease, 

the Upper Tanana, and especially the eastern population of the borderlands, were not affected as 

much as other interior Athabascans until the middle of the 20th century (McKennan 1981). 

Figure 27. Chisana City Streetscape, 1914. Geoffrey Bleakley Collection, Makawao, Hawaii. 
54 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

This is not to say there were no effects, nor that the ones they experienced were not 

significant. The imposition of the international border, the massive, though short-lived influx of

prospectors and miners during the 1913-14 Chisana Gold Rush, the steady stream of new technology 

and commodities through trade networks, the introduction of new ideas associated with Christianity, 

and the educational efforts of the Alaska Native Service were all factors that directly contributed to 

changes in Upper Tanana culture and society. What is of interest here is the degree to which these 

foreign elements were adapted within the local Dineh culture as opposed to fundamentally altering it. 

ABORIGINAL DEMOGRAPHY AND HISTORICAL EPIDEMICS 

They told us of a great tale of woe of how many Indians had died from which we 

understood that some epidemic had afflicted them (Griffith 1900). 

The fact that our anthropological knowledge of the subarctic cultures must be somehow 

different from the “aboriginal horizon” is particularly clear within the study of the population 

numbers, birth, death, and illness rates and causes, and age distributions within these categories. 

It is uncertain what effect, if any, postulated continental pandemics (Dobyns 1966, Crosby 

1976, Boyd 1990) had on the aboriginal populations of the interior western subarctic, but they 

may have been considerable; epidemic diseases and depopulation are recurring themes expressed 

within the regional folk history (see, for example, McClellan 1975:Chapter 1, and Coates 1991:9-14).

It is more certain, however, that the Upper Tanana Dineh were likely affected by a series 

of epidemics that passed through the central interior in the mid-1800s: smallpox in 1838-39 and 

scarlet fever in 1851 and 1865 (McKennan 1981). The effects of these epidemics, as well as later 

incidences of measles at the turn of the century, a major influenza epidemic throughout the Yukon 

basin in the 1920s, and endemic tuberculosis through much of the 20th century (see Table 2), were 

undoubtedly substantial. 

Figure 28. Cross Creek Village Cemetery, 1939. T. W. Ranta no. 56, USGS Photo Archives, Denver.
Aboriginal Demography and Historical Epidemics 55

Table 2. Epidemic Diseases of Note in Northwestern North America 

1781a Smallpox, demonstrably effecting Chipewyans and Cree 

1820sa Unidentified, but quite deadly, contagious disease among the eastern Dene is 

recorded in fur post records 

1835b Epidemic among coastal Tlingit with 20 to 50% population mortality; “likely 

transmitted to interior during trading expeditions” 

1838-39a Smallpox throughout the northwest subarctic; high mortality 

1838-39c Smallpox epidemic in central Alaskan interior 

1840s-1850sa A number of diseases, in particular whooping cough, with high mortality among 

children 

1846d “Great mortality” amongst the Native women of Fort Youcon reported by 

Alexander Murray 

1848b Epidemic among the Han after visits to Fort Selkirk and Fort Yukon 

1850sb Smallpox among Tlingit spread up the Alsek River drainage to “various parts of 

the interior, decimating entire villages” 

1850-51b Famine in the interior of the Yukon; diarrhea among children and incidents of 

pulmonary infections 

1851d As many as 1/3 of the Native population along the upper Yukon river carried off 

by what Robert Campbell believes to be mumps 

1851c Scarlet fever epidemic in central Alaskan interior 

1851-52b Epidemic “scarlet fever?” and severe famine among all Indians – “One third of 

population dead” 

1860b Scarlet fever epidemic at mouth of Alsek River and inland to upper Yukon River 

1862-65a Scarlet fever 

1865cd Scarlet fever epidemic in central Yukon and Alaskan interior; both Fort Youcon 

and La Pierre trading posts report 50% mortality of local Natives

1868b Epidemic at Fort Yukon 

1873b Dysentery among the Han 

early 1880sa Diphtheria 

1887-88b “Many die among the Han and Stewart River Indians” 

1897a,b Another round of Scarlet fever; “Selkirk Indians dying off fast” 

1898-99b “numerous deaths from illness among Indians” in the central Yukon 

1901b Northwest Mounted Police reports great mortality among Yukon Indians due to 

pulmonary infections 

1905b Diphtheria epidemic at Fort Selkirk 

1907b Tuberculosis is considered endemic among Yukon Indians 

1916b “Consumption is rife” among Selkirk people; occasional epidemics of smallpox, 

diphtheria, la grippe, chicken pox, and measles 

1918a Worldwide Influenza pandemic crossed the subarctic

1925b Influenza epidemic throughout the Yukon
1928a An even more virulent, and mortal, influenza virus passed through the north.

1929b “Tuberculosis among Indians of Southern Yukon is present in 10 to 15% of the 

population, and accounts for more than 50% of deaths”

1850s – Endemically high rates of tuberculosis; recently resurging in a new mutated 

onwards to strain, which is proving to be resistant to antibiotic treatment. 

today 

56 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Sources: a – Helm 1981; b – Gotthardt 1987; c – McKennan 1959; and d – Coates 1991. Gotthardt 

1987 sources include: Hudson’s Bay Company and Church Missionary Society Archives, cited in 

Legros 1981, 1984; Northern Lights (various issues); Helm, et al. 1975; Marchand 1943; Bancroft 

1886; Dall 1870; Archand 1966; Dept. of Indian Affairs Annual Report 1954; Northwest Mounted 

Police Annual Report for 1902. 

Among the Upper Tanana, Allen (1900:445) records that at Last Tetlin:

Nandell had informed me that there had been many deaths among these people, 

and as nearly as I could understand him, he feared they might attribute them to 

our entrance to the country.... The inhabitants around these lakes, including Tetlin’s 

following, were almost without exception suffering from sever coughs, and many 

showed unmistakable signs of pulmonary troubles. 

Regarding Kheeltat’s place (Tetlin), Allen (1900:445) writes, “the consumptive look and its 

accompanying cough were more marked here than at the former place (Last Tetlin).” 

Scottie Creek Elders all maintain that their village at Tsʼoogot Gaay was made of several 

hundred people in their younger years (1880s to 1920s). Mr. Andy Frank believed that it was “1917 

or ‘18 when a great number of people died in the region from ‘flu’” (possibly the northern reach of 

the worldwide Spanish influenza?), an epidemic that was repeated in the early 1940s.

In 1929, McKennan (1959:18) recorded a population of 152 for the entire Upper Tanana, 

distributed as shown in Table 3. 

table 3. Upper tanana population by “Band,” Winter 1929

Upper Upper Last Tetling Tetling Mouth of Scottie Total 

Chisana/ Nabesna Nabesna Creek 

Men 6 5 9 16 6 42 

Women 5 6 10 16 7 44 

Children 5 7 15 27 12 66 

Total 16 18 34 59 25 152

Source: McKennan (1959:18).

McKennan suggested that: 

The older Indians all stoutly maintain that formerly their number was much greater. 

They said that previous to the coming of the white man great numbers suddenly 

died from disease. The earliest explorers on the Yukon all met with a similar story 

(1959:19, emphasis added).
 

 

 

 

 

The Early Period of European Trade 57

Guédon (1974:10) writes that: 

The Natives still maintain that large villages or camps were drained of their 

population before or just after ‘the coming of the white men.’ Whether this refers 

to the scarlet fever of about 1868 or to other epidemics, or whether it reflects 

other events, this belief is basic to the Natives’ view of the past. We need more 

information to draw a better picture of the aboriginal times, but we cannot rule out 

the hypothesis of a larger population during the 19th century: a difference of 20 to 

50% would be sufficient to support the Native point of view. Archaeological research 

is needed in the who area as well as ecological studies. 

The historic populations documented by the earliest known censuses capture a picture of 

a people in population decline due to epidemic and endemic disease, quite likely exacerbated by 

nutritional stress caused by erosion of their subsistence resources, both factors over which the 

aboriginal population had no control. Some families, villages, and entire local groups (“bands”) were 

totally wiped out by these diseases, while others were merely devastated, depending on whether 

they had lost key hunters, childbearing women, children, or adolescents. As a result, fundamental 

adjustments were needed to adjust to the new demographic realities of the aboriginal occupants of 

the landscape. These changes and challenges included the following: 

• a dramatic increase in the availability and size of subsistence exploitation areas; 

• an effective decrease in the population available to be mobilized for cooperative hunting 

 and other group-orientated tasks; 

• an effective decrease in the number and dependability of subsistence resources (wildfowl 

` in the 19th century; caribou, moose, and salmon in the early 20th century); 

• significant changes in the distribution and availability of culturally suitable mates; and

• a dramatic increase in “adoption” of orphaned children, and subsequent realignment of 

 their social categories through fictive kin mechanisms, effectively muddling traditional 

 kinship relations. 

These factors, in turn, led to major redistribution of populations, particularly from decimated 

areas, in order to avoid demographic collapse. The concentration of remaining populations to 

reach sustainable levels of reproduction left many areas apparently “uninhabited” to the earliest 

European arrivals. 

THE EARLY PERIOD OF EUROPEAN TRADE 

The early period of European trade is characterized by introduction of the effects of a 

European presence in the region without direct interpersonal contact. These effects moved along 

existing aboriginal trade networks, carrying along new commodities (such as beads and copper pots), 

new ideas (such as in-ground burial), and new diseases. Tracing the exact geographical and temporal 

vectors of these movements in the pre-contact period is difficult, but the material evidence generated

by archaeological excavation of late pre-contact sites of the 19th century demonstrate its occurrence. 

The movement of goods along the trade networks increasingly escalated during the 1800s, 

following the formation of the Russian American Company in 1799 and the arrival on the coast of 

British and American traders, and the inexorable penetration from the east of the Hudson’s Bay 

Company in subsequent decades. Metal traps, axes, files, and nails (used for fishhooks), as well as

guns received in exchange for furs altered some patterns of subsistence, but indigenous use of snares, 

fences, weirs, spears, and the bow and arrow continued, as did decorative arts on clothing, although 

the geometric designs of quillwork were supplanted by floral designs of beading (McClellan 1981). 
58 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Oral history of the Borderland Dineh indicate that one of the principle localities for this 

trade was on “North Fork” island (Tl’oo Gayh K’it /on white grass/) on the upper White River, where 

Upper Tanana met with Tlingit people every two years, exchanging furs and copper for European 

trade goods and coastal resources, such as dried clams and dentalium shells. Brooks (1953:123) 

notes that “the Chilkats... appear to have been familiar with the copper deposits in the upper White 

River region. They called the White River the Irkhena, which means copper.” Bessie John recalled 

stories of her grandfather trading at North Fork Island, bringing back the first copper pots, as well 

as tea and tobacco, to their village at Taiy Chi (Easton n.d.). 

In addition to the intensification of existing trade relations, enterprising Natives explored the

establishment of new ones, as with the settlement of the interior Tlingit in the Tagish region of the 

southwest Yukon (McClellan 1975). This period may have also promoted a stronger sense of territorial

boundaries between groups in competition for scarce European trade resources, if only within discrete 

areas of the trapping/trading economy. This certainly seems to have been the case in the eastern subarctic 

where family trapping territories became increasingly reified, to the extent that some anthropologists

believed they could document a well-developed indigenous system of private property amongst the 

northern Algonquin at the beginning of this century (Speck 1935). Leacock (1954) and others (e.g. Tanner

1979) have convincingly argued that Speck documented a post-contact phenomenon stimulated by the 

mercantile fur-based economy, and one which did not prevent wider use of the landscape in more typical 

subarctic hunter-gatherer fashion into the present. Within the western subarctic there is little evidence 

for the establishment of family hunting or trapping territories prior to 20th century State regulation. 

Writing about the Upper Tanana in the late 1920s, McKennan (1959:128) notes that “the wanderings

of individual families compass such a large area that the institution of permanent hunting and trapping 

territories would be completely at variance with the native mode of life.” Brooks (1953:122) believed that

the interior Alaskan Athabascans maintained a usufructuary right in which “a visitor from a neighboring 

tribe might not catch fur-bearing animals except as food. He was privileged to kill any animal for food, but 

the pelt must be delivered to the tribe owning [i.e., occupying] the hunting ground.” 

Throughout this early period, the Russian American Company was singularly unsuccessful 

in extending direct contact into the Tanana River country. A number of exploration parties between 

1820 and 1850 were either turned back by Ahtna or Copper River Indians or, as in the case of the 

eleven Russians led by Rufus Sereberinikoff, never returned. The Chilkats on the passes to the south 

maintained a similarly successful blockade of British and American traders until the 1880s (Allen 

1887; Brooks 1953; J. Kari 1986; McKennan 1959).

While the coastal Natives were successful in preventing the movement of European traders to the 

interior, and restricted the movement of interior people westward, the Hudson’s Bay Company entered 

the northwestern subarctic overland from the east in the 1840s, establishing Fort Yukon in 1847 and Fort 

Selkirk in 1848 (Campbell 1958). Given their geographical range of kinship ties and travel to visit affines,

it seems likely that at least some Upper Tanana came into contact with Hudson’s Bay Company personnel, 

either at their trading posts or on their travels about the country, an assumption corroborated by Upper 

Tanana oral history. There is a rich account, for example, of the Borderlands Huskeh Taiy Suul traveling to 

Fort Selkirk to trade furs and returning with the first firearm – an old musket – seen in the Upper Tanana

region. This would have occurred somewhere between 1848 and 1852. Two lead shot musket balls

recovered during an archaeological survey at the location of one of Taiy Suul’s principal encampments in 

the Scottie Creek valley in 2001 provide material evidence in support of the oral history (Easton 2002).11 

11 Schwatka (1893:129), in reference to the Natives around Marsh Lake, speaks of “the stereotyped Hudson Bay Company 

flintlock smooth-bore musket, the only kind of gun, I believe, throwing a ball that this great trading company has ever issued

since its foundation. They also sell a cheap variety of double-barreled percussion-capped shotgun, which the natives buy, 

and loading them with ball-being about No.12 or 14 gauge – find them superior to muskets. Singular as it may appear, these

Indians ... prefer the flintlock to the percussion-cap gun, probably for the reason that the latter depends on three articles of

trade – caps, powder, lead – while the former depends on but two of these, and the chances of running short of ammunition 

when perhaps at a distance of many weeks' journey from these supplies, are thereby lessened. These old muskets are 

tolerably good at sixty to seventy yards, and even reasonably dangerous at twice that distance. In all their huntings these 

Indians contrive by that tact peculiar to savages to get within this distance of a moose, black bear and caribou, and thus to 

earn a pretty fair subsistence the year round, having for summer a diet of salmon with a few berries and moose. 
Early European Explorers 59

In terms of the expanding European fur trade, Brooks (1953:122) writes:

when the Russians reached the coast and, half a century later, the Hudson Bay 

traders reached the Yukon... the natives immediately adjacent to the trading 

posts obtained many articles which they bartered with the more distant tribes. 

In time these distant natives visited the posts themselves and thus avoided 

the profits paid to the middlemen. Thus, even the Tanana natives used to 

congregate annually at the mouth of that river and barter their furs with the 

white traders. Those of the upper Tanana reached the Yukon and Fort Selkirk 

for the same purpose by a more direct route. 

McKennan (1959:29) did not record any accounts of travel to Fort Selkirk during its brief

existence (it was destroyed by Chilkat traders in 1852). Many of the older people he interviewed

in 1929 noted that the first white men they personally had contact with were the traders Leroy

McQuesten and Joe Ladue in the 1870s and 1880s. Instead of directly through white men, it 

seems, much of the early Upper Tanana trade was through the established intermediaries, in 

particular the Kluane to the east, Han to the north, and Copper River Ahtna Natives to the west 

and southwest. 

Evidently the bulk of trade came from the Yukon rather than the Copper. Old Nicolai, 

however, who ranged from Taral to the head of the Nizina carried on some trade 

in beads and ammunition with the interior. He would leave his goods at his camp 

on the Chitistone, and the Tanana natives when they arrived would deposit furs 

in the proper amount.... Chisana Joe told me that many times he had made the trip 

and packed back powder, beads, tobacco and tea; and Frank Sam recalled that he 

had seen his first white man when he hiked with his father, Old Chief Sam, from the 

lower Nabesna to Dan Creek via the Skolai Pass (McKennan 1959:28).

The Alaska Commercial Company established trading posts at Fort Reliance in 1874, Belle 

Isle (across from present day Eagle) in 1880, Fort Nelson at the mouth of the Stewart River in 

1886, and Fortymile in 1887, and these posts were certainly subsequently visited by Upper Tanana 

Natives, as were the mining camps established in the mid-1880s at Franklin and Chicken Creeks on 

the Fortymile River (McKennan 1981:567; Gates 1994). However, the first incursion of a trader into 

the Upper Tanana region itself seems to have not occurred until about 1900, when the prospectorturned-trader, Bill Rupe, settled into the Scottie Creek valley. 

EARLY EUROPEAN EXPLORERS 

The Euro-American exploration of the Upper Tanana region began quite late, compared 

to much of the rest of the Northwest American subarctic, beginning in the 1880s. During his 1883 

military expedition through the Yukon River basin, Frederick Schwatka noted that the Tanana 

River was “the longest wholly unexplored river in the world, certainly the longest in the western 

continent” (Schwatka 1893:302). 

McKennan (1959:25) writes “In all probability the first white men ever to be on the Tanana 

were the traders, Bates and Harper, who, leaving their post at Belle Isle [across from present day 

Eagle on the Yukon River] in the late seventies, made their way up the Fortymile and its tributaries, 

crossed the height of land, and then descended the Tanana by means of a skin boat.” Schwatka 

recorded an account of this journey in his A Summer in Alaska. Undoubtedly the most significant of 

the early explorations of the 1880s was Lt. Henry Allen’s military expedition of 1885. His route took 
60 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

him along through the Copper River Valley and over the Suslota Pass to the Upper Tanana valley, 

which he then descended to its mouth. 

In 1898, Alfred Hulse Brooks, a US geologist, along with W. J. Peters, a topographer, 

traversed the Upper Tanana and recorded a short note on the Natives he encountered there. 

These [people] were essentially meat-eaters, their only fish diet being the Arctic trout, or

grayling, and a small whitefish. These highlanders, as they might be called, were the last

to come into contact with the whites and hence preserved many of their original customs 

up to recent times. In 1898 and 1899 I found such men living on the upper Tanana who, 

except for their firearms, exhibited but little evidence of intercourse with the whites.

Most of the men and some of the women were dressed entirely in buckskin, and their 

bedding was made of furs. Here I saw an Indian hunting with bow and arrow. His arrows 

were tipped with copper from the gravels of near-by streams. On this same stream, the 

Kletsandek, a tributary of the upper White River, I found a party of natives searching for 

the native copper pebbles in the gravels, their digging implements being caribou horns. 

Fred Moffit and Adolph Knopf conducted a geological reconnaissance in the region in 1908 

and also recorded a few comments on the Natives. 

The total native population of the area extending from the head of the Copper River 

to the White is probably not far from 45 or 50. The natives are divided between three

villages, if such they may be called, one at Batzulnetas, on the Copper River; one on 

Nabesna River, at the mouth of Copper Creek; and a third on Cross Creek, opposite 

the mouth of Notch Creek, in the Chisana valley. The Batzulnetas and Nabesna natives 

rely on the white men for a considerable portion of their food, but the Chisana natives 

are more independent. Their more isolated position has brought them less contact 

with white men, and they have retained their own manner of living to a greater extent. 

They depend almost entirely on game for food and lay up a good supply each fall for 

the winter’s needs. All the natives wear clothes obtained from white men, except 

moccasins, which they make themselves, but they prefer the white man’s footwear. 

Under the influence of white men they have become inveterate beggars, always asking

for tea or tobacco, for which, as well as for flour and cloth, they will trade meat or

leather goods, when they have them (Moffit and Knopf 1910:15).

It is important to note that their observation of “begging” by Natives of whites may have been a 

cultural misinterpretation. From the Dineh cultural perspective, this was likely more “demand 

sharing,” typical of attempts to establish and maintain relationships of reciprocity that are central to 

Dineh social organization (Kelly 1995).

THE INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY COMMISSION SURVEY IN UPPER TANANA LAND 

The establishment of the international boundary along the 141st meridian was the first 

real incursion by the State into the lands and lives of the Upper Tanana. While at first this had only 

a minimal effect on their lives, the existence of the border came to have profound social, economic, 

and cultural effects later in the 20th century. 

Until 1871, when the region was incorporated into the Northwest Territories of 

the Dominion of Canada, the lands to the east of the boundary were granted by Britain to 

the exclusive use of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The company regularly transgressed into 

the territory claimed by Russia and subsequently sold to the United States, establishing 
The International Boundary Commission Survey in Upper Tanana Land 61 

Figure 29. Surveyor on mountain peak from the Alaska Canada 

boundary survey from 1910 to 1913. Alaska State Library, Asa 

Columbus Baldwin Photo Collection, ASL-P71-412. 

Fort Yukon at the confluence of the Yukon and Porcupine Rivers in 1847, and regularly 

carrying out trade in the lower reaches of the Tanana River. In 1869 an American military 

survey determined the company’s illegal occupation within Alaska and deported their 

representatives upriver (Green 1982). This led to further recognition by the respective states 

of the need to permanently establish the location of the border in order to avoid future 

conflicts of this sort. 
62 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

First Attempts to Establish the 141st Meridian 

Initial work on determining the precise location of the 141st meridian began in 1887, with 

William Ogilvie’s astronomic observations along the Yukon River in association with the Geological 

Survey of Canada’s Yukon Expedition of the same year (Dawson 1888; see also Easton 1987). From 

1889 to 1895 several additional surveys were made of the 141st meridian in the Klondike region 

and in 1902 the line was extended south from the Yukon River to the headwaters of Scottie Creek 

(International Boundary Commission 1966). No mention is made in the reports of these surveys of 

any aboriginal inhabitants of the region. 

From the south, a US Geological Survey 

party explored the Upper Tanana territories 

in 1898. Little is recorded on their nongeological observations; however, a map 

provides some detail on their route and 

dates of passage through the area: 10 July at 

Snag, on the White River; 11-18 July along 

Snag Creek to the 141st meridian; 19-21 July 

south of Mirror Creek; 1 August at the mouth 

of Mirror Creek and Tanana River [sic] 

(United States Geological Survey 1899). 12 

Again, no mention is made of any 

Native people, a curious absence, since the 

villages of Niįʼį̀ įʼ,̨̀ Taatsàan, and Taatsàan 

T’oh lie within a mile or two north and 

south of their passage over the flatlands 

through which the middle Snag and upper 

Mirror Creeks run. However, August is the 

time of fish camp along Scottie Creek and 

may account for their absence. Another 

explanation is that these surveys, unlike 

those undertaken by George Dawson, 

were singularly uninterested in recording 

Native settlements or encounters. The 

fact that several field journals contain 

reference to Native encounters and villages 

elsewhere contradicts this assumption. 

Finally, we might surmise that the official 

reports neglected mention of Native people 

occupying the borderlands in order to avoid raising, at a bureaucratic state level, the presence 

of Native occupations (and perhaps rights that might flow from their occupation) along the 

borderlands. 

In early June 1900, W. F. King, Canada’s chief astronomer, and O. H. Tittmann, superintendent 

of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey, arrived in Skagway, Alaska, to mark out the provisional 

boundary between Canada and the United States along the three main passes (the Chilkat, Chilkoot, 

and White Passes) from the coast to the interior gold strikes in the Klondike. As they traversed the 

Chilkat valley, they were approached by a group of Tlingit Natives from the village of Klukwan, who 

“presented a petition to the commissioners asking that they be allowed to continue to hunt, fish, 

12 The identification of the Tanana River here is a geographical error; Mirror Creek runs into the Chisana River,

which in turn flows into the Nabesna River, which runs into the Tanana River further downstream.

Figure 30. Survey activity from the Alaska Canada 

boundary survey from 1910 to 1913. Alaska State 

Library, Asa Columbus Baldwin Photo Collection, 

ASL-P71-187a. 
 

In 1903 the establishment of the Alaska Boundary Tribunal was agreed to by Britain and 

the United States to adjudicate the disputed boundary between Canada and Alaska along the 

coastal panhandle. While the treaty negotiations were riddled with intrigues against Canadian 

interests (see Penlington 1972; Green 1982), the final terms of the resulting Convention of 1906

initiated intensive surveying of the border, including determining its position using astronomical 

observations and triangulation and cutting a 20-foot wide “vista,” as the strip cleared of trees 

and brush to mark the border is called, along its entire length by collaborating crews of the 

Canadian and American Geological Surveys. Fieldwork began in 1907 and continued until 1913 

(International Boundary Commission 1918). The remaining discussion here of the International 

Boundary Commission survey is restricted to activities that took place in the territory occupied by 

the Upper Tanana. 

The official accounts of the work of the boundary survey present the following general 

chronology: 

 

Official Accounts of the International Boundary Commission Survey 63 

Figure 31. Surveyor looking up a small tributary glacier, 141st Meridian, Kluane Glacier, Y.T. Canada. Dept. 

of Interior, Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1936-271 NPC, item Y-8-1-20, PA-044656.

and trade across the new boundary line that sliced across the Chilkat River valley about a mile north 

of their village. The commissioners agreed to forward the petition to the president and governor 

general respectively” (Green 1982:76; see also United States 1903: case appendix). No official reply 

to the petition has been uncovered to date. 

Official Accounts of the International Boundary Commission Survey

• In 1907, the several members of the survey projected a line from the Yukon River 

southwards 125 miles to a point near the crossing of Snag Creek. 
64 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

• In 1908, this line was continued southward past the White River crossing 

of the border, triangulation was completed to about 75 miles south of the

Sixtymile River (near to the headwaters of Scottie Creek), topographic 

mapping and vista clearing were undertaken to the Sixtymile, and permanent 

monuments were set through to the Ladue River. 

• In 1909, more than 50 men arrived at Canyon City on the White River in late 

spring (May 21st) to carry out the work of the survey; the majority proceeded 

up the White to work their way towards Mt. Natazhat in the Wrangell Mountains, 

while two smaller crews continued topographic surveys about the border to 

the north, meeting at Mirror Creek on August 24th; cutting of the vista was 

completed north from Mt. Natazhat to Mirror Creek. 

• In 1910, the vista was completed between Mirror Creek and the Ladue River, and 

monuments were set from the Sixtymile River to Mirror Creek. 

• In 1911, all survey efforts were north of the Yukon River. 

• In 1912, additional triangulation was carried out along the upper reaches of 

the White River to the Skolai Pass and into the Chitina watershed south of the 

Wrangell Mountains. 

• In 1913, a final inspection of the boundary from the Yukon River south to Mt. 

Natazhat was conducted, checking and numbering monuments, thus completing 

the work of the international boundary survey along the 141st meridian 

(International Boundary Commission 1918). 

This account of the survey activities does not do full justice to the enormous undertaking 

that was completed between 1907 and 1913. The final report of the commission provides

anecdotal accounts of the challenges met by the surveyors, and Green (1982) expands on this with 

information gleaned from archival field books and personal logs. Within all the officially published

documentation, however, there are no accounts of encounters with, or observations of, the aboriginal 

inhabitants of the region between the Sixtymile and White Rivers. Given the low population of the 

area we might not find this too surprising, however my own research into the archival documents

and the recording of oral history indicates that the survey did encounter Upper Tanana people. 

Archival research into the original logs of the survey was undertaken at the Public Archives 

of Canada, Ottawa, the Rasmuson Library Archives at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the 

National Archives in Washington, D.C. That research has provided a more detailed understanding 

of the routes and dates of passage through Upper Tanana territory during the survey, including the 

winter ranges of packhorses within the White River valley, which were undoubtedly encountered by 

Upper Tanana hunting caribou there, and lists of men employed to support the work of the official 

survey members. The latter provides us with additional sources (in the form of journals, memoirs, 

and letters of the named participants) to attempt to document more fully the interactions between 

the survey members and the local inhabitants. 

The final report of the International Boundary Commission (IBC 1918) includes an 

account of the “Chiefs of Parties and Assistants,” which in 1909 numbered 14 surveyors and 

their assistants. The personal diary of F. H. Lambert, who acted as a chief of party for the 

Crown, lists by name an additional 31 men hired by the Canadian survey to cut vistas, lay 

monuments, cook, and handle horses (Lambert 1909). Presumably, the United States would 

have hired roughly the same number of people. This suggests a total contingent of about 60 to 

70 men active in the region from late spring to late August of that year. 
Oral History Accounts of the Border Survey 65

Oral History Accounts of the Border Survey

Oral history accounts provide an important further elaboration on the encounter between 

the boundary survey people and the Upper Tanana. They document the actual division of Tsʼoogot 

Gaay village by the survey and recount the agreement that the borderlands Dineh would continue to 

have the right to occupy and use the region as they had done in the past. 

Mrs. Bessie John’s Account of the Border Survey 

The oral testimony of Mrs. Bessie John on the border survey through Tsʼoogot Gaay has been 

recorded by this study in the field and in John-Penikett and John (1989); they differ only in a few 

elaborating, stylistic details. The version below was presented at the Yukon Historical and Museums 

Association’s 1989 conference on Yukon Borderlands, held at Yukon College. (Several small errors 

in transcription arising from Mrs. John’s pronunciation of English as her third language have been 

corrected here.) Mrs. John’s daughter, Lu John-Penikett, helped to facilitate the interview. 

Mrs. John: Right now I’m going to tell you people about when the borderline go through 

there. There were two hundred in the village there, the place white people call Little Scottie 

Creek. There are lots of people buried there. All our people, things like that. At that time the 

borderline went through. That’s the story I’m going to tell you guys right now. 

This great story. My great grandpa, when that borderline go through ahead 

there. They got some, what they call, moose skin, caribou skin. That’s the kind of 

tent he got right down there at customs with the borderline going through. They 

don’t know at that time, these white people who come around the boundary line, 

so maybe that one guy who is the government boss, they hit my great grandfather’s 

tent. They say, “Could you move?” He do that you see? [the surveyor waved his arm]. 

So, that government said, “Your tent gonna be cut. You gonna be Alaskan, you gonna 

be Yukon?” they tell my great grandfather, they say. 

So, they make lots of moccasins to be used at that time by those boundary line 

people. I don’t know how many wore those moccasins, but all say, “Make moccasin.” 

I don’t know, but my mother and my great grandfather say “You know how many 

moose skin they need to keep warm, those Indian people?” Make moccasin, meat, 

everything. 

After that, the government, they give all kinds of flour and rice, I guess. They 

don’t know what’s that, my great grandfather. That flour, he tried boiling all day, he 

said grandma. He tell his wife, he said, “That’s sour water. You gonna die if you guys 

eat it.” He boiled it all day, he said grandma. He boiled it all day and put moose fat – 

he throw it in there. He finished his fat piece, he said my great grandfather, my great 

grandma. He stirred all day, and after that he got a stick spoon. They made it out of 

birch bark sometimes. You used a little bit, that’s all. You were his kids, they say. 

That’s a long time ago they do that, and I’ll talk to you about a story, you guys. The 

boundary line go through at that time. There were lots of people at Scottie Creek at that 

time – about two hundred. They buried fish [in ground caches], dry meat, everything.

All that stuff was cached. They put fish in there, dry meat, everything. At that boundary

line, he showed it to my great grandfather and that great grandma she carried that book 

around a long time. I’d like to know if that book is in Ottawa. They give my great grandma 

and great grandfather a red book a long time ago. “This is your book,” they tell my great 

grandfather. They carry it around a long time – it must have been about 1911 when the 

boundary line went through. Lots of people all just dead now. The story just grow up to 

us. That’s why I tell you guys special story about my great grandfather.” 
66 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Lu John-Penikett: So, mom, what happened when the boundary people asked him to 

move? Did he move or how long did they try and get him to move? 

Mrs. John: Long time. They stay there. He can’t move his moose skin or caribou skin 

tent. That’s right. They give him lots of food, they say. The government people. They 

stay there everyday. That’s all, I think. 

Lu John-Penikett: So, did they move or what happened when the boundary survey... 

Mrs. John: They don’t move! They belong to their village. The old borderline go 

through. They back and forth. They move all the way down to Big Scottie Creek, all 

the way down to the Yukon River. 

That’s the right way to Indian. They feed each other, you know. They don’t 

know boundary between Yukon and Alaska. Right now, just everything happened. 

It was supposed to be that they feed each other, just one trail in this country. All our 

country. They help each other, you know, Indian people. 

Lu John-Penikett: Well, I thought you told me before that Stsii Stsool [Tsaiy Tsuu, Mrs. 

John’s grandfather] didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to move but they kept asking 

him. So what happened? They got him to sign a piece of paper or something. 

Mrs. John: Yeah, that government they tell him to sign a piece of paper. So, he sign paper. 

Lu John-Penikett: And what did they say he was going to get from that? 

Mrs. John: “You gonna be Alaskan. You gonna be Alaskan. You gonna be Yukon. 

Two sides of the country, all you are from,” they tell my great grandfather. After 

that they do a book, and my great grandmother she said, “... some kind of bible.” 

They live to sign that, my great grandfather. He can’t move his tent, that’s why 

that government do that and he sign the paper. “Two sides of the country,” he 

say. “All your family, they are all going to grow up on two side of the country.” 

My great grandfather know all about our country here. That’s why he signed 

that paper (John-Penikett and Johns, 1989:187-190). 

Mr. Andy Frank’s Account of the Border Survey 

Andy Frank, who was a young boy at this time, shared his version of the arrival of the border 

survey crew at the village of Tsʼoogot Gaay in a 1994 interview: 

Borderland chief [the survey chief], his name was Raeburn. 

That’s when he say [my grandfather] at the border that time. “Good people,” he 

say, “what you do this, you cut the bush all the way in a line?” 

“That boundary line. New law. There going to be law, nobody can’t go across.” 

That’s what they [Raeburn] said, he said. 

Grandpa, he said, “No,” he said “I don’t like that,” he said. “Good people. White 

man good people, but tell ’em what I say,” he say. “That we can go anywhere, where 

we got hunting ground, where we got property to get everything, we go there. You 

got to tell ’em,” he said. “You’re allright, good people, but me, I like to go anyplace 

where I got land,” he said, my grandpa. 
Prospectors and the Chisana Gold Rush 67 

He like to hear our grandpa talk too, that people that time. Grandpa talk good. 

He called Border Chief. He got earring bead. “Why you do that?” he say that. Old time 

chief, borderland chief.13 

They call the Border People [the English surveyors], that’s what my grandpa 

told me, a long time ago. He tell that people, the Boundary Line Chief [Raeburn], my 

grandpa he say “No, no, no us,” he tell him. They put down [the line] all through. My 

grandpa he go Dawson, he make meeting. Grandpa he say “What they do down there?” 

“They make boundary line. You can’t go other side no more.” 

“No, not us,” my grandpa say. He tell it true. He put down [Titus John?], he tell his 

dad, who he put down. “Us? No way! We got proper way, we got hunt, good place to 

hunt we use. We go anywhere. Not us,” he say. I tell everybody. I go Fairbanks. I tell 

you too. That book, somewhere is that book (A. Frank 1994; Easton n.d.).14 

PROSPECTORS AND THE CHISANA GOLD RUSH 

Bill Rupe was not the only prospector to travel into the Upper Tanana borderlands at the turn 

of the century. It was quite likely Jack Horsfeld’s 1902 discovery of gold on Beaver Creek, west of the 

border, that first brought Rupe into the Upper Tanana basin. Bleakley’s (2007) history of mining in the

Chisana district notes that even earlier, in 1898, Henry Bratnober prospected up the White River. That 

same year so did Jack Dalton, who built a cabin on upper Kletsan Creek (Capps 1916:90). Bratnober 

and Dalton returned together to search for copper deposits on the upper Tanana River in 1903. In 

1905, Henry Bratnober traveled up the Nabesna River in a gas-powered sternwheeler, establishing a

winter camp for a small crew consisting of James L. Galen, Draper C. “Bud” Sargent, George C. Wilson, 

and Carl F. Whitham. In 1906 Aaron Johnson and un-named partners prospected lower Chathenda 

Creek, which would become the principal drainage of gold production in the Chisana region; however, 

they abandoned their efforts after a week of disappointing returns (Bleakey 2007). 

The discovery of the Chisana gold deposits is credited to William E. “Billy” James, Nels 

P. Nelson, and Fred W. Best, however, there are conflicting accounts of the discovery. What 

is known is that on May 13, 1913, James and Nelson, accompanied by Matilda Wales, longtime companion of James, staked their claims on Chathenda Creek, which effectively began 

the Chisana Gold Rush (Bleakley 2007; Capps 1916:92; Wickersham 1918:64). According 

to a 1914 Alaska territorial court decision regarding the recently staked Chisana claims 

(Wickersham 1918), James, Nelson and Wales established a base camp at First Timber Cabin 

on Beaver Creek, roughly 40 miles from Chisana, in December 1912 (Wickersham 1918:64). 

They returned to Chisana in May 1913, and James made the first discovery of gold in the 

district. However, a slightly different account is documented by Capps (1916:92), who, while 

outwardly acknowledging the “conflicting stories” regarding the discovery, asserts that the 

gold placer deposits were initially discovered in 1912 when James, Nelson, and Best began 

prospecting on the upper White River. It was during this time, although later denied by James, 

that James was reportedly shown a gold quartz prospect on Chathenda Creek by Indian Joe 

(also known as “Chisana Joe”), as well as a placer gold deposit nearby. James, Nelson and 

Wales returned in 1913 to stake the claims. 

The account in Capps (1916) is consistent with that provided by Knut Peterson, an 

immigrant from Denmark, who arrived in Alaska in 1923 and subsequently spent most of the rest 

of his life prospecting, goldmining, and trapping in the Alaskan interior. He spent a number of years 

at Chisana, where he met and worked for Nelson, and met and knew others from the Chisana Gold 

13 The Borderland Chief was who Andy Frank called “My Grandfather” and probably Chajakta, Huskeh or a respected leader 

of the borderlands area at the turn of the century. 

14 “That Book” is the red book in which Bill Rupe recorded the boundary agreement between Chajakta and Raeburn – 

referred to in Mrs. John’s account above. Additional documentation of Bill Rupe’s relationships with the Upper Tanana can 

be found in Easton (2007a). 
68 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Rush days. In his memoirs, he recounts the story of the Chisana discovery as told to him by Nelson 

(Peterson 1977). Peterson’s account credits Indian Joe with showing James and Nelson the gold 

quartz dike that led to the discovery of the gold placer deposits. Peterson’s account differs from 

others (Capps 1916:92; Wickersham 1918:65), however, in that he documents that they had given 

Chisana Joe the first claim named “Discovery.”

They [James, Nelson, and Joe] named it Bonanza Creek, and the next few days 

they were busy staking claims. Indian Joe got the first claim, named “Discovery.” 

Upstream two and a half miles was a small tributary, the rich baby, shallow ground 

and lots of gold. They named it “Little Eldorado.” Nineteen hundred and thirteen was 

the year that James and Nelson changed their luck! (Peterson 1977:24). 

Regardless of the differing accounts of the discovery of the gold deposits, after the initial 

discovery was staked, James traveled to Dawson to register the claims and get further supplies; he 

also picked up Fred Best and Andy Taylor to share in their good fortune (Bleakley 2007). Without 

additional collaboration, initial movement to the Chisana region was slow, that is, until Best 

returned to Dawson for more supplies in August and reported average returns of nearly $300 of 

gold a day. After this the Chisana Gold Rush was truly on. 

The Chisana Gold Rush was the last big rush in the western subarctic, drawing several 

thousand miners and entrepreneurs to the valley from communities all over Alaska and Yukon, as 

well as from further afield.

Walter Northway recalled that this was the year that he saw his first white man:

I was fourteen when I saw my first white people. My dad and I were hunting ducks

by the mouth of the Chisana River. We came to that point by moose-skin canoe from 

K’ehthiign. We were hunting with bow and arrows. My dad and I were on the bank 

roasting duck and making tea. I told my dad that I wanted to go for a walk. While 

walking down by the river, I heard voices, weird voices that didn’t sound like us. 

I ran back to my dad and told him I heard voices and they didn’t sound like us. 

He told me to watch for them. 

They came straight to us. Their clothes were ragged, shoes torn. They were 

starving. They came to where we were roasting ducks. 

When they saw the ducks roasting, they asked for them. My dad clapped his 

hands over his ears, letting them know that he did not understand them. Then 

they pointed to the ducks and made motions that they were hungry. Dad split the 

ducks in half for them and gave them tea. When Dad gave them the ducks, they 

were very hot. The men dipped the ducks in a puddle of water nearby to cool 

them off so they could eat them fast. 

After they were done, I took one of the men across the river in my canoe and 

came back for my dad and the other white man. Then Dad and the white men walked 

over to K’ehthiign. I traveled back by boat. 

Kids all surrounded the men when they got to our camp. They stayed with 

us until they regained their strength. They worked and helped us. Then they 

asked my dad if anybody could lead them to the Chisana Gold Rush. Joe Demit’s 

dad, K’ost’un’, and Chief Sam guided them. After these two, white men came like 

ants (Yarber and Madison, 1987:36-37). 
Prospectors and the Chisana Gold Rush 69 

Despite the difficulties that were faced on their arrival, by October 1913 Chisana City 

“contained about two hundred cabins. Among other amenities, it boasted two streets, two grocery 

stores, and the district’s third recording office. It also possessed a post office, run by former 

steamboat captain Theodore Kettleson” (Bleakley 2007).15 Although many left the region for the 

winter, the community continued to grow. By December another two hundred cabins had been built 

and the “city” now had four grocery stores, two meat markets, two barber shops, two restaurants, a 

hotel, a boarding house, and a saloon called The Miner’s Home, leading one newspaper to describe 

Chisana City as the “largest log cabin town in the world.” Upstream at the mouth of Bonanza Creek 

next to the diggings was a second community, “made up mostly of tents... a few cabins, as well as 

four stores, two hotels, and a restaurant” (Bleakley 2007). 

Gold production at the Chisana diggings never lived up to the expectations reflected in 

this building boom, however. Nineteen-fourteen was the zenith of production with 12,094 ounces 

recovered, worth a value of about $250,000. Production declined from that point forward, with 

minor surges as particular claims peaked or new technology recovered additional placer deposits. 

By 1915 only about fifty people remained in the community over the winter. The 1920 census 

recorded forty-three whites and one hundred and five Natives in the Chisana district.16 In 1924 the 

town site was described as consisting of “452 log cabins in which one man lives alone” (Bleakley 

2007). By McKennan’s visit in 1929 “the resident population of Chisana... totaled six men and one 

woman” (McKennan 1959:26), one of whom died that winter.17 The white population of the upper 

Chisana basin never grew much larger in the years that followed. 

The reaction of the Dineh living in the area to the establishment of Chisana City seems mixed. 

Bleakley (2007) writes that “some of the Cross Creek Village’s twenty-five or so residents moved

north or west to escape the unwelcomed impact of the gold discovery. Others, attracted by the stores 

and promise of cash labor, abandoned their traditional locale [at Cross Creek] and moved to Chisana 

City.” Presumably, those who moved “north” moved down the Chisana River to Scottie Creek and 

Northway, while those who moved “west” moved to the village on the Upper Nabesna River. 

Archdeacon Hudson Stuck, an Episcopalian missionary of the day, viewed the emergence of 

the settlement with moral alarm. “It seems altogether impossible that a tribe of Indians should live 

in the near neighborhood of a considerable town without suffering degradation,” he wrote. “There 

are always white men eager to associate with them to debauch the women and make a profit of 

the men; insensibly the native virtues are sapped.... the men grow shiftless and casual, picking up 

odd jobs around town and disdaining the hunting and fishing by which they used to live” (Stuck 

1917:56-57).

Such disdain for hunting and fishing may have been more pragmatic than shiftlessness, 

since there is widespread agreement that one of the most immediate effects of the Chisana rush was 

a severe depletion of game in the region. Western store food was both scarce and expensive during 

the three boom years of 1913-15. For example, a letter from Fred Best to his parents describes 

prices of 40 cents a pound for flour, 50 cents a pound for sugar, and 25 cents a pound for beans 

in the winter of 1914 (Bleakley 2007). Hungry prospectors hunted and trapped sheep, caribou, 

ptarmigan, hare, and other game to the extent the Dall sheep population of the area was virtually 

eliminated and the Chisana caribou herd severely reduced (Capps 1916:21). In addition, many 

of the over-wintering miners attempted to supplement their income by trapping, reducing the 

population of furbearers as well. During his stay at Chisana in 1929, McKennan was told that prior 

15 The townsite was originally christened Johnson City by the miner’s committee which founded it on 9 September 1913; it 

was renamed Chisana by the postal service. 

16 They included seventeen placer miners, ten prospectors, the US commissioner, two trappers, a trader, a merchant, a 

blacksmith, a cook, and six wives or children. 

17 McKennan’s fieldnotes, journal and letters home during his stay at Chisana provide a vivid picture of life in the 

community from 22 September through to 22 November 1929, when he left to continue fieldwork in other Upper Tanana 

communities. Its original repository is in the Special Collections at Dartmouth College Library in Hanover, New Hampshire. 

Mishler and Simeone (2006) provide an abridged and annotated copy of this material. 
70 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

to the gold rush “Chisana [was] the best all round hunting place in the old days [for] caribou, moose, 

and sheep” (McKennan Papers, Series 2/Box 15/Folder 93). In his monograph he records that “the 

White River was practically unvisited by Indians whereas formerly it had been a popular hunting 

territory. The basins of the Beaver and the Chisana, formerly the best hunting territory in the area, 

also were much less frequented due to the depletion of the game following the Chisana stampede of 

1913” (McKennan 1959:17). 

Thus, it seems that the Dineh of the upper Chisana area had two choices – move to better 

hunting territories on the Nabesna and lower Chisana Rivers or seek wage labor to supplement 

their depleted subsistence resources with store-bought food. Though neither choice meant a 

complete degradation of their lifestyle as Archdeacon Stuck believed, they did necessitate a 

reasonable adaptation to these environmental changes. 

Reckord (1983:238-39) believes that Cross Creek Village “could have been abandoned as 

early as 1913 when the residents moved across the river to Chisana, to which they were attracted 

by the store and promise of cash labor. Some even tried their hand at gold panning.” She also notes 

that Chisana City “attracted the Native people from villages in the region. From Cross Creek, Scottie 

Creek, and Cooper Creek on the Nabesna, they came to trade furs and buy supplies. They also 

provided services and labor. They were active in the freighting business. They delivered the mail 

from Chistochina by dog sled in the winter. They panned for gold on their own” (Reckord 1983:235; 

see also pp. 228-229). 

Several of the immigrant miners who stayed in the region married into the Dineh 

community. James Galen married Ada, daughter of Walter Northway’s sister Elsie and Peter Albert. 

Pete Eikland, who began to work the Chisana diggings in 1921, would later marry a “niece” of 

Chisana Joe, Mary, daughter of Tsaiy Suul and sister to Lucy, wife of White River Johnny. (Old) 

William Blair married Tilly Enoch, with whom he sired Young Bill Blair, and later married Mary 

Tom Tom. 

It is only about the mid-1930s that the historic record documents Dineh actually 

working claims. Chisana Joe, “worked the fraction between claim Nos. 3 and 4.... [while] 

an unidentified Native man worked the upper portion of Little Eldorado” in 1937 or ’38 

(Bleakley 2007). A similar group of unidentified Native men mined a fraction on Bonanza in 

1939 (Bleakley 2007). Johnny Nicolai, who was raised by Chisana Joe’s brother (Chisana or 

Nabesna) John (Justin), believes it was 1937 when he moved over to Chisana, where “they got 

their own little mining camp... prospecting, pan-gold, slush box workers during the summer.” 

He recalled “quite a few older people there, his dad [referring to another person present at the 

interview] Jack John and Chisana Joe, Chisana John and Chisana Billy, all them old, pretty old 

that time. Not very many kids that time.” It was here that he met his wife Cherry, daughter of 

Andy Toby. Mr. Nicolai also recalls others frequently coming from Scottie Creek and Northway 

on the lower Chisana River to visit and hunt, including White River Johnny, Bill John (Bell 

Gaiy), Titus John, Joe Mark, Shorty, Steven, and Harry Frank. Mr. Nicolai himself worked the 

diggings and trapped through the region from “head of Beaver Creek all the way through back 

into the Nabesna,” taking his fur for trade down to Slana (Nicolai 2003; Easton n.d.).18 

Gold production practically stopped altogether during the Second World War, after 

which only a few claims were providing “meager” returns (Bleakley 2007). Big game hunting 

took over as the principal economic activity in the upper Chisana River region in the late 

1940s, and remains its mainstay today, although a few placer claims are still held and are 

intermittently worked. 

18 People began to trade in Slana after the trading post in Chisana closed upon the death of its owner/operator C. A. Simons 

in 1929 (Reckord 1983:230; McKennan in Mishler and Simeone 2006:39). 
Miners, Missionaries, Traders, and the State in the Chisana River Basin after the Gold Rush 71 

MINERS, MISSIONARIES, TRADERS, 

AND THE STATE IN THE CHIS ANA RIVER BASIN AFTER THE GOLD R USH 

The winter of 1913-14 brought both the completion of the permanently marked 

international boundary along the 141st meridian and the Chisana Gold Rush to the Upper Tanana 

Dineh. While these events seem to have had only a transitory effect on the lives of the Dineh at 

the time, both presaged the future. Although the majority of the several thousand white people 

attracted by the Chisana gold finds left the region within the year, they introduced a pattern of 

territorial dispossession and competitive resource exploitation, which dramatically affected 

subsistence and settlement patterns in the upper Chisana basin. The marking of the boundary 

declared the intent by the United States and Canada to assert two distinct administrative regimes 

over the territory of the Upper Tanana Dineh. While both States were initially reluctant to establish 

a costly physical and controlling presence within the region, the American government did so much 

sooner than the Canadian. 

The period between 1913-14 and the establishment of the Alaska Highway in 1942-43 

was one in which a three-pronged assault on the culture of the Upper Tanana Dineh was initiated 

and carried out with increasing vigor, in a clear attempt to degrade its relevancy to Native peoples 

and replace it with a culture of dependency originating within the State metropolis. The three 

elements of this strategy were agents of the fur trade involved in economic transformations, agents 

of Christianity involved in metaphysical transformations, and bureaucrats of the State involved in 

replacing the indigenous transmission of culture with a new model of social organization. 

For purposes of discussion these activities have been divided into separate elements; 

however, it is important to realize that they are articulated, overlapping, and interdependent – fur 

traders are Christians too, missionaries are capitalists as well, and bureaucrats can prove as zealous 

in their attempts at social engineering as the most dedicated missionary. But, it is just as important 

for us to appreciate that the actions of any particular agent need not necessarily be in congruence 

with the aims of another. Thus, there were moments of conflict and cross-purpose between 

these agents and their actions and some opportunity for the Upper Tanana Dineh to exploit these 

differences to suit their own purpose. 

The period is notable for the increased nucleation of Upper Tanana Dineh nomadic band 

society into more permanent village settlements, as a result of adopting new architectural styles 

and a variety of western technologies. As well, there were important differences in the early 

attempts by the American State to institute planned assimilation of the Upper Tanana Dineh through 

the establishment of regional economic, religious, and education programs compared with that of 

Canada. Within the Canadian jurisdiction, the State displayed little interest in the lives of the Upper 

Tanana Dineh, restricting its presence to the occasional police patrol and missionary excursion until 

the building of the Alaska Highway established efficient transportation access to their lands.

Undoubtedly, these differences between the two governments were partly a function of 

the differences in geography and transportation infrastructure, which made it relatively easier 

for American representatives to travel into the region. In Alaska, the Tanana River valley provided 

direct access to the region; it was possible for riverboats to ascend the stream as high as the 

Nabesna River. The Valdez to Eagle Trail was completed in 1903, with commercial transport 

from Valdez to Fairbanks initiated the following year; by 1923 it had been upgraded to carry 

automobiles, and renamed the Richardson Road from tidewater to Delta Junction, where it met 

the road on to Fairbanks and the Alaska Railway to Anchorage. As early as 1917 the Alaska Road 

Commission was also contributing to upkeep of several of the prospector routes (which generally 

followed well-worn Native trails) into the upper Nabesna and Chisana valleys, including the 

McCarthy-Chisana trail system, and the Slana-Nabesna trail, which it planned to upgrade to a 

road running further east to Chisana and then White River. Only the first portion of this road was
72 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

completed by 1933, however. The ARC also upgraded the Big Delta-Tanana Crossing trail to wagon 

standards in 1923-24 (Bleakley n.d. b, n.d. c). 

In the Yukon, the development of a transportation infrastructure focused on consolidating 

access to and from the goldfields at Dawson City along a roughly north-south line that largely 

ignored the lands along the western borderlands (Duerden 1981). Although the Chisana Gold Rush 

stimulated the establishment of at least two routes into the Upper Tanana headwaters country – the 

Dry Creek Trail from the mouth of the Snag Creek on White River, and the Canyon City Trail from 

Burwash to the upper White River – both were left to decay after the short-lived rush. 

Within this period, while the State busied itself with the initial consolidation of its hold over 

the lands and economy of the Upper Tanana, the Native people, in turn, were involved in adjusting 

their social organization to enable the continued maintenance of their culture and identity as Dineh. 

Their historical experience cannot simply be told as a tale of imperialist subjugation but must reflect

something of the dynamic interaction of competing and complimentary values, interests, and intents. 

Traders and Trappers in the Chisana Basin 

The development of mining in the Chisana-Nabesna basin was accompanied by an 

expansion of trading establishments in the region, not just at the white communities of Chisana and 

Nabesna, as just described, but at other locations within the area as well. Unfortunately, beyond the 

general accounts given above, records of trading transactions at the Chisana store have not been 

recovered. However, we can reasonably assume that the type of trade that occurred there was not 

unlike that undertaken on the lower Chisana River, as described below. 

In partnership with Andy Frank’s father, William “Bill” Rupe established the first trading 

post in the region at the Native village of Nahtsįą ch’ihchuut Männ’ at Pepper/Paper Lake on upper 

Scottie Creek just after the turn of the 20th century, possibly during the short rush to the White 

River District in 1902, which was stimulated by Jack Horsfeld’s discovery of gold on Beaver Creek 

east of the Canadian border (Easton 2007a). As Andy Frank described in a 1994 interview: 

My daddy had partner, Bill Rupe. No white man that time. My daddy’s partner, Bill Rupe. 

First white man that time. He stay. My daddy just have girlfriend, that white man, he find

white man. Young man. He stayed together. He no quit, no more. He see my daddy do 

good, so he stay around there, until my daddy show how to trap ‘em, and that got lots of 

fur, so he tell my daddy teach him how to understand good, you know, teach a long time, 

teach my daddy how to talk English. So my daddy go Dawson, sell fur. He tell my dad how 

to do it, my daddy do it. Sell all fur, sell fur they go to Dawson, they buy boat, I guess. Come 

back to the Ladue, they bring stuff there. I don’t know how they got those two horses 

there. Maybe bought from somebody, they bought from somebody. Then they started to 

haul freight over that high mountain [from the Ladue to the Scottie Creek drainage]. 

Rupe remained in partnership with Andy’s father for about ten years. During this time, 

he fathered a daughter named Margaret, also known as Maggie, with Annie John. In 1908 it was 

recorded that “W. S. Rupe has a trading post situated 40 miles due West from a point 60 miles up the 

White River. This post is situated on a branch of the Tanana River. He also trades with the Copper 

Indians as well as other Bands, who come a distance of 250 miles up the Tanana River” (Anonymous 

1908). International boundary surveyors G. Clyde Baldwin in 1908 and Thomas C. Riggs in 1909 

both record encountering “Rupe’s trading post” on Scottie Creek (Baldwin 1908:9-10; Riggs n.d.: 

July 1909). Rupe took his daughter to attend school in Dawson around 1912. He continued to trap 

and prospect from the Klondike to the White Rivers until his death in Dawson City in 1937.19 His 

daughter Margaret left Dawson in 1927 for Victoria, British Columbia, where she graduated from 

19 “William Rupe, old-time trapper in the White River district, passed away yesterday at St. Mary’s hospital after a 

prolonged illness. The deceased was born in Santa Rosa, California about seventy-one years ago. He is survived by one 

daughter, Margaret Rupe, now residing on the Pacific Coast.” Dawson News, 31 July 1937. 
Traders and Trappers in the Chisana Basin 73 

Figure 32. Chief Joe, Jack Ray, John Healy, John Hadjudovich [Hajdukovich]. Drane Family Collection. 

UAF-1991-46-719. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

St. Joseph’s School of Nursing in 1930. She worked at the St. Joseph Hospital until 1956, rising to 

oversee the nursing staff of the maternity ward. Margaret married an affluent man named Arthur 

and retired to live with him.20 

In 1907 William Newton established a trading post at the mouth of the Healy River on 

the Tanana. In 1912 he extended his operations further upstream, establishing a post at Tanana 

Crossing and caches at Tetlin and the mouth of the Nabesna River. Newton sold these upstream 

operations to John Strelic and returned to Healy River in 1914 (Simeone 1995:28-29). Strelic 

worked in the region into the 1920s, traveling up as far as Chisana to trade (McKennan Papers). 

A Native seasonal fishing camp / village known as Haltäl Cheegn at the mouth of Snag 

Creek became one of the staging points to the Chisana gold fields in 1913. A 2003 archaeological 

reconnaissance documented that the principal Native settlement and the trading post were located 

along the south bank of Snag Creek at the confluence with the White River, while the short-lived 

gold rush “city” was located on the west bank of the White River north of Snag Creek. By 1916, Snag 

City had contracted to two or three white men, including “A. Boulay, trader and prospector” (Tidd 

1916). According to McKennan, Jack Dolan took over the Snag trading post in 1918 (McKennan 

Papers, “Snag – History”). Northern Tutchone Dineh and their families from the mouth of the 

Stewart River, Coffee Creek, and Wellesley Lake areas, and Upper Tanana Dineh from the Chisana 

River and Scottie Creek basins, including Bell and Laura John, Titus John, Andy Frank, and “Chief” 

Johnson and his wife Lakduu, and others made Snag a semi-permanent village around this time 

as well. Jack Dolan eventually “adopted” young Jimmy Enoch after the death of Jimmy’s father, 

20 Archives of the Sisters of St. Ann, Victoria, British Columbia. Personal communication from Margaret Cantwell, S.S.A., 

archivist, 30 Jan 1998. 
74 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

sponsoring his schooling in Dawson City. Mr. Joseph Tommy Johnny believes he continued to trade 

here until the late 1930s, when he sold out to (Old) Bill Blair and Paul Neiman. Dolan remained at 

Snag until his death in 1945 (Nieman n.d.:176) and is buried at the cemetery there (Easton n.d.). 

In 1908 James A. Northway made his first ascent of the Tanana River with a view to starting 

a trading post at the head of navigation, but only reached Tanana Crossing before freeze-up. He 

continued upstream the following summer, establishing a trade cache at Tetlin River. In 1910 he 

lost his trade outfit on his way back upstream, but he continued to return to the Upper Tanana to 

trade over the next few years. About this time, he met Walter Northway and his father and bestowed 

the name Northway on Walter’s father; Walter Northway believed it to be “about 1908” (Yarber 

and Madison 1987:36). Walter Northway recalled that “the steamboat used to stop at the mouth of 

Moose Creek. I can remember seeing a lot of boats with a lot of men going up to the Chisana Gold 

Rush. We used to sell them moccasins and meat. Then we would buy tea, rice, tobacco, flour, and 

other things from them” (Yarber and Madison 1987:36). In 1913, James Northway’s experience 

allowed him to ferry prospectors and trade goods some 25 or 35 miles up the Nabesna River before 

grounding on a gravel bar (Brown 1984:43-44). 

Another steamboat operator, C. D. Flannigan, was more successful that year and “was the 

only steamboat pilot to complete the difficult and treacherous trip up the Nabesna river and was 

one of the few to reach Chisana” (Ferguson 2002:118). Flannigan later opened a trading operation 

at Tetlin, and caches at Tanacross and Northway, which he operated into the 1920s (McKennan 

Papers, Series 2/Box 21). 

William Newton’s move to Tanana Crossing in 1912 was coincidental to the establishment 

of a mission station there by the Episcopal Church. Margaret Graves and Celia Wright were the 

first missionaries. They were followed by E. A. MacIntosh, who served at the mission from 1915 

through 1924 and again in the 1930s. Arthur Wright, a Tanana mixed blood, also served during 

this time, having been raised to be a missionary. In an attempt to curry their favor and interest, the 

missionaries, particularly MacIntosh, seem to have carried on some trade with the Natives as well, 

although Mrs. Wright later recalled that “most of the families who lived at Tanana Crossing when 

she lived there had come from Lake Mansfield. The people from Nabesna, Tetling and other points of 

the Upper Tanana River visited there on special occasions but did not settle there” (Wright n.d.:3). 

Herman Kessler was another prospector-turned-trader who operated in the Upper Tanana 

district perhaps as early as 1916-17.21 Kessler operated a trading post first “up at Chisana, close

to Scottie Creek. Then, he built a cabin close to Nabesna village [Northway].... Kessler traded 

with fifteen to twenty, maybe thirty people up there” (Hajdukovich in Ferguson 2002:74). Walter

Northway recalled that “the first store here was built by Herman Kessler. He built his store at

Stover [Stuver] Creek up the Chisana River. First he started his store in a tent, then he built a store 

in the old village across the river [from present day Northway]” (Yarber and Madison 1987). He 

remained active, trading in Northway into the 1950s and was buried at his request in the Native

graveyard at Northway. 

Mr. Louis Frank remembers both Dolan and Kessler, who would converge on the Scottie 

Creek and Chisana River trade from opposite directions. At the remains of his grandmother Bessie 

Mason’s cabin at the High Cache village we found a “Yukon stove,” which is rectangular in shape. “A 

lot of muskrat cooked in there,” Louis recalled. The stove was bought from Jack Dolan, the trader 

at Snag. Such a stove then cost seven dollars. You could bake bread in it. When the top of the stove 

burned out, you could just turn it over and use it upside down. Dolan would come down to High 

Cache with a pack train of horses for trading. Herman Kessler, from Northway, would do the same. 

Kessler often camped at They sh’ok, the eastern point of the hills on the southern side of the Scottie21 Herman Kessler is listed as “miner, resident of Fairbanks” in the 1915-16 edition of Polk’s Alaska Gazetteer (p. 228); 

most sources agree that his operation predated Hajdukovich’s, which was started in 1919. 
Traders and Trappers in the Chisana Basin 75

Desper Creek valley, just inside Canada, and then took the trail back over the border. Fred Demit, 

George Haley, and Bill (Mary Tyone’s brother) worked for Kessler. Kessler sold round “Alaska 

stoves,” while Dolan sold the rectangular “Yukon stove” (L. Frank 1999). 

Ezekial “Zeke” Mullett worked a claim and trapped on the upper White River in 1910 and 

1911, according to articles in the Chitina Leader. He was also reported to have worked at Chitina 

in 1911-12 and later in the Chisana district with his partner Percy Thornton at Skookum Creek in 

1919 (Bleakley n.d. a). He subsequently set up a small fur trading post on the middle reach of the 

Scottie Creek valley on the shores of a lake that came to be known as Ziik Mann’ in Upper Tanana. 

The remains of his cabin, which he operated off and on until the 1930s, can be found there (Easton 

n.d.), although it seems that he worked it half-heartedly, preferring instead the more transient 

lifestyle of the Dineh. A 1929 RCMP report on a patrol to the region found him at Wellesley Lake (on 

the Canadian side) and noted: 

Zeke Mullett, this white man has turned to be a regular Indian, traveling around the 

country with the Indians and living right with them all the time. [He] has been trying 

to marry a daughter of an Indian by the name of Copper Jack. This Indian girl is 

about fourteen years of age, but will not have anything to do with this man Mullet as 

he is getting pretty well along in years. Mullet has paid about $400.00 to the father 

for this girl. Mullett in the meantime is living with Copper Jack and his family. This 

white man is following the Indian mode of living (RCMP 1929). 

Lawrence De Witt traded into the upper Ahtna country. Living around Tetlin, he would buy 

supplies from one of the Upper Tanana traders and then transport them up the Nabesna and on 

as far as Mentasta, exchanging commercial supplies for furs, which he would sell on his return to 

Northway to another of the traders (MacIntosh n.d.). 

Finally, John Hajdukovich began his long association as a trader, prospector, roadhouse 

operator, big-game guide, and self-appointed guardian of the Upper Tanana in 1919. Several 

accounts of Hajdukovich’s life in the region are available (Brown 1984, 1999; Ferguson 2002), as 

well as substantial documentation available in the US National Archives, a special Hajdukovich 

collection at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Archives, and a large collection of correspondence in 

the Edward Mallinckrodt archives held by the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works of St. Louis, Missouri. 

Hajdukovich initially established trade operations or caches at Tanana Crossing, Tetlin, and 

Northway. By 1926, with the assistance of Ted Lowell, 

Their primary post was near the mouth of Healy River [and] they operated additional 

stores at Tetlin, Last Tetlin, Moose Creek, and near Gardiner Creek on the Chisana 

River. Each summer Hajdukovich and Lowell made six to twelve trips in freight boats 

to the Upper Tanana Indian villages. A trip might include a run up Healy River to trade 

with the Indians on Healy Lake; a brief stop at Tanana Crossing; an ascent of Tetlin 

River to Tetlin and Last Tetlin, and Nabesna River to Nabesna, and Chisana River to 

Scottie Creek (Brown 1984:61-62). 

Hajdukovich also employed local Natives as freighters and traders. Walter Northway recalled: 

John Hajdukovich and his brother Milo came and built a store. They built it on this 

side of the river before we built the village of Nabesna. The two storeowners didn’t 

like each other. Teddy Lowell was the store manager. We used to trade fur and sewing 

things for groceries. Then I became fur buyer for John Hajdukovich and Teddy Lowell. 
76 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

I used to go with a freight sled full of groceries to Scottie Creek and all the way to 

Snag. Trading groceries for fur or just buying fur all the way. One of my sons was 

named after Teddy Lowell (Yarber and Madison 1987:43). 

In the1920s Hajdukovich began to lobby the Territorial and federal governments to 

contribute money and resources to the development of the Upper Tanana region. He was 

particularly interested in further trail and road construction, for which he hoped to gain 

government contracts; the expansion of services to the Upper Tanana Indians, particularly in 

the areas of health and education; and the establishment of regional economic development 

opportunities for the Natives through reindeer herding and fur farms. In these pursuits he 

found allies among some wealthy and influential Eastern Establishment big game hunting 

clients, in particular Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. and Wendell Endicott. These efforts had an 

important influence on the establishment of federal Bureau of Education schools at Tetlin in 

1924, and later at Northway in the 1930s, the introduction of a full-time traveling nurse to 

the region in the mid-1920s, and, perhaps most importantly, the establishment of the Tetlin 

Reserve by a Presidential Executive Order in 1930. As a result, despite souring of relations 

in the 1940s due to the establishment of federally sponsored Native cooperative stores in 

the Upper Tanana villages – which effectively put his trading operations into bankruptcy 

– Hajdukovich is generally remembered fondly by Elders of the region. He passed away at 

Fairbanks in 1965.

Undoubtedly, one reason Hajdukovich is well remembered was his refusal in all his years of 

trade to provide liquor; indeed, up until the early 1930s, all the Upper Tanana traders maintained 

an agreement of effective prohibition in the region. As Beck (1930:28-29) observed, “this is not 

without some personal interest in the matter.... a drunken native did not produce as much fur as the 

same native would if he were sober all the time.” 

The fur trade through the middle of the 20th century was a period of record incomes 

for the Dineh in both Alaska and Yukon. The world market generally expanded and remained 

strong through this period, despite three short-term falters in 1921-22, 1931-32, and 1939-41, 

until a slow, inexorable decline began in 1947, which marked the beginning of the end of this 

way of life for most people (McCandless 1985; Coates 1991). Knut Peterson recalls the drop in

fur prices, in conjunction with newly imposed game laws, as being particularly devasting for 

the Dineh. 

During the 1920s, and most of the 1930s, the natives made good money on 

fur, and fairly good from then until almost 1950. But after that, the prices

dropped and dropped. It would be hopeless for a native today to even think 

of supporting his family by trapping and hunting. The game laws forbid him 

to kill meat out of season. Besides that, Alaska is now overcrowded with big 

game guides, so the hunting ground has been turned over to the sportsmen. 

The days of the Alaskan Indians’ wilderness freedom have long since come 

to an end (Peterson 1977:41). 

The Natives of the Upper Tanana trapped or hunted a wide variety of furbearers, 

including lynx, fox, beaver, marten, wolverine, rabbit, bear, mink, weasel, otter, coyote, and 

some wolf, but undoubtedly the mainstay of their fur production was the muskrat. Families 

moved onto traplines around November and stayed out for three to six months. Some went as 

individual families, while most consisted of two or more, the most common combination being 

the families of a man and his son-in-law, or two hunting “partners.” By the middle of the 20th 
Traders and Trappers in the Chisana Basin 77 

century, each of these groups had “a generally recognized right to certain territory or area for 

his or their trapline. These rights traditionally pass from father to son, but actually inheritance 

practices vary according to circumstances” including transfer to a son-in-law, a nephew, or a 

daughter (Goldschmidt n.d.:62). It was also pointed out to Goldschmidt that trapping areas 

around the principal villages were reserved for the use of Elders who were no longer able to 

travel long distances. “We have to have long trap lines because we call in other Indians from 

the other villages to work with us. We have the old people use the short trap lines around the 

village. They go around the village with short trap lines because they are not able to walk and 

climb so far.... We don’t want whites trapping here too close” (Walter Isaac of Tanacross, in 

Goldschmidt, n.d.:25-26).

The trapping group set up a permanent seasonal base camp and then traveled their 

traplines in rotation, usually with several separate lines radiating from the base. The length of 

these lines was variable but could reach distances of 75 to 100 miles, with small supporting

cabins or tents along their transit. More plentiful game and fuel were found away from the 

principal village locations. All members of the family who were of age and health participated 

in the trapping (Burge 1938:20-23; see also Goldschmidt n.d.). 

“Ratting [muskrat] season” ran from March to May. Although they are easier to catch 

in the fall, the quality of their fur was less and maximizing the pelt value allowed for less 

to be taken for equivalent financial value, thereby contributing to muskrat conservation. 

This approach placed the Upper Tanana Native trapper at a competitive disadvantage with 

itinerant white trappers who came through the region on occasion, or the efforts of overwintering prospectors. Several documents attest to incursions of such men in the 1920s 

and ’30s. Burge (1938:23), for example, notes that “it is not unusual for white trappers 

to go into an area and use every means of getting the largest number of pelts possible 

in a short time, regardless of the effect this might have on the future production of the 

area. Since they have no interest in the continued use of the particular area in which they 

trap, they do not practice the conservation that is common among Indians.” He goes on to 

note that under this influence, “one year some of the Indians of the Upper Tanana were 

persuaded to kill muskrats in the fall. However this was stopped by the pressure of public 

opinion” (Burge 1938:23). In 1946 Walter Northway regretfully admitted the following to 

Goldschmidt (n.d.:77): 

We take care of our rats until this spring. We take care that we don’t kill them 

all off. We let some of them remain so that there will be some of them next year. 

I know I hurt myself, but this year I cleaned out all the rats. I cleaned them out 

because the white man will get them anyhow. Then the army people have been 

killing off the rats. The white people try to clean up all the game.... The Indian 

way is to leave something for next year and not to try to make everything at 

once. The white man does not care. He figures on getting rich right away. He 

doesn’t have to live here next year. 

The Chisana River basin was a part of this regional trapping economy since before the 

1913 Chisana Gold Rush. “The natives take a quantity of furs each year – fox, lynx, marten, 

mink, and wolverine – which they trade to the white men for provisions, clothing, and 

ammunition,” reported Moffit and Knopf in 1910 (p. 15). After the essential collapse of the

Chisana Native village when the store at Chisana closed in 1929, trapping continued in the 

upper Chisana basin, primarily by residents of the upper Nabesna community, along with 

people at Northway and Scottie Creek, who also trapped the lower Chisana basin. As reported 
78 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

earlier, the upper Nabesna residents included Nabesna John and, “the ancestors of the Alberts 

and Franks of Northway, and the Sanfords and Justins of Nabesna Bar, Chistochina, and 

Mentasta” (Reckord 1983:225), as well as the Jackson brothers, Nicholas, John, and Albert, and

Oscar Jimmy of Northway (BIA 1996a:5).

In 1938 Johnny Nicolai began trapping the region as well, running a line along the 

foothills of the Nutzotin Mountains from Nabesna to King City, on to Beaver Creek and its 

headwaters, and back over into the Upper Chisana River and Nabesna. Titus John and Bell Gaiy 

spent the occasional season trapping in the foothills. They were “cousin-brothers” to the Justin 

brothers (i.e. their mothers were siblings). Joe and Martha Mark and their family continued to 

return to trap in the upper Chisana basin after they moved to Big Scottie Creek and Northway 

(Nicolai 2003). Oscar, Abraham, and Guines Albert, then residents of Northway, shared a 

trapline along Stuver Creek and the lower Chisana River. Oscar Albert also trapped along the 

Nutzotin foothills between the Nabesna and Chisana Rivers (Goldschmidt n.d.:66). Joe Demit 

and Andrew Jimmy Albert also hunted and trapped in this area (Goldschmidt n.d.:65). On

the lower Chisana River, residents of Big Scottie Creek and High Cache villages held traplines 

upstream to Wellesley lake, north into the Dawson Range foothills, and east up Scottie and 

Mirror Creeks (Easton n.d.). 

An incomplete selection of Hajdukovich’s trade records is held in the Archives at 

the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Rasmuson Library (Hajdukovich Papers). They contain 

transaction records of trade, credit, and fur bought at Tetlin, Nabesna, and Healy Lake. The 

earliest year seems to be 1922 and the records continue to about 1952, with the latter few

years being restricted to hunting (guiding) and prospecting records. The forty-three journals 

do not constitute a full yearly series nor necessarily a full record for any one year, but the 

material provides some sense of the types of items sought by Indians and the amount of fur 

they were bringing in. 

The 1922 ledger for Nabesna shows an extensive and varied inventory, which included the 

following products: 

Chewing Sugar Flour Tea Coffee Baking 

Tobacco Powder 

Butter Rice Apples Raisins Candy Gum 

Handkerchiefs Shirts Pants Suspenders Coat & Vest Long-johns 

Overalls Socks Undershirts Underwear Stocking Hose Dresses 

Towels Ribbon Calico Thread Needles Soap 

Candles Windows Nails Knives Files Matches 

Chain Canvas tents Axes .22 long shells .22 short .30 – .30 shells 

shells 

In July 1922, credit was established at the Nabesna store by the Upper Tanana trappers 

through the exchange of nineteen moose skins and eighty-six pounds of dry fish. In late November 

and early December Hajdukovich purchased 243 rat skins, three mink, and one each of moose and 

ermine, and 142 pounds of dry fish. Noted clients from the Chisana basin included Martha Mark, 

Polly, Little John, Big John, Andy Frank, Lacho, and “Scottie Creek Bill” (likely Bell Gaiy / Bill John). 

Of interest is that most of these people took little in merchandise that year. Lacho purchased soap 

and tobacco and took the remaining due in cash. Little John and Bell Gaiy wanted only rifle shells 
Traders and Trappers in the Chisana Basin 79 

and cash. This could be a function of their commitment to traveling light or might reflect the fact 

that while they traded fur with Hajdukovich they bought their merchandise from another trader, 

perhaps closer to their home camps and villages in the Chisana basin. A number of contemporary 

observers noted that the competitive presence of at least six traders in the upper Tanana River 

region, as well as the existence of trading posts at Chicken, Salchaket, Tanana, Stewart River, 

Dawson, and Fort Selkirk, allowed the Dineh to take “advantage of this proliferation of posts 

by trading wherever they could get the best price for their fur” (Simeone 1995:28). Perhaps 

not surprisingly, the records also show that the two people who made the most purchases of 

commercial goods were Walter Northway and Chief Sam, who were in rivalry for Huskeh status 

within the Northway village. The goods they bought were eventually used as gifts to others within a 

potlatch or distributed more generally (Hajdukovich Papers, Box 1). 

By 1942 the records show a marked increase in purchases by Chisana-area residents. In 

that year, for example, Little John (White River Johnny) exchanged sixty muskrat pelts, valued by 

Hajdukovich at $75.50 (average $1.26/pelt) for 50 lbs. of flour, 11 lbs. of Lipton tea, 40 lbs. of rice, 

30 lbs. of sugar, 1 tin of baking powder, 2 lbs. of sugar, 2 lbs. of salt, 4 packages of pasta, 3 tins of 

fruit, 16 packs of gum, a jar of sweet pickles, a tin of Star Chew, 3 rolls of thread, a file, 3 packs of 

matches, a pair of wool socks, a wool shirt, 1 pair of pants, 1 pair of boy’s overalls, 1 carton of .22 

long, 8 boxes of .30-.30 rifle shells, and $11.75 in cash, from which he then drew $1.75 to purchase a 

pen knife. 

In that same year, Martha Mark exchanged sixty six muskrat pelts, valued at $87.00 (average 

$1.32/pelt), for 50 lbs. of flour, 20 lbs. of sugar, 20 lbs. of rice, 3 lbs. of tea, 2 cans of lard, 2 tins of 

baking powder, a jar of sweet pickles, 3 packages of dried peaches, 2 tins of fruit, 1 tin of Star Chew, 

6 soap bars, 1 file, 5 rolls of thread, 1 butcher knife, 2 boy’s underwear, 1 boy’s overall and shirt, a 

pair of socks and shoes, 1 pair of dress pants, 2 pair of women’s hose, 4 packs of matches, 2 boxes 

of .30-.30 shells, one towel, 6 yards of calico, and 3 yards of ribbon, a value of $50.00 (Hajdukovich 

Papers, Box 5).

In my discussions with various Upper Tanana Dineh regarding the period between the 

Chisana Gold Rush and the building of the Alaska Highway, it is clear these days are remembered 

as halcyon. The trapping economy was an easy overlay onto their traditional subsistence 

economy. Unparalleled technological innovations were available to them from which they could 

pick and choose, adapt as they pleased, or pass over for more traditional ways. One old time 

Sourdough wrote that his “long association among these people [the interior Athapaskans] 

compels me to admit (I used to be greatly prejudiced as are all who are not well acquainted 

with them) that their average mentality is fully equal to that of the whites. They show this in 

many ways. Noticeably in the canny way in which they weed out the customs of the white men. 

Adopting those which are practical and discarding those which are impractical” (Huntington 

1927). The bathtub, for example, never really caught on before modern water systems were 

introduced, and even today the sweat bath still prevails with many people of the region. “White 

people brought problems to us, but we sure were happy you brought those pots!” declared Bessie 

John, while another opined of her youth in the 1930s that, “I’m not going to say it wasn’t a hard 

life, but it was a good life” (Easton n.d.). 

Rivals such as Walter Northway and Chief Sam held rich potlatches, while others were 

able to undertake less extravagant potlatch acknowledgements of their husbands, wives, 

children, and even dog teams, in addition to fulfilling their traditional obligations to their 

departed kinsmen through funeral potlatches (see, for example, accounts of potlatches in 

MacIntosh (1918), Endicott (1928), Beck (1930), and McKennan (1959)). More prosaically,

people remember White River Johnny’s cabins at Big Scottie Creek and Taiy Chi as the scene 

for near-nightly festive dances held around a Victrola phonograph, the few platters being 
80 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

played over and over again, pieces of which lie still on the ground outside the berm of his 

Taiy Chi sha today. Elders today recall with some amount of awe their first peach, tomato, 

or orange. They speak with satisfaction of their rifles and the increased certainty of their 

hunting, particularly women who for the first time could live without a man and survive, as 

Mary Eikland chose to do for many years between her two marriages. 

But even with these technological advantages, the old religious ideology held sway. People 

remained respectful of the natural world, carefully nurturing the viability of their traplines by avoiding 

over trapping. “The natives have their own rules and regulations with reference to conservation of the 

fur bearing animals,” reported Beck (1930:31). “When rats have been trapped heavily on one lake one 

spring, the following spring that area is closed.” Eight years later, Burge (1938:7) noted similarly that 

the Upper Tanana “practice a conservation of natural resources that is exemplary.” 

So, while many outside observers have maintained that the introduction of western 

technology and foodstuffs created a “dependency” on these goods, which drew them further into 

the cash economy,22 it is equivocal to what extent this was imposed and to what extent it was chosen 

and integrated in such a way as to minimize its potential transformative effect on the core beliefs of 

Upper Tanana Dineh (see also Easton 2007b). 

The Nabesna Gold Mine 

The Dineh communities of the upper Nabesna River were tied closely to those of the 

Chisana; indeed, most Dineh who lived at the one also spent a significant amount of time at the 

other, so much so that McKennan classed the two areal communities as a single Upper Tanana 

“band,” although there were also intimate ties with the settlements on the lower reaches of both 

the Chisana River (McKennan’s “Scottie Creek band”) and Nabesna River (McKennan’s “Mouth 

of Nabesna band,” i.e., Northway). The upper Nabesna River “Upper Tanana” community also 

maintained equally close ties to Ahtna speakers of the upper Copper River valley, as McKennan 

(1959:21-22) observed.

Considerable intercourse exists between the people of the upper Nabesna and those of 

the Copper River. Of the four families camped at the head of the Nabesna when I was there 

[in the winter of 1929], one woman, the wife of John, was from Mentasta on the Copper 

River, while John’s mother, the matriarch of all four families, was from Batzulnetas. On the 

other hand, at Batzulnetas there was a Nabesna man married to a local girl. 

There were at least four sequential villages on the upper Nabesna during the 19th and 20th 

centuries. The earliest known village was reported to be at the mouth of Platinum Creek, called Dit’aan 

Cheeg (hawk [creek] mouth), and was certainly occupied in the late prehistoric period but abandoned 

prior to 1901. According to Jack John Justin the village was used “way before white people came in. 

That’s old-timer people” (P. Kari 1985:63, in Bureau of Indian Affairs 1995b:4). It may be the “Indian

house” Allen (1887:63) reported at the mouth of Platinum Creek. Mr. Justin recalls seeing the remains 

of this village in the early 1920s, which consisted of “housepits, underground caches, and sweat baths” 

(Reckord 1983:219). Several attempts to locate this village in the later 20th century have failed. It is 

assumed that the village itself has been eroded away by stream action (McKennan 1959:18), although

the remains of an associated cemetery have been located (BIA 1995b).

The second village site was known as Daxuhtaa’ Cheeg (flat-topped mountain mouth) (J. 

Kari 1986:209; Reckord 1983:224-225) and was located upstream and across the Nabesna River 

22 Writing of the aboriginal occupation of the upper Chisana after the gold rush, one BIA report states, “What did occur 

was a dependency upon Western-manufactured items and a preference for Westernized food items.” Interestingly the next 

sentence reads, “When Chisana’s store closed in 1929, the community’s Indian population moved back to their former 

settlements and reassumed a subsistence lifestyle” (BIA 1993b:20). The two statements seem contradictory, since a state 

of “dependency” suggests an inability to do without or otherwise. 
The Nabesna Gold Mine 81 

on the left bank. Formerly a hunting camp (BIA 1996b:4), it was occupied for a short while after 

the abandonment of Dit’aan Cheeg village but was in turn “abandoned after the death of a powerful 

shaman” (McKennan 1959:18). 

The third village site – called Tthiixaa’ Cheeg (brain [creek] mouth) – was further 

downstream, near the mouth of Cooper Creek, and along the main trail between Nabesna and 

Chisana. According to Jack John Justin, the name of the village came from the milky color of the 

water in Cooper Creek, which resembled the color of the animal brain-based solution used to tan 

hides (J. Kari 1986:209). Tthiixaa’ Cheeg, which McKennan visited for several weeks during winter 

1929-30, was occupied from about 1909 to 1943-1945 (BIA 1996a:16). Occupants included its 

founder, identified as Charley Toby’s great-great-grandfather (presumably in the late prehistoric 

period), Nabesna John, and “the ancestors of the Alberts and Franks of Northway, and the Sanfords 

and Justins of Nabesna Bar, Chistochina, and Mentasta” (Reckord 1983:225), the Jackson brothers, 

Nicholas, John, and Albert, and Oscar Jimmy of Northway (BIA 1996a:5).

The village near the mouth of Cooper Creek was occupied during the onslaught of 

prospectors, miners, and entrepreneurs heading for the Chisana gold diggings, and its Native 

residents were involved in cash labor initially as freight haulers, then as miners and in the sale 

of hand-hewn lumber, as well as continuing subsistence hunting and commercial fur trapping. 

White prospectors had discovered gold on the upper Nabesna River in 1899, and a small mine 

was established about 1908 upstream of the village. In the late 1920s, the mine was substantially 

expanded, employing some forty to sixty miners, and some Dineh assisted in grading an airstrip 

on nearby Nabesna Bar. The airstrip became an important commercial hub for the region until the 

construction of the “Abercrombie Trail,” a road extension from the Richardson Highway at Slana 

to the Nabesna mines (now known as the Nabesna Road) in 1934. Several Native families moved 

to Nabesna Bar about this time, with the remaining occupants of Cooper Creek village moving 

across the river to Nabesna Bar in the mid-1940s. The cabins and other structures at Tthiixaa’ 

Cheeg were destroyed in an accidental fire, although accounts disagree about the timing of the

fire. In an interview with Jim Kari (1986:209), Jack John Justin dated the fire to 1943 or 1944.

Although that account doesn’t identify the fire as resulting in abandonment of the village, several

authors connect the fire to move of the remaining occupants to Nabesna Bar (e.g., BIA 1996a:6).

Holly Reckord (1983:231), however, suggests that the cabins at the site were used occasionally 

by people hunting, fishing, and trapping for another decade, before the village was destroyed by a

fire in the mid-1950s.

Gold production continued at the mine site until it was banned at the beginning of World 

War Two due to it being deemed as competing with other industrial work directly related to the war 

effort, and the population of the area collapsed. 

People left the Nabesna and Chisana valleys to work on war-related jobs in Alaska 

such as the construction of highways and airfields. Some of the Indian inhabitants 

of Cooper Creek Village left and moved to Northway or the northern Copper River 

villages. A small group composed of women and older men remained behind, 

trapping and living off the land. Those who left Cooper Creek returned to the village 

when trapping, hunting, or traveling through the area (Reckord 1983:231). 

While killing the mine, the war stimulated some economic activity in the area, as the airfield 

at Nabesna Bar was expanded to accommodate ferrying freight from the end of the Slana-Nabesna 

road for the construction of the Northway airport and for service as an emergency landing for 

Lend-Lease aircraft being transported to Russia. When the airport was abandoned in 1944-45 as 

obsolete to the war effort, the remaining occupants of the Cooper Creek village moved to occupy the 
82 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

buildings there and to erect new log cabins. The move may have been prompted in part by the fire 

at Tthiixaa’ Cheeg; however, Nabesna Bar also had the advantage of being closer to Nabesna Road 

along with stores and trading posts (Reckord 1983:217, 231). In a sense the move to Nabesna Bar 

was a re-occupation for the Dineh, since it had long been a traditional campsite, known as Dehsoon’ 

Cheeg ([creek] mouth).23 Native occupants at this time included Nabesna John, his son, Jack John 

Justin, Lena Charley, Frank Sanford, Daisy Sanford, Johnny Nicolai, Glen Burrell, and Andy Toby, and 

their families. A cemetery was established at the site during its occupation; Nabesna John is buried 

there (BIA 1996b; Reckord 1983:231). 

Like the Alaska Highway, the establishment and upgrading of the Nabesna Road had a 

profound effect on the lifestyle and settlement patterns of the upper Nabesna-Chisana Dineh 

occupants. “A trip between Valdez and Cooper Creek that had taken weeks in the first few decades of 

the century now took a morning” (Reckord 1983:231), and residents shifted their orientation from 

the lower Nabesna River to the Copper River valley villages of Mentasta, Gulkana, and Chistochina, 

where food and supplies were more economically available. 

The majority of people who lived in the Upper Nabesna-Chisana region had died or 

moved away by the late 1960s, although the Justins continued to occupy the site until the 

1990s (BIA 1996b:9-10). Jack John Justin and his stepbrothers Wilson and Calvin Justin ran 

a guide service for some years. Mr. Jack Justin, the last resident, moved to Chistochina in 

the mid-1990s due to failing health (BIA 1996b), although the area is still visited by Dineh 

today who come to hunt and, perhaps more importantly, savor the sense of their history that 

pervades their ancestral land. 

Missionaries 

Upper Tanana Dineh traveling to Dawson, Eagle, Tanana, or Fort Selkirk in the late 19th 

century would have been the first to encounter Christian missionaries stationed at these locations, 

and to have heard of their teachings from their relatives and friends there before families at home. 

Indeed, it is said that the Huskeh Isaac of Mansfield had been so impressed by the missionary 

stationed at Eagle that he traveled to Fairbanks in 1909 to petition the Episcopal Bishop Rowe 

to send a missionary to the Upper Tanana valley. The following year Archdeacon Hudson Stuck 

traveled through the region and determined that the abandoned government buildings built to 

support the Eagle telegraph line at Tanana Crossing provided a suitable base for a mission. The 

church purchased these in 1912 with a gift from St. Timothy’s School and Miss Margaret Graves 

was assigned the task of bringing the Christian faith to the Upper Tanana. Accompanying her was 

Miss Celia Wright, of Dineh and European descent from the lower Tanana River, who could speak 

Athabascan (MacIntosh n.d.; Graves 1913). 

By 1919, “about a dozen natives had cabins” at Tanacross; almost certainly these 

were exclusively people from Mansfield and Kechumstuk. The mission at Tanacross operated 

continuously through about 1923-24, when it was closed due to lack of funds. Intermittent visits by 

Episcopalian pastors occurred through to 1931, and it was during this period that the missionary E. 

A. MacIntosh first ventured upriver to Tetlin and then to Nabesna / Northway. MacIntosh re-opened 

St. Timothy’s as a full-time operation in 1931 and remained there for the next decade, traveling to 

Tetlin and Northway to attempt conversions. 

In his short memoir of these days, MacIntosh was decidedly ambivalent about the success of the 

missionary effort. His converts “readily accepted the Christian religion outwardly, but still pinned their 

faith on the Medicine making of the old men.... It has been the constant effort of the missionary to try to 

draw them into the Christian way, watching lest they paganize it” (MacIntosh n.d.:7). Later he writes, 

23 J. Kari (1986:208) and Reckord (1983:217) list the spelling as Dehsoo’ Cheeg and translate the name as “good area mouth” 

or “clear area mouth.” 
Missionaries 83 

Religious progress with the Indian is quite slow, anyway, as they are a gregarious 

people. They are so closely bound together by customs and teachings of their fathers 

(some of which are a hindrance to the Christian life) that it is next to impossible to 

get one of them to cut loose and make an individual stand. The older ones are loath 

to give them up and have a tendency to hold the people to those things meanwhile 

professing Christianity. Some gradually sluff off those things but too many either 

draw back or become indifferent (MacIntosh n.d.:14). 

MacIntosh also grappled, albeit quite uncritically, with the effects of successful erosion of 

Native beliefs. “The younger people,” he wrote in 1938, 

are becoming enlightened and having lost faith in the leadership of their elders are 

becoming confused. They are coming more and more in contact with white people of 

various stages from being mildly interested in Christianity to those opposed to it which 

is also confusing. One of their greatest weaknesses is their desire to be a good sport and 

agreeable to those around them. Thus they are easy prey to those who have no scruples 

about making bad examples or spreading undesirable teaching (MacIntosh n.d.:14). 

One of the great attractions for the Upper Tanana to the mission was the availability of 

instruction in western arts, particularly the English language as well as practical skills in math, 

gardening, and preparing the new foods. This desire is reflected in their petitioning for and 

eventually getting federal government-run schools at Tetlin (1925), Northway (part-time about 

1926, full-time in 1940/41), and Tanacross (1931), although the latter school was delivered by the 

missionary E. A. MacIntosh’s wife when it was reopened that year until her replacement in 1938. 

The combination of missionary preaching and western education seemed to have been 

regarded as a necessary evil by many of the Tanacross Natives and certainly frowned on by the BIA 

Education office from the 1920s onwards. The combination was “in many ways unsatisfactory, for 

the educational program inevitably was strongly influenced by the policies of the mission,” Burge 

(1938:15-16) wrote. In 1931, the field agent of the BIA’s Office of Education found that most Natives 

of Tanacross were desirous of having a school but not one associated with mission work. 

From what I could learn from the natives and others, it seems that they did not have 

much school when the mission was operating [in years earlier], only two or three days 

every month or two.... Those that did not want the mission returned frankly stated that 

they wanted their children to learn to read and write in preference to leaning so much 

about religion, as religion was not such an important thing with them as they had a 

good one of their own before the white men came to the country (Beck 1930:20-21). 

Relations between the Episcopal missionaries and the traders were ambivalent. On the one 

hand, as Christians themselves, the traders had some appreciation for the positive contributions of 

missionary work, particularly in the areas of promoting literacy in English and providing medical 

care. On the other hand, villages with a mission tended to be more sedentary that those without 

one, and thus their hunting and fur trapping production were less. The missionaries encouraged 

the women and children to stay home off the traplines, particularly during the worst of the winter 

months, which they viewed as an unnecessary hardship. However, families that stayed in the village 

were enticements for the men to “make constant trips to and from his trap line to carry meat and 

fuel to his family. This wastes time and inevitably results in a smaller crop” (Burge 1938:21). The 

traders and some others took a view contrary to the missionaries. 
84 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

There is no justification for the belief that any hardship is worked on these families 

[who go on the winter trapline]... Both the Indians with whom I talked and the 

field nurse at Tetlin definitely stated that the children return to the village after the 

trapping season in better health than at any other time of the year. It is true that 

extreme cold is experienced during the winter in this area, and fifty degrees below 

is not uncommon, but it is no colder in the hills than it is in the village, and the 

proximity of the fuel supply makes it easier for them to keep warm (Burge 1938). 

The introduction of state-sponsored schools and nursing care in the 1930s further eroded 

the missionary’s practical influence within the region. Indeed, by 1934 missionary proselytizing 

was contrary to BIA policy. Circular 2970, issued by BIA Commissioner John Collier, noted that: 

There are Government schools into which no trace of Indian symbolism or art or 

craft expression has been permitted to enter. There are large numbers of Indians 

who believe that their native religious life and Indian culture are frowned on by 

Government, if not actually banned... [Accordingly]... No interference with Indian 

religious life or expression will hereafter be tolerated. The cultural history of Indians 

is in all respects to be considered equal to that of any non-Indian group. And it is 

desirable that Indians be bilingual, fluent and literate in the English language, and 

fluent in their vital, beautiful, and efficient native languages.... the Indian arts are to 

be prized, nourished, and honoured (Collier 1934). 

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to say that Christianity was completely rejected by the 

Upper Tanana – there are many Upper Tanana Dineh today who say they are Christian. Rather it was 

integrated within their indigenous world view, reflecting the tolerant pragmatism of Athabascan 

spiritual beliefs generally. Many people I know attend what are still itinerant church services in 

their communities every month or so, although their indiscriminate attendance at Roman Catholic, 

Episcopal, Pentecostal, or “holy-roller” sideshows demonstrates that these are regarded as much as 

social events as spiritual ones. Many read the Bible and reflect on its stories with interest; however, 

they often relate these biblical stories to stories from their own mythological corpus. Having said 

this, there are also many Dineh who are unequivocal in their rejection of Christianity, particularly 

those who were subject to abuse at Canadian Christian residential schools. One middle-aged man 

introduced himself to me as he shook my hand with the declaration, “By the way, I practice my 

mother’s religion – is that going to be a problem?” 

Perhaps most importantly, however, many remain perplexed at the distance between the 

spiritual teachings of white men and their behavior, at how little the teachings of the Bible seem to 

guide their actions, particularly in their relations with Indian people. “Indian people don’t tell white 

how to believe in god, how to pray,” Mrs. Bessie John once lamented to me in her smokehouse. “You 

guys shouldn’t tell us that either. I respect Jesus, Mary, and the Ghost. Why can’t whites respect us, 

our way?” (Easton 2008). I couldn’t answer her. Another man is adamant that the Christian way is 

the white man’s way. “Some people say they are the same but the Indian way is different. We don’t 

kill for no reason and we know all life is sacred. It’s a serious business to kill something.” However, 

another Dineh teacher believed she had the answer. It is because white people are not fully formed, 

spiritually, due to a flaw in our history. “Ts’awusha, you know him?” she asked me, referencing their 

Culture Hero who set the world straight in myth-time. “He was the same guy as your Jesus, the same 

person. They say he left here and kept going west, all around the world, fixing things up in Russia, 

India, and then there in Israel. That’s where you guys killed him. You never let him fix your world 

there, you just killed him. That’s why I think white men are so different and sad” (Easton n.d.). 
The State and the Dineh of the Chisana Basin Between the Wars 85

The State and the Dineh of the Chisana Basin Between the Wars

Many of the initial explorations of the Chisana River basin were government-sponsored 

military and geological expeditions explicitly tasked with gathering intelligence on the lay of the 

land, its resources, and the nature of the aboriginal occupants in order to inform US government 

policy decisions. Yet, aside from these explorations and the development of a series of trail and road 

corridors, there was little direct State activity in the region until the 1930s. Canadian interest in 

the area after the establishment of the international border was even more muted. After this time 

there was a slow expansion of state power in the region by the United States, principally through 

the Alaska Native Service, until the sudden explosion of activities related to the building of the 

Northwest Staging Route and the Alaska Highway, which brought both State’s hegemony onto the 

borderlands in a pincer movement from East and West. 

The general history of the relationship between Alaska Natives and the US government 

is well documented in Mitchell (1997, 2001) and Case (1984). The initial federal governmentNative relationship in Alaska was ambiguous due to the distinction made in Article III of the 

1867 Treaty of Purchase between “uncivilized tribes” and other “inhabitants of the ceded 

territory.” This resulted in “the impression that an indefinite number of Alaska Natives 

were not subject to the principles of federal Indian Law” (Case 1984:6). This was further 

complicated by the 1884 Organic Act and several subsequent statutes which stated that there 

was a federal obligation to protect Indian lands “actually in their use or occupation,” language 

which was taken to imply “that Alaska Natives, unlike other Native Americans, did not have 

claims of aboriginal title to vast tracts of tribal property” (Case 1984:6). The Organic Act of 

1884 also required that federal educational services be made available to Alaskan residents 

without regard to race and thus the education of Alaska Natives was assigned to the federal 

Bureau of Education, which established the Alaska Native Service for this purpose. The 

absence of a Bureau of Indian Affairs Agency in Alaska led the solicitor for the Department of 

the Interior to the legal interpretation “that Alaska Natives did not have the same relationship 

to the Federal government as other Native Americans” (Case 1984:7). Until the influx of 

immigrants associated with the series of gold rushes at the turn of the century, there was little 

political impetus for federal intervention into Native affairs in interior Alaska. 

Education and the provision of other services such as health care in Alaska was 

segregated in practice, however. Within larger mixed communities, such as Juneau and Sitka, the 

white residents vigorously resisted integrated education and separate schools were set up, while 

schools in the outlying interior villages were perforce predominantly Native. Special programs 

within the Department of Education, such as the cultivation of reindeer herds initiated in 1894, 

were constructed specifically for application within Native communities. Thus, the passage of the

1905 Nelson Act, which specifically allowed for appropriations for the “education and support

of the Eskimos, Indians, and other Natives of Alaska” and the independent funding of schools for 

white children upon petition, was merely a formal acknowledgement by Congress of “what had 

by that time become an accomplished fact – federal services provided to Alaska Natives because 

of their status as Natives,” separate from those provided whites (Case 1984:8). The following 

year the Alaska Native Allotment Act extended the provisions of the 1887 General Allotment 

(“Dawes”) Act to Alaska that permitted individual Natives to receive up to 160 acres of land as 

an “inalienable and nontaxable” homestead (Case 1984:8). In 1931, the work of the Bureau of 

Education’s Alaska Native Service was transferred to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, completing the 

formal federal recognition that “the Natives of Alaska, as referred to in the treaty of March 30, 

1867, between the United States and Russia are entitled to the benefits of and are subject to the

general laws and regulations governing the Indians of the United States” (BIA Solicitor’s opinion, 

quoted in Case 1984:10). 
86 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) was amended in 1936 with specific provisions 

of application to Alaska, ending the allotment policy and putting in its place the ability for the 

Secretary of the Interior to designate lands actually occupied by Natives as new or additional 

reserve lands. It also provided revolving funds for economic development, permitted the 

establishment of federally charted cooperatives and businesses, and promoted the formation of 

local Indian governments under a federal constitution. “The Department of the Interior immediately 

embarked on a drive to organize Alaska Native villages under IRA constitutions and business 

charters. By early 1941, thirty-eight Native Groups had organized under the Alaska amendments” 

(Case 1984:11), including the villages of Tanacross, Tetlin, and Northway. The Bureau of Indian 

Affairs also began to provide additional human services to Alaskan Natives under the authority of 

the Snyder Act in 1931, through which nursing and educational services were extended into the 

Upper Tanana region later that decade. 

Finally, it is significant that the federal government-Native relationship in policy as well as 

legality in Alaska was not developed until the 20th century, after the passage of nearly 150 years of 

prior experience with “the Indian problem” in the lower forty-eight states. As a result, many (though 

not all) of the federal policies implemented in Alaska were less oriented towards the assimilationist 

practices of the past and more directed at the maintenance of independence through the 

preservation of local subsistence economies and cultural traditions (Collier 1934). Only one formal 

“Indian Reservation” – the Metlakatla Indian Reserve on Annette Island, established in the late 

19th century – was authorized by Congress in Alaska. Instead a series of Executive Order Reserves 

were established for the purposes of education and economic development (e.g., the reindeer 

forage grounds in northern Alaska). Congress prohibited the creation of additional reserves except 

by Congressional action in 1919; however, the Secretary of the Interior “circumvented the law by 

establishing several “public purpose reserves” in Alaska that were de facto Native reserves,” and it 

was under these provisions that the Tetlin Reserve, embracing some 768,000 acres, was established 

in 1930 (Norris 2002:6). Six “IRA Reserves” were established and numerous others proposed 

(including the extension of the Tetlin Reserve eastward to the Canadian border for the benefit of the 

Nabesna, Northway, and Chisana basin Natives) under the authority of the Indian Reorganization 

Act between 1943 and 1949, after which no further Native lands were designated until the Alaska 

Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. 

The Bureau of Education 

William James’ 1914 letter regarding “destitution of about 15 natives in the Shushana region”

is one of the earliest direct records within the Department of Interior Archives that references the 

Chisana River basin. The Department’s non-committal response reflects the general neglect of the

region at the time. The miniscule size of the Department’s budget for a vast area, more pressing 

concerns elsewhere in areas of greater Indian-white contact, and the remoteness of the Upper 

Tanana seem to have been the principal motivations for this neglect. A 1919 report noted “There are 

some places in the District that are not reached by the Bureau of Education and some which are so 

scattered that it would be impossible to supply them with schools. The Tanana Crossing district is so 

remote and the people so scattered that a school there would be impractical” (Forbes 1919). 

Another of the founding prospectors at Chisana, A. F. Nelson, apparently took it upon himself 

to provide some education to the children living in Chisana in the 1920s, but this was suspended 

as a result of an audit of the operations of the Seattle Office of the Department of Education – out 

of which ran the Alaska Native Service. The audit was extremely critical of the Seattle Office and its 

director Wagner, who was found to be incompetent in his job and lax in his duties and service, which 

was often in contradiction with many government regulations. Among the 115 recommendations 

for improvement or action are two of particular interest: 
The Bureau of Education 87 

That cognizance be taken of the fact that numerous teachers employed in the Alaskan 

Service do not appear advanced in education, based on mis-spellings, grammatical 

errors, and formation of sentences in their reports and communications. 

A shipment of school supplies, valued at less than $150.00, was made to A. F. 

Nelson, U. S. Commissioner at Shushana, in July of 1925, on the recommendation of 

Superintendent Ben Mozee. Mr. Nelson is said to be intending to teach the natives 

but he is not a teacher and may be a missionary. Government supplies cannot be 

used for sectarian purposes so this was wrong. A commissioner is not, strictly 

speaking, an employee of the government but receives a commission on fees and 

penalties collected in the enforcement of Federal regulations, such as game laws, 

prospecting licenses, and so on.24 

Meanwhile, downstream at Tanacross, lobby for a government school to replace the 

struggling Episcopal school began as early as 1922 when Galen Fry wrote his friend William 

Lopp, then Chief of the Alaska Division of the Bureau of Education. In his response Lopp noted 

that he had recommended opening a school at Kechumstuk in 1907, but the teacher chosen 

for this work was assigned to Tanana village on the lower river. Lopp went on to say that he 

is favorable of the idea of a school at Tanacross and found Fry’s suggestion that he offer the 

teaching post to W. C. Denny, a trader at Tanacross, to be acceptable. Lopp wrote to Denny 

the same day offering him the position and inviting him to fill out and return the appropriate 

forms of employment,25 however nothing seems to have come from this or a subsequent 

recommendation, apparently approved by Superintendent Tigert in Washington, that a school 

be opened in the Tanacross vicinity.26 

Federal government attention was drawn to the Upper Tanana basin primarily through the urging 

of the trader and area benefactor, John Hajdukovich, and the lobby of his wealthy and influential Eastern

Establishment friends William Endicott and Edward Mallinckrodt, both of whom had direct personal 

access to the Secretary of the Interior and the President. As a result, the Tetlin Reserve was created and 

funding was provided for a school and medical supplies there (Brown 1984, 1999; Ferguson 2002). The 

old-time prospector John A. Singleton was formally appointed to run the school in July 1924. He had been 

engaged for this at Hajdukovich’s suggestion and Chief Peter Joe’s request27 and officially continued the

work until his forced retirement in 1933.28 In its first year of operation, the Tetlin school had an average

daily attendance of 19.1 students, and operated on a little over $50 worth of supplies.29 

24 US National Archives, RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs / Entry 806, Records of the Alaska Division, General 

Correspondence / Box 154 – 1925-26 (FY), Reports and Exhibits with Reports by Inspector Trowbridge / Folder – Report 

by Inspector Trowbridge on Inspection of Seattle Office, 29 October 1925.

25 Letter, W. T. Lopp, Chief, Alaska Division to Galen S. Fry, St. Timothy’s, 17 January 1922; and Letter, W. T. Lopp, Chief, 

Alaska Division to W. C. Denny, Tanana Crossing, 17 January 1922. US National Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of 

Indian Affairs / Entry 806, Records of the Alaska Division, General Correspondence / Box 111 – 1921-22 (FY) Bureau of 

Efficiency – New Schools / Folder – New Schools.

26 Superintendent of Education of Natives of Alaska to Commissioner of Education, Washington, D.C., 2 August 1923. US 

National Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs / Entry 806, Records of the Alaska Division, General 

Correspondence / Box 119 – 1922-23 (FY), Contract Files – Seattle Office, General / Folder – New Schools.

27 “At the earnest solicitation of their Chief, Peter Joe, I have agreed to teach a term here this summer and I am now 

endeavoring so to do.... I might also mention that I am [also] giving them instruction in gardening, etc., and that they 

are sawing the lumber to make benches and desks by hand.” Singleton, J. A. to Sutherland, D. 11 June 1923. US National 

Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs / Entry 806 / Box 128 / Folder – New Schools. Beck (1930:31) 

incorrectly asserts Singleton had been teaching for two or three years prior to the formal establishment of the school. 

28 US National Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs / Entry 806, Records of the Alaska Division, General 

Correspondence / Box 256 / Folder – Singleton, John A.

29 US National Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs / Entry 806, Records of the Alaska Division, General 

Correspondence / Box 152 – Seattle, Reorganization of Office – Seattle Office, Financial / Folder – Seattle Office, General.
88 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

The establishment of the Tetlin school had several effects on the Dineh further east on the 

Nabesna and Chisana Rivers. Just after opening, prior to 1930, a number of families moved to Tetlin for 

the school year in order to provide education for their children. Yet most people found this impractical 

and refused to return the following year. Subsequently, Singleton traveled to the lower Nabesna fish camp

during its use in June and July and held a day school there. Some Scottie Creek/Chisana families sent their 

children to this enterprise, but petitions during the 1920s and ’30s for a school at Northway were rejected 

by the government with the following justification:

Investigations show that due to the migratory habits of these people it would not justify 

the government to establish a school here. In the summer time there is nothing to hinder 

them from going to Tetlin to fish and they could send their children to school at the same

time. They have done this one time in the past. When I informed them that I could not 

recommend a school for that place, they all decided to do the next best thing, and that 

was, to move to Tetlin during the summer months (Beck 1930:43). 

In 1934, Fred Dimler and his wife replaced Singleton. Dimler’s Tetlin School reports record 

twelve elementary and sixteen high school students in 1935-36 and thirteen elementary and fifteen 

high school students in 1936-37. Among the students were children of Elisha (Jackson) Demit and 

his wife Bertha (most of whom were born on the Upper Chisana), Stephen and Walter Northway, 

and Chief Sam, whose wife Bessie was born in the Chisana basin.30 

Burge (1938:16) found twenty children 

from upriver attending school at Tetlin in 1938, 

though attendance had both economic and social 

consequences. “The journey is expensive and the 

accommodations at Tetlin are extremely limited. 

To bring many children and their parents is 

risking serious complications and disharmony 

there, as well as breaking down the community 

life at Nabesna” (Burge 1938:16). Ivar Skarland 

made a similar observation in 1939 when he 

noted that, “some of the Nabesna Indians have 

with great economic sacrifice spent the winter at

Tetlin in order to give their children a chance to 

attend school there” (Skarland 1939). 

Singleton’s teaching approach was an 

emphasis on “the three R’s as well as any and 

all work in the Manual Arts. He believe[d] the natives should be taught such things as will best fit 

him to his environment, and he is doing his best to do it” reported Beck (1930:32). This approach 

was one of proclivity and pragmatism on Singleton’s part, but it was also in agreement with the 

general policy of the Office of Education.31 Beck (1930:35) observed that: 

Mr. Singleton has day school for the children and night sessions for all. At the day 

sessions the Chief of the village is always present. He attends for two reasons; one 

30 Annual School Census Report, 1937/38, Tetlin, Alaska. US National Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian 

Affairs. BIA Quarterly School Reports / Entry 818 / Box 2. 

31 “Considerable effort is made to adapt the school program in Native schools to meet the needs and interests of the 

Native people served by these schools, thereby including many projects directly related to making a living in Native 

communities.” It was policy to schedule classes during times of greatest residency in the village, regardless of the time of 

year, allowing for participation in subsistence activities. Alaska Narrative, Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1941. US National 

Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs / Entry 121, Central Correspondence Files – 1940 – 1956 / Box 16 

/ Folder 00 – 1941 – AK – 032. 

Figure 33. Lee Jennis and students at Northway 

School, 1943. Duesenberg Film Archive. 
The Bureau of Education 89 

because he is chief of the village and wants to have an important part in the matters 

pertaining to his people and the other is, because he wants to learn to do like the 

white people do. His wife attends every session of school to teach the girls to sew 

and make clothing.... I was glad to note that he had the cooperation of the entire 

village in every thing he attempted and that the school was the center of all activities 

and to which everything else was subordinated. On Sunday evenings he has them all 

gather at the school house and they sing church songs, tell folk tales and usually he 

makes a talk on cleanliness or some other subject of kindred nature. 

In the winter of 1939-40 a day school was formally established at Nabesna/Northway, 

that drew thirty-four students – eighteen boys and sixteen girls between the ages of 5 and 24. In 

his first quarterly report, Dimler wrote “Nabesna is a village in which school has never been held 

before.... The children and their parents were eager for the school. The boys and girls met two 

evenings a week for gymnastics, games, & etc. The children had simple weaving in Arts and Crafts. 

Their final products were square baskets.” By March enrollment had grown to thirty seven (twenty 

boys and seventeen girls), and the villagers had cut and hauled enough logs to construct a building 

specifically for the school. Three boys also made three pairs of skis.32 

As was typical throughout Alaska, the teacher provided a range of additional services 

to the community including special community meetings, adult classes in cooking and sewing, 

arts and crafts, social welfare, cooperative store and IRA-related actions, gardening, first aid, 

recreational activities, management of a community building shop, construction of a schoolhouse, 

and co-operation with other government agencies, including the Census Bureau, the Alaska Game 

Commission, and the Weather Bureau.33 The net effect of these activities was to introduce and 

provide access to a range of government services previously unknown in the region. The timing of 

the school’s opening at Northway was also propitious. Within the year the region experienced the 

arrival of the builders of the Alaska Highway. Thus, the schools and their teachers became important 

vectors for negotiating the new relationships that descended on the Dineh of the Upper Tanana with 

the building of the highway. 

Through the 1920s, Singleton also provided limited, but often critical, medical care to the 

inhabitants of the region, until a government-sponsored nurse was stationed at Tetlin in 1932. Beck 

(1930:36) notes that: 

The medical work done by Mr. Singleton is by no means an unimportant one. He is 

very attentive to the natives in this respect and does everything possible to keep the 

well, well, and to cure the sick.... The Medicine Chest sent to these people each year by 

the Office of Education is a Godsend, not only for the Tetlin natives, but for villages fifty

and a hundred miles away.... The villages of Tetlin, Tanana Crossing and Nabesna have 

no medical care whatsoever, other than that afforded by Mr. Singleton. If a native gets 

sick he must either do the best he can for himself or go to Fairbanks [273 miles away]. 

If he is very sick he will either be dead or well before he could get there in most cases. 

A nurse should be stationed at Tetlin. She could serve Nabesna and Tanana Crossing. 

32 Quarterly School Report – Tetlin – Nabesna Day School (2 January 1940 and 1 April 1940). US National Archives. RG 75, 

Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs / Alaska Division / Quarterly School Reports – 1937 – 40 / Entry 818 / Box 4 / 

Folder P1-163. 

33 Teachers were also expected to provide information, as their duties permit, “of a medical, physiological, or 

anthropological character in regard to the natives,” for transmittal to the Smithsonian Institute, as requested by Aleš 

Hrdlička (Memo, Claxton to Employees of the Alaska Division, 12 January 1920. US National Archives. RG 75, Records of the

Bureau of Indian Affairs / Entry 806, Records of the Alaska Division, General Correspondence / Box 98 – 1919-1920 / (FY) 

– Natives – New Schools / Folder – Outside Relations, Miscellaneous). This directive was followed up in 1927 by a request 

to provide skeletal remains to the Smithsonian Institute, a practice to which neither Singleton nor Dimler, at least, assented. 

US National Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs / Index to General Correspondence, 1910 – 1930 / Box

1927 / #122, 29 July. Smithsonian Institute, regarding their request to Alaskan teachers to send them skeletal remains. 
90 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

There was little that Singleton or the nurse could do for tuberculosis – the major medical 

scourge of the Dineh in the region. In 1924, Singleton reported that “the natives are healthy.” By the 

1930s, however, a variety of tuberculosis strains had become endemic in the Upper Tanana Dineh 

population, causing great discomfort to many and death to others. MacIntosh (n.d.:15) observed 

that, “in 1915 tuberculosis was quite prevalent at Ketchemstock and there were only a very few 

cases here [in Tanacross] and practically none at Tetlin and Nabesna. Now it is as bad here as it was 

at Ketchemstock then and nearly as bad at Tetlin and Nabesna. Together with flu and tuberculosis 

there were 17 died here last year from a population of 135.” At Tetlin in 1930, Beck (1930:37) 

found “Edna Joseph, age fifteen, and a very bright girl is afflicted with tuberculosis of the throat.... 

Alfred John, a tubercular native in the last stages of the disease was the only other native in serious 

condition at the time of my visit. Nothing can be done for him and no doubt he is dead by this time.” 

Writing of the Chisana community, Beck (1930:47) observes: 

This village was the center of a gold stampede about fifteen years ago. As is the case 

with most stampedes, it left a group of sickly, dirty, tubercular and improvident 

group of beggars in its wake. Mr. Robert McKennan, anthropologist from Harvard 

University, visited with these natives for a period of two months. He told me that 

he did not believe that there was a single individual in the entire village that was 

not afflicted with tuberculosis in some form. Attached is a list of the natives living 

at Chisana. Titus and Wife, 2 boys (7 – 10), 1 girl (14), Chisana John and Wife, 1 boy 

(23), Chisana Joe and Wife, 2 boys (2 – 4), Andy Toby and Wife, 1 boy (3). 

Paradoxically, Burge (1938:18) reported that “the health of the Indians of the Upper Tanana 

region is comparatively good and there is reason to believe that it will improve in the future,” while 

Ivar Skarland reported in 1939 that: 

Tuberculosis has been and still is the main scourge among the natives of this region 

[the upper Tanana River]; but I believe that they are beginning to develop resistance 

to most of white man’s diseases. That they are holding their own is due to the high 

birth rate.... At present the medical needs are attended to at Tanana, several hundred 

miles away.... People from the Upper River, having no doctor and only one nurse, 

seldom go to the hospital before it is too late. 

Land and Political Organization 

In 1915, a group of Tanana River Dineh Huskehs met to discuss the effects of white 

immigration into the Alaskan interior and to bring their concerns forward to the US government 

authorities. The Tanana Chief’s Conference of 1915 was held in Fairbanks to discuss land claims 

and educational and employment opportunities within the emerging State order. Foremost on 

the agenda of the representatives of the United States was the settling of the Tanana Dineh upon 

individual homesteads or collective reservations, under the terms of the 1906 Alaska Native 

Allotment Act, a proposition largely rejected by the chiefs who maintained “we don’t want to go 

on a reservation.... We just want to be left alone. As the whole continent was made for you, God 

made Alaska for the Indian people, and all we hope is to be able to live here all the time” (Mitchell 

1997:177-78; Patty 1970). Archival research has not identified any allotments under this act being 

granted within the upper Tanana River region. 

With the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and the Alaska Amendment of 

1936, Alaska Division teachers were given the responsibility for organizing Native villages and 
Conclusion 91 

cooperatives.34 This was done in Tetlin in 1939 and in Northway in 1942, but no effort was made to 

similarly organize the lower Scottie Creek villages, which were considered too small. One of the first

actions by the new Tetlin Council was to request to have their Reserve extended to the Canadian 

boundary. The Reserve extension was requested again in 1941, enlarged to include the lands 

associated with the villages of Healy Lake, Tanacross, Last Tetlin, Tetlin, Nabesna, and Scottie Creek. 

Meanwhile the newly organized Council at Northway sent a similar petition to the government for 

the establishment of a Nabesna Reserve from the Canadian border to the eastern boundaries of the 

Tetlin Reserve and from the top of the Nutzotin Mountains to the Ladue River (Brown 1984:147-51).

Although the extension of the reserve was one of Burge’s major recommendations, and the 

American Association of Indian Affairs lobbied for its formation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was 

initially against the idea, sensing that the non-Native public would be opposed, and this proved to 

be the case. In the fall of 1941, the Alaska Territorial Legislature appealed to the federal government 

to review all public land withdrawals, revoke those deemed no longer necessary, and specifically 

requested the dissolution of the Tetlin Reserve, which it deemed would hinder development of 

the upper Tanana River region (Brown 1984:151-58). Faced with this request, the Bureau of 

Indian Affairs began a formal investigation of the matter, sending several field agents and the 

anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt into the region over the next several years to determine the land 

use requirements of the Natives in the region. 

As a result, the Secretary of the Interior signed Public Land Order 386 on 31 July 1947, which 

withdrew from public use 208,000 acres around Northway and 282,000 acres around Tanacross “pending 

further study of the lands for designation as Indian reservations.” With a change in BIA policy on the 

creation of new reservations, the withdrawals were revoked by Public Land Order 961, 10 May 1954

(Brown 1984:170-72). The federal recognition of the Native use and occupation of the eastern Upper 

Tanana Dineh of the Nabesna and Chisana River basins would have to wait until the settlement of the 

statewide Native land claims by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. 

Conclusion 

The Dineh of the Upper Tanana were in many respects fortunate to have considerable 

interest generated in their needs and difficulties during the interwar period as they prepared, albeit 

without certainty as to when, for the inevitable penetration of their lands by increasing numbers 

of white men. Chief Peter Joe of Tetlin, for example, petitioned for a school at the village in a 1923 

letter to the Congressional Delegate from Alaska, in order to be able to survive the changes of the 

future. “I want my people to learn in school” he wrote, “.... I don’t want my people to die.... That’s 

all I want. I want my people try to little learn.... By and by, no fur, no game this country and I afraid 

my people can’t live” (Joe 1923). Without the intercession of people like Hajdukovich, Endicott, 

and Mallinckrodt and the investigations by the American Association of Indian Affairs, which 

Mallinckrodt sponsored, I suspect little in the way of government services beyond Tanacross would 

have been extended to the Upper Tanana Dineh until the building of the Alaska Highway. 

The establishment of the schools at Tetlin and Northway encouraged new migration 

and settlement patterns in the region and an increase in sedentary village nucleation. Increased 

sedentary village life by band organized hunters and gatherers in response to their interaction 

with state structures is well documented in the north and throughout the world (Acheson 1995;

Asch 1988; Helm 1961). The two principle factors leading to this nucleation were initially the 

34 “Instructions for Organization in Alaska Under the Reorganization Act of June 18, 1934, and the Alaska Act of May 1, 

1936 and the Amendments Thereto.” US National Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs / Public Inventory 163 / Entry 803 Copies of letters and telegrams sent by the Chief, Alaska Section, BIA 1935-37 / Folder AK-28504-35-

056-pt 2 to 63-37-066.
92 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

location of commercial trading posts and subsequently the provision of an increasing array of 

government services, initially education and health, followed by additional services, such as 

welfare and pensions.35 The general result of this nucleation in many northern groups was an 

increased use of industrially produced commodities, including foodstuffs, clothing, and housing 

structures, as well as the increased tendency for local and regional identities to become focused 

on settlements of occupation. The migration of most of the Upper Chisana residents to Big Scottie 

Creek and then Northway, or the upper Nabesna River communities to the Copper Valley, due to 

these factors can be viewed as the final dissolution of that resident community, in the strict sense

of “residency,” although Chisana Joe continued to live in the upper Chisana village until his death in 

the early 1960s. 

A final important effect of the new State order on the traditional culture of the Upper 

Tanana Dineh was the reification of band leadership. Formerly, band leadership emerged through 

the demonstration of personal ability in specific tasks and the more ambiguous display of personal 

spirit power, however the continued legitimacy of leadership was dependent on one’s appropriate 

exercise of authority, relying on persuasion and good sense rather than coercion. Leadership could, 

and often did, fluctuate between individuals based on performance or the nature of the task at hand. 

Within Alaska, as early as 1906, contemporary band leaders were being recognized by the State 

as local and regional “chiefs” with considerable presumed political authority. The introduction to 

Alaska in 1936 of the Indian Reorganization Act (1934) coalesced further formal representative 

governance, establishing village Councils and elected Chiefs, a process completed in the Upper 

Tanana in the late 1930s and early 1940s. 

THE ALASKA HIGHWAY AND THE CHISANA RIVER DINEH

We were here, at Niįʼį̀ įʼ̨̀ , down below in the village. Chief Johnson, my dad, Lucy, 

Cecily, Bessie, Lakduu, me and some other kids. Me, I’m just a little kid, later they tell 

me, but I remember the noise coming through the trees. It’s dark. We can see lights 

out there, where the noise is? Chief Johnson he go out to check it out and when he 

come back he put dirt from fire, you know charcoal, on his face like this, like that. His 

face all black. That’s who’s coming he tell us. They were driving the cats through the 

forest down below us, right there. You see those trees there? That’s where they first 

come through, right there. I was scared. We all went up to Pepper Lake, and then 

down to Snag (Joseph Tommy Johnny in Easton n.d.). 

Although the upper Chisana River basin was still used seasonally for hunting and trapping, 

by 1940 most of the Upper Tanana Dineh had orientated themselves to the village settlements of 

the lower river (Big Scottie Creek, Northway, High Cache, Taiy Chi, and Niįʼį̀ įʼ̨̀ ) or the upper Nabesna 

River village(s). Thus, the building of the Alaska Highway had an immediate and direct effect on the 

Dineh of the region. 

The building of the Alaska Highway in 1942-43 was one of the great engineering and 

logistical accomplishments of the era. Built from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Fairbanks, 

Alaska, in just over 8 months, the road was initially intended to provide staging support for airfields 

associated with the transportation of war supplies to Russia and as a supply route to the Northwest 

35 The first record I have found for government assistance in the upper Tanana region includes two residents at Nabesna 

Mines and ten families at Tetlin, four of whom were relocated Chisana River people in 1941. "Families to Whom Surplus 

Supplies Could be Sent, 1940-41." US National Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs / Entry 121, Central 

Classified Files (1940-1956) / Box 125 / Folder 53984-1941-AK-720. In 1941 the BIA also included monies for Tanacross 

and Tetlin for “relief of destitution.” “Report on Relief of Destitution for the Alaska Indian Service, as required by the 

Appropriation Act for Fiscal Year 1942.” US National Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs / Entry 121, 

Central Classified Files (1940-1956) / Box 125 / Folder 53984- 1941-AK-720.
The Alaska Highway and the Chisana River Dineh 93 

in defense of a possible Japanese invasion. Though the success of constructing the 1,700-mile road 

was a significant accomplishment, this was tempered with a considerable disregard for local and 

regional concerns. As noted by Yukon ethnohistorian Julie Cruikshank, “within a year and a half, a 

total of 34,637 men came to a relatively isolated part of the world where only a few thousand people 

made their homes” (1985:175).

The notion of an overland road to the northwestern subarctic was hardly new, having 

been proposed off and on since the time of the Klondike Gold Rush, but for a variety of reasons, 

principally related to international political relations, one never emerged (Remley 1985; Fisher 

1985). Ironically, one reason put forward for the reluctance of the Canadian federal government 

to undertake the building of a road to its northwest territory was “a fear of American economic 

and military domination” (Remley 1985:1). The Canadian position was, however, eroded by the 

portrayed urgency of an overland route to Alaska in time of war, although historic documents 

clearly indicate that “as a strategic measure for the direct support of Alaska... the highways’ impact 

was... virtually negligible... it was not needed for defense. The highway was built for other reasons” 

(Fisher 1985:33).

Whatever the motivation for the building of the highway, the impact of an overland route 

through the far Northwest has been considerable. The immediate effect on the Upper Tanana was 

similar to that documented for the Tutchone and Kaska Athabascans to the southeast of them. 

The building of the road itself led to a noted increase in mortality and sickness within Native 

populations, particularly through dysentery, jaundice, whooping cough, mumps, meningitis, 

measles, and influenza. These last two diseases were particularly devastating, especially within 

areas outside of Whitehorse (Marchand 1943). Infant and youth mortality during construction were 

particularly high. The presence of military medical personnel along the route alleviated this impact 

somewhat, but the wide travel of the Native population and the epidemic nature of the diseases 

carried them much further afield than the highway corridor itself, and often medical attention was 

not accessible in the outlying areas (Coates 1985; Oland 1985). Thus, actual mortality rates outside 

of the urban centers through the Northwest were probably even higher than the medical records 

indicate, a fact generally substantiated by oral history accounts (Cruikshank 1985; Easton n.d.). 

In addition, liquor became more easily available and weakened the health of many families and 

communities. 

The influx of tens of thousands of engineers, construction workers, and support personnel, 

combined with the mortality of the period, significantly altered the ethnic ratio of the region, 

transforming the Native population from the majority outside of the urban/village centers to a 

decided minority throughout much of the region. Native people declined as a percentage of Alaska’s 

population from 50.6 percent in 1929, to 44.8 percent in 1939, to 26.3 percent in 1950, to 18.8 

percent in 1960 (Norris 2002:5, Table 1.1). The resulting competition for and increased exploitation 

of game animals and fish resulted in a severe depletion of Native subsistence resources along the 

highway corridor, which itself often followed the traditional trail system. Many Natives recall with 

bitterness and incomprehension an apparent tendency for highway personnel to hunt for sport 

and leave game to spoil.36 In addition, regulations concerning the destruction of highway-related 

materials and foods rather than their local distribution, in order to avoid “unfair competition” with 

commercial sources, contributed to further alienation between Natives and newcomers. “Indians 

recall ‘potholes filled with hams,’ ‘bags of flour dumped in the garbage,’ and so on. Such behaviour 

was repugnant to people who had always made maximum use of their environment. Such waste, 

which the older Indians have never forgotten, seemed a betrayal of man’s obligation to share” 

36 There is an equivocal debate on this point. Most anthropological oral histories of the period suggest that game depletion 

and waste was significant (e.g., Cruikshank 1985; Easton n.d.), while documentary histories tend to underplay the effect of 

hunting by highway personnel (see, e.g., McCandless 1985).
94 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

(Cruikshank 1985:185). Besides food, other waste was deposited along the highway corridor in 

the form of sewage, petroleum, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and other defoliant chemicals, 

munitions, broken machinery, and general garbage, all of which introduced new environmental 

pollutants of danger to humans and animals alike.37 

The highway also significantly altered people’s orientation to the landscape in several

important ways. First, Natives were increasingly dispossessed from their landscape, which was 

in turn fundamentally altered by highway construction. The route taken by the highway and the 

ancillary noise, destruction, and increased human activity disturbed local distribution of game 

(McCandless 1985:87). The highway placement also significantly altered the regional settlement

pattern, shifting demographic concentrations from villages away from the road to junctions and 

stations along it (Duerden 1981:33-35), a process that was apparent in the preceding period as

people became orientated to trading post locations. The highway also redefined, accelerated,

and consolidated this process of village nucleation and opened up the land to easy access by 

immigrant white settlers and migrant hunters. New hunting regulations and enforcement 

hampered and reduced Native subsistence hunting. Wage labor opportunities increased, but this 

in turn reduced both the time and need for subsistence efforts on the land. Another effect was 

to increase inter-community travel and communication by use of the new road system. The road 

was not merely a vector for the transportation of material goods, but also a line of communication 

to and from state metropoles, a mechanism for the consolidation of State control over this 

hinterland (Innis 1972; Cruikshank 1998). These effects also contributed to a growing awareness 

of the need and responsibility of the encapsulating State to recognize and respond to requests for 

aboriginal land claims. 

The building of the Alaska Highway is often portrayed in histories as a “peaceful invasion” 

of the far Northwest. For the aboriginal people of the Upper Tanana however, who had lived in a 

general condition of respectful co-existence with the various streams of traders and prospectors 

during much of the previous hundred years, it created a tumultuous redefinition of their society. As 

Bill Simeone has noted, “the construction of the road completely altered these existing relationships 

and recast Native people as strangers in their own land” (Simeone 1992:45). The character of 

Native-newcomer relationships was fundamentally altered from close and personal to distant 

and stereotyped. “Before the war Natives and Whites inhabited an overlapping universe of shared 

experiences based on life close to the land and characterized by personal relationships. After the 

war, this universe was fragmented, and Native people became socially, economically, and politically 

marginalized” (Simeone 1992:50).

The Construction of the Alaska Highway

The Alaska Road Commission was tasked to construct airfields in Alaska in the 1920s, one 

of which was built at Tanana Crossing and another at upper Nabesna, which we discussed earlier in 

the context of the Nabesna Mine. Later, in the 1930s there was an interest to extend North American 

air travel to the Orient via a Great Circle Route through Yukon and Alaska. In support of this, 

additional airstrips were constructed in 1940-41, consisting of airports, airstrips, and navigation 

beacons stretching from Montana, through Alberta and Yukon, and finishing at Ladd Airforce Base 

outside of Fairbanks. Two new airstrips were built within the Upper Tanana region: at Snag, Yukon, 

and Northway, Alaska. Several Upper Tanana men worked on the construction of these airports. 

37 The full extent of these polluting deposits will probably be never known, but recently the US Army has taken some 

responsibility for their presence, engaging in environmental cleanups about the airports at Northway and Tanacross for 

example, where significant levels of PCBs and other persistent pollutants were removed; the work remains ongoing (D. 

Corbert, personal communication, Easton n.d.). 
The Construction of the Alaska Highway 95

Figure 34. Ferry across Big Scotty Creek in birch bark canoe, June 13, 1942. Walter W. Hodge Papers, 

1925-1948. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Walter Hodge 

with the US Army Engineers crossing Big Scottie Creek in a traditional birch bark canoe typical of the Upper 

Tanana; across the creek stands “John Little Joe,” i.e. White River Johnny, who is recognizable by his diminutive 

size, face, and famous hat (now curated at the White River First Nation). Mrs. Bessie John recalled this event 

and believed it was one of the last birch bark canoes in use in the region as canvas was more commonly used 

for covering frames since at least McKennan’s 1929 visit. 

With the declaration of war by Japan in December 1941, and the extension of the Lend-Lease 

armament program by the United States to the Soviet Union, the airports, now collectively known as 

the Northwest Staging Route, became vital strategic elements in the United States’ western theatre 

and a supply road in support of the airports was upgraded to a major thoroughfare. The effort was 

staged by military and civilian construction crews working towards each other along the route. 

The route of the highway from Tanacross to Kluane Lake had been roughly surveyed and 

mapped in June 1942 by Colonel Walter Hodge, guided by the Southern Tutchone Bobby Kane of 

Aishihik, and accompanied by a Captain Baker and Mr. McGilveray. The following extracts from 

Hodge’s field diary record his travel through the Upper Tanana borderlands.

Thursday, June 11, 1942 – Spent day in reconnoitering for crossing at Snag. Found 

suitable one on Snag Creek about one mile downstream from junction of Beaver 

Creek. About one-half mile down farther downstream found a camp about two 

weeks old which had evidently been used by an army reconnaissance party. 
 

96 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Friday, June 12, 1942 – Crossed Canada – Alaska Boundary into Alaska at 6:32 pm, 

three-quarter mile north of International Boundary Commission Monument #165 

at longitude 141.00 West, latitude 62.38.15 North. Passed Chief Johnson’s cabin on 

Snag – Scottie Creek Trail and found note that Lt. Hammond, 29th Engrs. had been 

there May 21, 1942. Camped on border tonight next to Scottie Creek. 

Saturday, June 13, 1942 – We travelled north along the Canada Alaska border for 

about five miles today from I.B.C. monument 165 to two miles beyond #164. Just 

before reaching Big Scottie Creek we came to an Indian village just a few feet over 

the border in Alaska. There we found six men, four women, a small boy, a small girl, 

and a baby boy living there. Chief Johnson was the headman. They understood and 

spoke very little English and did not speak the language of our guides. After a while, 

though, we did manage to get the information we wanted on how to get to Nabesna. 

We found Big Scottie Creek too deep to ford, so got Johnnie Little Joe [White River 

Johnny – Little John] at the village to ferry us across in his birch bark canoe. It took 

twelve trips to get all our equipment across and cost us $5.00 which we paid for in

food. Coffee at $1.00 a pound and tea at $1.50 a pound, which is standard trading post

prices. We then swam the horses across and finished the ferrying operation by 10:00

pm. These Indians were the first human beings we had seen since May 30th and in

one hundred and fifty miles of travel.

The Canadian Border is a straight line cut through the wilderness about twelve feet 

wide along the 141st meridian west longitude. On prominent hilltops and in certain 

valleys and it is marked by nine copper or brass cone about two feet high set in 

concrete with a number on and Canada on one side and United States on the other. 

Sunday June 15, 1942 – Twenty miles today. Entered Tanana.

Monday June 16, 1942 – Headed Northwest all day. Crossed Gardiner Creek 2 pm. 

Beautiful ground and exposure ever since entering Chisana-Tanana Valley. Made 

about thirteen miles today. May make Northway day after tomorrow with luck. We 

see three to six planes passing daily overhead, but no one ever sees us. Urine still 

very dark and still feels bilious. 

Tuesday June 17, 1942 – Followed ridge along right limit of Tanana all day and 

camped for night on Tanana just above point where Nabesna River flows into it. At 

Scottie Creek village Indians told us to build smoky fire and fire several shots. Then 

a boat would come and get us from Indian Village about seven miles up Nabesna. We 

did so, but no one came. We can hear planes of Northway seven miles away. 

Wednesday June 18, 1942 – Evidently our shots were heard, because an Indian boy 

and man appeared at our camp at five am. They said they heard our shots and came 

over, thinking it was some Indian who was hungry. We invited them for breakfast 

then had Bobbie Cain our Indian Guide return with them to the native village to 

get a gas boat to ferry us across Tanana and up the Nabesna to Northway Airfield. 

The Indian with gas boat arrived at our camp on the Chisana River at eleven am, 
The Construction of the Alaska Highway 97 

Figure 35. Walter Mason’s A Company 97th Engineer Regiment building a pioneer bridge. Photo by 

Walter E. Mason. Lael Morgan Collection, UAF-2012-71-351. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, 

University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

we loaded up and took off at two pm for Northway Airfield where we arrived about 

four-thirty pm. The charge for ferrying us up was $20.00, which we paid for in 

rations, miscellaneous food, etc., worth $10.00 and ten gallons of gas at $1.00 per 

gallon. We saw our first white people today since leaving Burwash on May 30th.

The Alaska portion of the road from the Richardson Highway to the Canadian border was the 

responsibility of the 97th Engineer Regiment, an all-Black unit under the command of Colonels Stephen 

C. Whipple and Lionel E. Robinson. The regiment arrived at Valdez on the 29th of April 1942 and assisted 

the Alaska Road Commission on the Richardson Highway upgrade. On the 7th of June they began what 

would come to be known as the Slana Cutoff, a new road from Slana through Mentasta Pass to the Tanana 

River, which they had completed by August 17th near the junction of the Tok and Tanana Rivers. This was 

12 miles east of Tanacross village. They then crossed the Tanana River and pushed towards the border, 

which they reached on October 17th with the expectation of meeting the 18th Engineer Regiment coming 

north from Kluane Lake. Carrying on southeast, the two regiments met near Beaver Creek, Yukon, on 

October 25th, completing the last gap of the pioneer road (Doyle 1943). The 97th, along with several

civilian contractors, were tasked to spend the winter extending and upgrading the pioneer road from the 

White River back to Tanacross (Duesenberg 1994:24-28). 

The 97th Engineers consisted of about 1200 enlisted men and 50 officers. By October 1942, 

they were distributed at camps established at intervals along the highway, as detailed in Table 4. 
98 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

table 4. Winter camps of the 97th engineers, Winter 1942-43

Location Group Structures Capacity 

White River 1 Platoon Engineers 12 buildings 100 man rest camp 

Beaver Creek 1 Platoon Engineers 12 buildings 100 man rest camp 

Gardiner Creek Battalion HQ & 

Support Co. 

31 buildings 

Gordon Lake Regimental HQ, 

Battalion HQ, & 

Support Co. 

33 buildings 

Northway Junction 1 Company 18 buildings (incl. 

Field Hospital) 

Midway Lake 1 Platoon Engineers 12 buildings 100 man rest camp 

Little Tok River 1 Platoon Engineers 5 buildings

Source: US National Archives. RG 94, Adjunct General’s Office. WW II Operation Reports 1940-48 

American Theatre / Box 31 / Folder 91-DP1 0.1 Alaskan Department – History of the Whitehorse 

Sector of the Alcan Highway 1942-43. 

In addition, eighteen Iowa construction contractors, employing about 1,300 civilian 

workers, joined the 97th in the Tanana valley in August 1942. After a summer of “one exhausting 

move after another for... two and a half months; fifteen camps in all,” they too established semipermanent camps at 30 locations between Big Delta and the White River, including Beaver Creek, 

Mirror Creek, Desper Creek, Gardiner Creek, Little Beaver Creek (just west of Northway Junction), 

Midway Lake, Tok Junction, and Tanacross (Duesenberg 1994:85). Finally, a variety of support 

and maintenance units of the War Department, Quartermasters, Signal Corps, Airport and Medical 

Personnel, and so on, were present, mainly stationed at the Snag, Northway, and Tanacross airports. 

At Northway, similar to the other airports, the air and support staff base consisted of 57 buildings 

by 1944,38 capable of housing 70 officers and 816 enlisted men.39 Altogether then, the Upper Tanana 

region saw an influx of about 4,000 people in 1942-43, an unprecedented number who, unlike the 

immigrants of the Chisana Gold Rush, remained in the area for the next three years. 

Social Relations with the Highway Builders

Relations between Dineh and civilian contractors also seem to have been generally favorable. 

Dineh were frequent visitors to the contractor camps near Midway and Northway. Dineh women sold 

moccasins, gloves, and birchbark baskets to the workers as souvenirs, and the men supplied some game 

meat and acted on guides on some hunts. White workers listened to myths and stories of Dineh history 

and Dineh joined them for dinner. “Workers recall that the natives developed a routine of appearing along 

the road at the same time every day to hitch a ride.... Art Bolton, Kaser construction foreman, remembers 

Chief Northway came practically every Sunday to his camp for dinner. ‘He was particularly fond of our 

canned peaches,’ says Art. ‘We thought a lot of those people. The chief would often bring his attractive 

daughters who liked to dress in modern clothes. They were really nice people’” (Duesenberg 1994:147). 

38 Report of Excess Real Estate, Northway Airfield 13 October 1945. US National Archives. RG 77, Records of the Office of 

the Chief of Engineers / Entry Security Classified Subject Files 1940-45 / Box 602 / Folder 602 Northway Airport Alaska. 39 US National Archives. RG 77, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers / Entry Security Classified Subject Files 

1940-45 / Box 640 / Folder 600.1 Northwest Staging Command (2 of 4).
Effects on Native Subsistence 99 

Sexual liaisons between the highway contract workers and Dineh women occurred. While 

some resulted in lasting relationships – the men staying on after their construction contract ran 

out or the women moving elsewhere with their husbands – most were more ephemeral, with the 

men leaving the region once their construction work was completed, often leaving one or several 

children behind with their abandoned “country wife.” One Dineh woman who lived on the lower 

Chisana looked off wistfully into the distance when I asked her about the building of the Alaska 

Highway. “The highway,” she sighed. “Lots of boyfriends then,” she added with a laugh (Easton n.d.). 

Another married a contract worker, and then moved away from the region in order to place their 

children in a larger parochial school. One of these children moved back into Northway in her 40s 

after living in Washington State, California, and New York, consciously working to become proficient 

in her Native language and working with Elders to preserve and transmit Dineh culture. Simeone 

(1995:42) has generally observed that “liaisons between Native women and soldiers produced 

children who were often left behind after the war, and some Native women who married soldiers 

left the region forever.”40 Since the subject of illegitimacy is regarded in negative terms in white 

morality, they are seldom identified as such in genealogical research. Instead, following Dineh social 

custom, most of these children were simply subsumed into the local community as the woman’s 

matrilineal offspring and integrated into their subsequent marriages.41 

Effects on Native Subsistence

Despite these relatively good relations between individuals, construction of the Alaska 

Highway also brought new difficulties to the Dineh. Disagreement among historians regarding the 

effect of the building of the highway on Native subsistence was noted earlier. In the Upper Tanana 

region, however, the impact seems to have been considerable.42 There were several reasons for this. 

The first was the blandness of the construction worker’s diet. Rations for the 97th Engineers 

were particularly poor in 1942-43, since fresh foods could not be shipped due to a lack of space 

and so “B-rations for frigid climates” were heavily used. A report noted that “while this food 

was undoubtedly nourishing its sameness and lack of variety soon palled on the appetite of all 

personnel. The troops in the field, working 10 to 16 hours a day, were forced to eat Vienna Sausage, 

chili con carne, and corned beef hash, at practically every meal, until, after a reasonable time, they 

began to throw it away untouched. The situation was later improved [in 1943] by the shipment of 

certain dehydrated foods.”43 

The situation for the civilian contractors was little better. With the full contingent at Gulkana 

in July 1942, the camp required 60 pounds of flour and ten dozen eggs to make a morning meal of 

pancakes and 325 pounds of salmon for lunch, purchased from the Ahtna resident, Frank Ewan. As 

they moved into the Tanana valley, supply lines became more tenuous and less timely, resulting in 

loss of fresh foods, particularly meat. The men reacted predictably. “We have been without fresh 

40 Until at least the mid-1950s, official Army and Airforce policy was not to encourage or approve marriages of enlisted 

men in Alaska due to a lack of married quarters and low pay, a policy that led directly to Alaska Native women having 

children of servicemen and remaining single mothers. This caused some concern in the Bureau of Indian Affairs due to the 

increase in welfare and other support payments to such families. US National Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of 

Indian Affairs / Entry 121, Central Classified Files (1940-1956) / Box 128 / Folder 9135-1948-AK-741.

41 McKennan (1959:117) records that “adoptions often take place, and the parents draw no distinction between their own 

and their adopted children. The latter are generally orphans or [children of single parents], although occasionally a man 

with no family will adopt the child of some relative who has more children than he can feed.” 

42 Clarke (n.d.:33) “observed few signs of wildlife destruction around army and construction camps,” during his biological 

survey of the Canadian portion of the highway corridor north to the White River in the summer of 1943. “Some bears had 

to be killed and we had evidence of game hunting by Army and Public Roads Personnel were made. In one place we saw 

evidence that sheep had been killed illegally. Army and construction men were too busy to hunt,” he concludes. 

43 US National Archives. RG 94, Records of the Adjunct General’s Office. WW II Operation Reports 1940-48 American Theatre / Box 31 / Folder 91-DP1 0.1 Alaskan Department – History of the Whitehorse Sector of the Alcan Highway 1942-43. 
100 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

meat nearly three weeks now, and beans were getting tiresome to most of us – yesterday afternoon 

the climax came; fresh meat was needed and the only answer was to go hunting. So the men leaving 

for the woods were bristling with rifles and wearing determined looks” (Duesenberg 1994:47).

Many workers also engaged in fishing and hunting as a source of recreation in the 

wilderness. The War Department encouraged this as a means to maintaining morale. “Owing to 

their location they have had no social or other contacts with civilization and only such recreation 

as could be obtained by hunting and fishing,” the Chief of Engineers was informed in August 1942,44 

although without a hunting license this was technically illegal. The military subsequently sought 

and obtained the liberalization of the Yukon and Alaska game laws to allow hunting and fishing 

privileges for military personnel in Alaska and the Yukon. The Alaska Defense Command’s General 

Orders “enjoined every member of the military service in Alaska to not only conform to the letter 

and spirit of the game regulations but to conduct himself in a sportsman-like manner and avoid any 

act of thoughtlessness or greed that might brand him as a game hog or unworthy citizen.” In support 

of fishing as a recreational activity, fishing tackle was distributed “to enable 10 percent of personnel 

to go fishing at one time.”45

Civilian workers also availed themselves of the opportunity to fish and hunt as recreation 

as well as providing supplementary food. Duesenberg quotes one worker gleefully reporting that 

“there is game galore around us – bear, deer, moose, caribou, beaver, mink, wolf, ducks, and geese.” 

He also presents photographs of a day’s catch by some of the men (see Figure 36); strings of fifty 

or more fish, smaller grayling, mid-sized whitefish, and thirty-pound lake trout, are proudly held 

(Duesenberg 1994:164-65).

In his 1946 ethnographic sketch of Northway, Goldschmidt (n.d.:57) records that, “During the

recent war an air base was established at Northway with dire results to the village. The men of the post 

engaged in hunting of game, which resulted in a serious reduction of the wildlife population. Natives 

whose very life depended upon the fur and meat animals were filled with resentment at soldiers who shot

for mere pleasure, frequently not even picking up the carcasses of the animals so destroyed.” Elsewhere 

in his report, Goldschmidt (n.d.:26) records Chief Isaac of Tanacross complaining that, “these army people 

have been killing off the rats. The White people try to clean up all the game,” an observation that suggests 

that some military personnel were also engaged in either for-profit-trapping or merely wanton killing of

muskrat for recreational pleasure in a boring landscape. 

Concerns over increased pressures on game stocks in Yukon led the Canadian government 

to set aside virtually all the land on the southern side of the highway from Haines Junction to 

the international border as a Game Sanctuary in December 1942. Early the following year the 

Territorial Council, which held jurisdiction over hunting regulations, prohibited all hunting, even 

by Natives, within the preserve and for a mile on either side of the highway along its length. The 

conservationist ethic was stronger than the belated recognition that this would create hardships for 

the Native people of the Kluane Lake and borderlands region. Authorities sought to ameliorate their 

limited misgivings in the offering of some assistance to affected Natives in the form of facilitating 

the marketing of muskrat pelts and the extension of welfare benefits along the northwest portion of 

the highway (McCandless 1985, Coates and Morrison 1988).

The opening of the Alaska Highway to civilian traffic and the building of the Taylor Highway 

into the Dawson Range north of Tanacross after the War brought increasing numbers of nonresident hunters into the region. This further reduced the region’s subsistence base, particularly the 

Fortymile caribou herd and furbearers. In 1946, Goldschmidt (n.d.:26) heard repeated complaints 

44 Hoge to Chief of Engineers, Wa D.C., 29 August 1942. US National Archives. RG 77, Records of the Office of the Chief of 

Engineers / ACC #72A3173 / Box 14 / Folder Storage 611 (Alcan Highway Part 1). 

45 Annex No. 3 to G-2 Periodic Report No. 62 (24-31 July 1943). US National Archives. RG 407, Records of the Adjutant 

General’s Office / Entry 427 / Box 7 / Folder 91-DC1/21.
Effects on Native Subsistence 101 

Figure 36. Duesenberg Construction Workers with a Catch of Fish. H. Milton Duesenberg Collection, 

Clear Lake, Iowa. 

“that the Whites, who come into the area for the trapping season alone, would take all the rats 

from the lakes, and destroy hunting for several successive years.” Goldschmidt wrote his wife 

that “The Indians are anxious for some protection against the encroachment of Whites, which 

take their cabins and their trap lines and threaten them with shooting, then kill out all the game” 

(Goldschmidt 1946a). The situation was not much improved the following year when a BIA field 

agent visited the villages of Tanacross, Tetlin, Northway, and Mentasta Lake to: 

Ascertain how the livelihood of the natives of those villages is being affected by 

the increase in White settlers along the Alaska Highway. It was found that the 

natives of all the villages except Tetlin, which has a reservation, have been bothered 

considerably by White encroachments on their trapping areas, and particularly by 

transient muskrat hunters who camp along the road, clean out the muskrats which 

are the principal fur animal of the area, and drive on” (Strong n.d.). 

Simeone (1992:49) notes similarly that along the Taylor Highway “some non-Native hunters 

lined the road waiting for the caribou to cross, taking animals primarily for their antlers.” Pointing 

to the fact that the number of resident hunting licenses grew from about 9,000 in 1946 to 31,500 

in 1955-56, stricter State game laws, which for the first time explicitly restricted Native subsistence 

hunting, became an inevitable response to increased competition over diminishing subsistence 

resources. “These regulations created an antagonism between Native and non-Native that is still 

apparent today in the debate over subsistence” (Simeone 1992:49). 
102 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Animals were not the only subsistence resource affected by the construction crews. 

Although plants were never a primary source of direct nutrition among the Dineh, they nevertheless 

were a critical component of the subsistence economy, specifically as a source of direct (in the heat 

and light of fires) and indirect (as insulating architectural components) energy required to survive 

the cold temperatures of the subarctic. The loss of easily accessible firewood in the vicinity of the 

villages was previously noted and could only have been exacerbated by the needs for both fuel 

and building material along the length of the highway corridor. The seemingly endless vista of a 

wilderness forest was in fact not endless. By May 1943 at Snag, for example, “the available supply of 

timber in the vicinity of the Airport has now run out and it will be necessary for Currie and Lundie 

to move their saw mill to the nearest available stand of timber, which is located about 25 miles from 

the airport.”46 Mature spruce trees are still rare in the area today. 

Wage Labor in a Hinterland Boom-Bust Economy

Another feature of highway construction that affected Dineh subsistence patterns was 

the availability of opportunities to exchange their time and labor for cash wages. While many 

Dineh took up some sort of wage labor during this period, it is uncertain to what extent it was 

pursued. Simeone (1992:46) writes that “some Tanacross people believe that during the highway 

construction the Native economy changed to approximately 50% wage labor. While hunting was 

still considered the ‘regular life,’ almost everyone devoted at least half of their time earning cash to 

purchase food.” More specifically, Simeone (1995:41) notes that “Men worked as guides for survey 

crews or as construction workers, while women served as domestic help or made money selling 

mittens, moccasins, and beadwork to the workers.” Some men worked with John Hajdukovich 

operating a sawmill, which provided timber to the construction effort (Brown 1984) while others 

cleared brush for the extension of the airports at Tanacross, Northway, and Snag (Easton n.d.). 

The draw towards wage labor also motivated the abandonment of most of the villages that lay 

off the highway and promoted increased sedentarism in the villages along it. With rare exceptions, the 

residents of Big Scottie Creek, High Cache, and Scottie Creek moved to Northway and Snag. While people 

continued to use the Chisana River basin for hunting and fishing, this became a seasonal, short-term use

during the 1940s. A few families, notably the Justin brothers (Chisana Joe and Nabesna John), Bell and 

Laura John’s, White River Johnny’s, Andy Frank, and Titus and Annie John, remained living “in the bush” of 

the basin, as these traditional areas away from the highway came to be called. 

Many scholars (e.g. Simeone 1995, Strong 1972, Brown 1984) maintain that the engagement 

in wage labor developed an increased dependency on western manufactured foods and material 

goods. To the extent that this is demonstrated by the use of wages to purchase such goods, they 

are right, but I am not sure that “dependency” is the appropriate concept. Typical of Northern 

development projects, the building of the Alaska Highway and its ancillary roads produced a shortterm boom economy, which was followed by an inevitable bust once the work was completed. The 

US government spent more than $1 billion dollars in Alaska between 1941 and 1945. In 1943, there 

were about 152,000 armed forces personnel present, requiring support services from foodstuffs 

to entertainment. Between 1940 and 1950 the non-Native population more than doubled from 

40,000 to nearly 95,000. “In short, the war was the biggest boom Alaska ever experienced, bigger 

than any of the gold rushes of the past. Yet at the end of the war, with the curtailment of defense 

spending, Alaskans once again were confronted with the problems of a seasonal economy” (Naske 

and Slotnick 1987:131). The reaction to the contraction in local wage labor was varied. Some people 

moved away to seek new jobs elsewhere, a few were able to pick up jobs associated with highway 

maintenance and other government infrastructure, and some returned to join others engaged in a 

46 Memo to Commanding Officer, Alaskan Wing, Status of Construction, 11 May 1943. US National Archives. RG 77, Records 

of the Office of the Chief of Engineers / Entry SCSF 1940-45 / Box 635 / Folder 600.914 Northwest Air Route (2 of 4).
 

 

Effects on Native Health - Alcohol 103 

mixed subsistence-trapping economy. In both Canada and the United States there were increased 

levels of government cash transfer in the form of old age pensions and welfare payments. As citizens 

of the emerging post-war welfare state, Dineh had the right to access these payments, and as 

economic actors doing so afforded many the capacity to continue a subsistence lifestyle congruent 

with Dineh values on the margins of the wider encapsulating capitalist economy. This is similar to 

former foraging societies worldwide documented by anthropologists (e.g. Easton 2001a, 2007b; Feit 

1982, 1999; Lee 1992; Nadasdy 2003; Petersen 1991) 

Such a perspective frequently emerges in discussions with Upper Tanana Dineh, who 

continue to regard the subsistence lifestyle, even with its limited cash input, as the most appropriate 

way to live a good life and follow the Dineh Way. This does not imply that their society has entirely 

rejected the drastic changes introduced with the construction of the Alaska Highway. Rather, this 

also suggests that the intrusion of the capitalist economy and wage labor system into the Dineh Way 

are not the only factors that have contributed to conditions of “dependency” or “impoverishment.” 

We must also consider the incursion of one specific commodity – alcohol.

Effects on Native Health 

Alcohol 

Walter Goldschmidt (1946a) summarized the health effects of the highway at Northway in 

1946 as follows: 

The story of Northway is indeed a sad one. It is the same story with native people 

throughout the nation, but it has been done in the 1940’s rather than in the 1840’s. 

The natives have been ransacked with disease, especially TB. Lately they have 

been getting dysentery from the water and dying of it. The whites complain that 

the natives haven’t sense enough to boil their water. Yet it turns out that the Army 

built an air base upstream from the village and dumped its sewage in the river. 

One teacher – missionary is reputed to have pimped the native girls with the Army 

personnel, who probably required little of the go-between services. Liquor has come 

in and the old people are impatient and fearful in the face of it with their youngsters. 

The widespread use of liquor in the Upper Tanana region had been effectively suppressed 

for many years by a “gentleman’s agreement” among the traders not to import it, an agreement that 

began to break down in 1932 when, according to John Hajdukovich, Herman Kessler began to bring 

liquor and liquor-making materials into his store at Gardiner Creek. Despite this, however, the effect 

of liquor on Native communities in the Upper Tanana seems to have been negligible through the 

1930s. Burge was able to report that in August of 1938: 

According to the local whites and the Indians themselves, there is very little whiskey 

consumed on the Upper Tanana. There have been cases of Indians obtaining 

whiskey from whites, and a few instances of home distilling, but there has been no 

widespread drinking. They do not apparently go to any great trouble to get liquor.... 

In general, there seems to be a strong public opinion against the introduction of 

liquor; during my stay, the Indians signed a petition requesting the authorities to 

prevent the issuance of a license for the sale of liquor to any traders operating in 

Tetlin, Tanana Crossing and Nabesna (p. 15).

By the time Goldschmidt visited the Upper Tanana in 1946 liquor consumption patterns 

had changed enough to cause considerable stress to the local Native leadership. Walter Northway 
104 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

welcomed Goldschmidt to his community along with the following words: “I have tried to learn 

everything I can. My grandfather told me our way of doing things. He told me how to act. He 

told me not to use things too strong. Now the white man has brought us whiskey. Now I am 

losing all my own people. I am sorry about this white man business” (Goldschmidt n.d.:57-

58). At Tetlin the liquor problem was considerably less. “Liquor was brought into the village

for the first time this [spring], and there are just the beginnings of disaffection among the late 

teen and people in their early 20’s. The clans have seen what has happened at Northway and 

Tanacross and are hoping to avoid it” (Goldschmidt 1946b). In another letter Goldschmidt 

(1946a) writes that “I know that I sound like an old blue nose, but the problem of drinking in 

these places is a nasty one.” 

The opening of the highway for civilian traffic and the development of Tok as a regional 

service center further entrenched liquor consumption and its related problems among the 

Upper Tanana, as roadhouses, cafes, and stores appeared all along the highway. As Simeone 

(1992:50) notes, with the building of the highway “Native people were exposed to alcohol on an 

unprecedented scale. Where alcohol had been relatively rare in the upper Tanana region before the 

War, it became commonplace afterward. Bars sprang up along the road, particularly at Tok. Alcohol 

became a health problem that has devastated Native communities over the fifty years since the 

highway was built.” 

The litany of the specific effects of alcohol has been enumerated often: poverty, child neglect, 

spousal abuse, fighting, and accidental deaths. Two important Chisana area residents died at this 

time directly from alcohol. “Skookum” Lucy John, White River Johnny’s first wife, froze to death 

along the highway while drunk, while the wife of the recently deceased Chief Johnson, grief-struck 

and drunk, burned to death at Snag after inadvertently knocking over a candle in her cabin while 

falling into a deep sleep (Easton n.d.). However, perhaps the most recalled tragedy was the death of 

Jacob Isaac, a son of Chief Isaac of Tanacross. On September 8, 1945, he drowned while crossing the 

Tanana River from the Army field in a small boat in the company of a white soldier with whom he 

had been drinking (S. Boyd 1945). Some members of the Council thought it might have been murder 

and met with the Commanding Officer to discuss it. “Sam had asked the bar tenders in the Civilian 

Rec Hall not to sell liquor to our natives. He also asked the army not to sell beer to the natives. The 

White people criticized him for his discrimination...one councilman had taken a bag of beer away 

from Jacob earlier in the evening” (A. Boyd 1945). No charges were laid, but shortly thereafter the 

Native villages were placed off-limits to military personnel. 

Disease and Illness 

The influx of newcomers also brought a variety of illness and disease that were either 

previously unknown or in new strains to the Dineh. Many became sick, and some died as 

a result of no immunity or low resistance. Measles, dysentery, jaundice, whooping cough, 

mumps, and meningitis appeared in the villages, and during the winter of 1942-43 measles 

and influenza became epidemic all along the highway corridor in Native communities 

(Marchand 1943). 

Tuberculosis had already become endemic in the Upper Tanana region by the 1930s, but 

the increased ease and speed of travelling among communities afforded by the highway embedded 

it further in nearly every village. Tubercular death rates for Alaskan Native people were dreadfully 

high, particularly when compared to the general American death rates, as shown in Table 5. By

1943, Alaskan Native health statistics showed grim life expectancy of morbidity and mortality 

for the average Native person, as revealed in Table 6. At particular risk from exposure to these 

illnesses were the young and the elderly, and many Upper Tanana Dineh of these ages died during 

the 1940s. 
 

 

Disease and Illness 105

table 5. tubercular death Rates per 100,000, 1940-1945

Year Alaska Natives United States 

1940 367.3 45.9

1941 426.5 44.6 

1942 340.3 43.1 

1943 346.2 42.6 

1944 362.2 41.3 

1945 359.1 40.1 

Source: US National Archives. RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Entry 121, Central 

Classified Files (1940-1956). Box 16 Folder 6219-1947-AK-032.

table 6. mortality statistics, alaska, 1943

All Alaskans White Alaskans Native Alaskans United States 

Infant Mortality 

1943 (per 1000 

live births) 

119.6 37.9 180.3 40.4 

Birth Rate per 

1000 

22.7 18.3 29.8 

Death Rate per 

1000 

13.3 24.0 

General Mortality 

1943 

1,322 520 802 

CAUSE OF DEATH 

TB 297 17 273 409.5

Heart Disease 170 134 36 234.4 

Accidents 

(other than car) 

127 79 48 174.1 

Pneumania 117 19 98 161.3 

Whooping Couth 62 0 62 85.5

Source: Foster to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 11 January 1946, re. 1943 Statistics. 

According to Walter Mason, officially Army medical personnel had no responsibility for the 

health of Native people along the highway. However, there are several accounts of their providing 

medical aid to Upper Tanana Dineh who became ill. Of particular note is the case of Joseph Tommy 

Johnny, a son of White River Johnny and his second wife Cecily. Mr. Johnny had contracted a 

particularly virulent form of tuberculosis of the skin, and his parents believed he was dying when 

the Army arrived. The Army flew him out for treatment at the Native tuberculosis sanatorium at 

Sitka, where a series of operations and treatments cured him (Easton n.d.). 
106 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Another “hidden” activity of Army personnel was the disbursement of army rations and 

equipment to the Dineh. This was completely against all policy, however some Natives recalled 

how boxes of food would “fall” off a truck while in transport; in actual fact some soldiers were 

deliberately dropping a case or two off their trucks along the highway for the express use of 

the Dineh. In addition to food, some Dineh received ammunition, which was in short supply 

commercially during the war. Finally, Dineh scavenged additional food or equipment from army and 

civilian dumps along the road. 

In late 1943 the dumping of food and other stores along the White River in the vicinity of 

the highway was reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In bringing this to the attention of 

the War Department’s Security and Intelligence Division (G-2), J. Edgar Hoover (1943) also noted he 

had been “advised that many Indians in the vicinity of the White River have already removed a large 

supply of usable articles,” including canned goods sufficient “to feed themselves and their sled dogs 

for two or three years.” 

A subsequent investigation confirmed the existence and location of a cache “two miles down 

the east bank of the White River from the junction of the river and the Alaska Highway.” The cache 

had been observed in June 1943 by a Utah Construction Co. worker and consisted of “about two tons 

of canned Army meats such as Spam, Vienna sausage, meat and vegetable hash, pork luncheon meat, 

etc., all of this in apparent good condition and appearing as if it had been merely dumped off a truck 

in a haphazard fashion and not piled there.” However, “upon arrival at the above described scene, it 

was discovered that subject cache had been removed by some unknown person and was no longer 

in evidence, with the exception of a few crushed cans of meat and vegetable hash of Quartermaster 

origin, and broken, empty boxes which had contained Army foodstuffs.” In addition, during their 

search, “three other food caches containing abandoned Army supplies and some valuable road 

construction equipment were discovered.” The report concludes: “With regard to the mention in the 

basic letter of Indians obtaining large amounts of canned meats, it can be said that the local Indians 

had been previously offered Army foodstuffs that had become damaged in shipment and were not 

prone to accept them. This curious fact can be explained by the existence of much work, high wages, 

high fur prices and the difficulties of transporting any of the aforementioned foodstuffs. It is also 

notable that canned meats are not considered good fare for sled dogs and are too heavy to carry on 

long treks by dog team” (Whitham 1944). 

A tragic unintended consequence of this practice was the death of Chief Johnson, the Dineh 

Huskeh of the Lower Chisana basin-Scottie Creek borderlands from about the 1920s until his death. 

Mrs. Bessie John recalled that he became terribly ill after eating a can of peaches he had gotten from 

an Army dump (along with a good pair of boots), and the description of his painful death at Snag 

corresponds well with that of contracting botulism (Easton n.d.). 

A final, absurd action by the Army had a detrimental effect on some local Dineh. This was 

the destruction of the Native graveyard at Snag, which was bulldozed during the construction of the 

road from the Alaska Highway to the airport at Snag. The senselessness of this to the Dineh merely 

confirmed their worst perceptions of non-Native people. Such a disturbance of the resting place of 

their relatives, who in Dineh cultural belief were still alive in spirit form awaiting their opportunity 

for reincarnation, caused many considerable psychic pain. This act, combined with the tragic deaths 

of Chief Johnson and his wife Lakduu, symbolically presaged to many Dineh the great difficulties 

they were to face in the years to come with this new road of access to their homeland. 

The Consolidation of State Authority in the Chisana River Basin

Judge Wickersham’s 1915 prediction of the overwhelming of the Upper Tanana River 

basin was thirty years off the mark and it was caused not by a railway but a highway. The building 

of the Alaska Highway transformed the borderlands region from one of difficult access to one of 
The Consolidation of State Authority in the Chisana River Basin 107 

direct access and facilitated the further assumption of authority by the State over the lives of the 

Upper Tanana Dineh. In the case of the Alaskan portion of the region, this was an extension and 

acceleration of processes of State hegemony begun in the late 1920s. In the case of the Yukon 

portion of the region, this was really the first time since the Chisana Gold Rush that Canadian 

authorities concerned with aboriginal people turned their attention towards it. The road allowed 

more frequent visits by a variety of government representatives, including social workers, 

development officers, Indian Agents, medical personnel, and educators, as well as immigrant 

settlers, itinerant capitalists, and a variety of missionaries. This increased access resulted in new 

interference into and authority over the lives of the Dineh in the region. In turn, the Upper Tanana 

Dineh became increasingly aware of the need to react politically to, incorporate judiciously, and 

resist these attempts to assimilate their society into the encapsulating states of Canada and the 

United States. 

The concerns expressed by Walter Northway and other Dineh since the late 1930s regarding 

the need for formal recognition of the Upper Tanana land rights became increasingly pressing. 

In addition to describing white encroachments on Native trapping areas, BIA field agent James 

B. Strong’s report on his 1947 trip to the region noted that two liquor dealers had set up on or 

within the borders of the Tetlin Reserve in order to sell alcohol to the Natives (Strong n.d.). This 

information, along with Walter Goldschmidt’s report and the lobbying efforts of the American 

Association of Indian Affairs did lead to a withdrawal order of nearly 208,000 acres around 

Northway that year, but the withdrawal was revoked in 1954 without any designation of reserve 

lands for the Dineh of the Alaska borderlands (Brown 1984:170-172). 

The subsequent resolution of the Alaskan Indian lands question over the following twenty 

years was a complex battle waged between Alaskan Native organizations, their real and assumptive 

allies in a variety of lobby organizations in the lower 48 states, the federal and state representative 

governments, a myriad of state and federal bureaucracies, Alaskan, United States, and international 

commercial and conservation interests, and innumerable individuals, the full complexity of which 

will probably never be able to be realized. Volumes of histories and analyses have been offered thus 

far, with more surely to come. Donald Mitchell’s two-volume history of “the story of Alaska Natives 

and their lands” (Mitchell 1997, 2001), written from the perspective of having served as general 

legal counsel to the Alaska Federation of Natives, provides as good an initial guide to this historical 

labyrinth as any (but see also Case 1984 for a focus on the legal implications). It is sufficient to say 

that President Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) into law in 1971. 

Under its provisions all aboriginal rights and land claims in Alaska were extinguished and replaced 

with specific lands, monetary compensation, and defined and limited aboriginal rights. Among other 

significant trade-offs, Alaska Natives gave up any aboriginal hunting and fishing rights and were 

subject to the hunting and fishing laws and regulations of general application.

Activism for recognition of Native land rights in Yukon can be traced back as far as January 

1902, when the Lake Laberge Huskeh Jim Boss, recognizing the lasting effect of the Klondike Gold 

Rush, wrote the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Canada to request compensation and lands 

set aside for the Natives of the Yukon. “Tell the King very hard,” he wrote, “we want something for 

our Indians because they take our land.” The Canadian Government’s policy response for the next 

seventy years, with a few limited exceptions, was benign neglect of this and subsequent requests for 

negotiations on Yukon Native land claims. 

In 1973 the Yukon Native Brotherhood published Together Today for Our Children Tomorrow 

and submitted it to the Trudeau government of the day as their opening position in the modern land 

claims process. This eventually led to the territory-wide Umbrella Final Agreement between the 

Government of Canada, the Council for Yukon Indians, and the Government of the Yukon in 1993. 

It stipulated the common principles for the negotiation of individual land and self-government 
108 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

agreements to be negotiated with the individual Indian Act Bands of the Yukon. Learning from the 

experience of their Alaskan cousins, the Dineh of the Yukon steadfastly insisted upon, and retained, 

their aboriginal hunting and fishing rights to take wild game at any time of the year, anywhere in the 

Yukon, for the purposes of subsistence or religious ritual. 

The borderland Dineh of Canada, who are now politically organized under the White 

River First Nation, were not able to reach a satisfactory local agreement and refused to approve a 

proposed final agreement in 2004. In April of 2005 the Federal Parliament’s approved mandate for

negotiations of Native Land Claims in Yukon lapsed and formal negotiations have now ended. Thus 

the White River First Nation, who extended membership to many of their relatives resident in Alaska 

who themselves or whose ancestors had lived off the common lands of the borderlands in the past, 

remain without a land claim agreement and retain their constitutionally protected aboriginal Rights 

and claim over the full extent of their traditional territory in Canada (Easton et al. 2013). 

Returning to the immediate post-highway years, Dineh in the Yukon were also faced 

with new challenges of the post-highway world. One of the most influential on the lives of the 

children and their parents of that era was the trauma associated with the extension of educational 

opportunities for the Dineh of the borderlands. 

In 1947 the Catholic Oblate missionary order (OMI) began to operate an itinerant school 

at Snag village. So few attended that no federal assistance for the provision of education to Natives 

was sought. Nevertheless, in 1948 the Oblates established a church and school at Snag under the 

direction of Father Pierre Rigaud. The initial resistance of the children was overcome by providing 

candy to everyone who attended. “I remember very well the beginning of that school,” Rigaud later 

recalled, “It was kind of funny.” 

First of all there was nobody. I rang the bell in the morning and nobody came. And 

then, after around eleven o’clock, I heard the screaming outside and I looked – it was 

Old Lucy Johnson that had Esther Tom Tom and was pushing her to the school. Finally, 

they reached the house and Lucy opened the door and pushed Esther in and closed 

the door behind. And I went to Esther and I told her, I said “Come on.” But she held my 

hand and she bit me sound. But after a while, anyway, I gave her candy and she come 

down and in the meantime Lucy was getting another one. It was Agnes [Tom Tom]. 

[They were] the two that I started school with that morning. We didn’t teach 

anything, but anyway I gave them candy and told them to bring the others in the 

afternoon. Finally, in the afternoon, the whole group came. Big boys, big girls, small 

boys, small girls. Everybody was coming. Then we started the school, you know, and 

I told them we would have some play and this and that and everybody seems to be 

happy. And, finally, the next day they were there and [we kept] on going like that. 

Especially the big girls, Alice, Bill, and Ida, they were quite helpful, I must say, taking 

care of the little ones and all that. 

There were the big boys, there was Joe Jack, Walter too. Johnny Tom Tom was 

very smart at the time. He was a good kid, very smart. All of them were smart. I 

must say that those kids from Snag, in no time they learned how to read and their 

calculations, their arithmetic, addition, subtraction, in no time at all. They were very 

smart, I must say that.... [I ] stayed two or three months with them (Rigaud 1995).

In 1949 the school was held further south, at the Native fishing camp at Edith Creek, in order to 

accommodate students from both the Burwash and White River areas. 

In 1951, with federal funding, the Oblates opened the Lower Post Indian Residential 

School south of Watson Lake, in the far southwest Yukon. This ended the early era of local Native 
The Consolidation of State Authority in the Chisana River Basin 109 

village schools, which in the case of the Upper Tanana and Stewart River Dineh was short indeed. 

Instead, a bus was sent up along the highway, collecting all the school-age children they could 

find. If parents would not release them, they were told that it was the law to send their children 

to school and they could face fines if they did not. Furthermore, Family Allowance Benefits, which 

had been extended to the Yukon borderland Dineh a few years earlier, were directly tied to school 

attendance by children. Authorities had the power to cut off payment of this small source of capital, 

which had become increasingly important with continuing collapse of the fur trade market thru 

the 1940s and 1950s along with the loss of subsistence hunting opportunities in the Kluane Game 

Sanctuary. Parents were promised that their children could return in the summer; what they were 

not told is that the parents would have to pay for their transportation to and from the school, nearly 

750 miles away. When children could not return the following year due to the costs, some Dineh 

parents of coming-of-school-age children decided to move – either over to Alaska where there 

were local schools or deep into the bush away from the highway in an attempt to avoid the Oblates. 

Several mixed-race families, including Mary and Pete Eikland, moved to Haines Junction, where 

their children could attend the territorial school, but full-blood Natives were prohibited in Yukon’s 

segregated territorial schools, a situation that did not change until the 1960s. 

Ironically, as Dineh children were being taken from their parents in order to “civilize them 

through modern education,” a territorial school was opened in Beaver Creek in 1953 for children

of highway maintenance workers stationed there, but it too was for white children only (Almstrom 

1991; Easton n.d.). This situation effectively decimated the Yukon portion of the borderlands of 

young Dineh, many of whom were not to return until the 1960s, some of whom were never to 

return, leaving behind some elderly and a few holdouts, such as White River Johnny and his family, 

the elderly Enochs, and William Peter. Bell and Laura John, Andy Frank, and Titus and Annie John 

abandoned their sometimes residences in Canada and took up permanent residence on the Alaskan 

side, although they continued to travel seasonally up Scottie Creek to hunt and fish. It is almost

impossible to imagine the challenges that the children sent to the Lower Post school faced. Many, 

now between their late 30s and early 60s, simply refuse to talk of their experiences, the trauma too 

great even now to recall. Language use was punished, Native culture denigrated as savagery, and 

rote mechanical behavior instilled through monotonous exercises and unforgiving discipline. (For 

more detailed discussions of the Indian residential school experience in Yukon see King (1967) and 

Coates (1984, 1987).) Many who eventually returned to the borderlands still have an unconscious 

prohibition against using their Native language as adults, even though in safe eliciting environments, 

such as in bush camps and workshops at the Yukon Native Language Centre, they demonstrate they 

retain a full ability to do so. Others suffer from remorseful self-abuse through alcohol, drugs, or 

criminal behavior, holding a deeply ingrained self-loathing for themselves and their Native culture. 

This is illustrated in the following excerpt from the author’s fieldnotes

I’ve seen X around Whitehorse off and on the last month or so and met him 

on Main Street in Whitehorse today. He told me he was doing some time up at the 

Salvation Army half-way house for breach of probation – drinking got him two 

months back in the penal home. Initially he was very comic about it, saying that “It’s 

not such a bad life. They feed you and you got a nice bed and I can go out every day. 

Of course I have to be back by five o’clock, but that’s dinner time anyways.” It was 

the first time that X had admitted his troubles directly to me and he surprised me by 

continuing. He’s in until the 5th of June, he told me.

“Well, that’s not so bad,” I offered, “you just don’t want to make a career of it.” 

“Oh, I’ll be back...there’s no doubt about it,” he replied. “It’s my second home, jail. 

I’ll always be back. I’ll keep trying to stop drinking but I don’t think I’ll ever be able 
110 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

to, not completely. I’ve been trying different things, new ways of trying to deal with 

it. They’ve some new programs now that they’ve admitted they were wrong and I’ll 

try them and see how I do. The best is still the bush, though, hunting, camping out. 

No booze out there and you’re doing something important, you know it, you can feel 

it. But it’s hard to get over it. I’m suing them, and I’ll keep that up. If I win, well, at 

least I’ll have some money.” 

I began to understand his oblique references to “they” and “them”, but 

not wanting to pry and wishing to emphasize the positive I tried to steer the 

conversation away from the latent topic. “By the time you are out Shakwak should 

be started up. You should be able to get a job there pretty quick and put away some 

good cash.” The Shakwak project was the name for the Alaska Highway realignment 

through the Shakwak Trench, from Whitehorse to the border, which had been 

under construction off and on over the past decade; additional funding from the 

US government, which had financed eighty percent of the work to date had been 

announced last fall. 

“I don’t think so. Why work, when I’ve got such a good lifestyle already. Good 

food, warm bed. Work like that is just an excuse to drink. Up at the jail, there are 

three of us, all the same. The guard comes into our room and sees us sitting there, 

he says ‘You guys got the cleanest room.’ Of course we do, that’s what they trained 

us for; you get up in the morning and you make your bed, tight as a board. At night, 

before you go to sleep, you tidy up your room, fold your clothes, put everything away. 

We all grown up now, but we still do it, like robots, every night and every morning. 

We’re still scared, you see. That’s why we all drink.” 

I could not avoid the topic any longer. “You were at Lower Post,” I said, referring 

to the Catholic-run federal residential school for Indians, which operated down 

south near Watson Lake from 1951 to the mid-60s.

“Yeah. And that’s why I drink. I know it. See that guy?” He gestured his head to 

a fellow walking down the street. “He used to be a great basketball player. He was 

over at Courdecet Hall,” which was a non-denominational Indian residential school 

opened later in Whitehorse. “You couldn’t touch him. The only way I could stop him 

was to trip him as he went by. That’s cheating but you couldn’t touch him otherwise. 

He hasn’t played since he finished school. He’s like us. I didn’t see him for years. I 

thought he must be dead by now, but I met him last week again. “I thought you were 

dead,” I told him. He gets out to Dawson or Pelly Crossing when he can, and takes 

some time off; that’s why I haven’t seen him. But he comes back, like the rest of us.” 

“I’m a grown man now, on the outside. I got a six-year-old daughter. I was talking 

to my wife yesterday when it was raining. She said my daughter had gotten my big 

parka on. “What are you doing?” “I’m taking this to Daddy,” she says, “he must be 

cold.” She wanted to bring me my coat. Here I am in Whitehorse, in the rain, and she 

wants to take care of me” (Interview with Anonymous, 19 May 1999, Whitehorse, 

Yukon, in Easton n.d.). 

After the construction of the highway, the village at the mouth of Snag Creek became the 

principal Native settlement in the Yukon portion of the borderlands, having attracted a number 

of Upper Tanana-speaking Dineh from the lower Chisana River basin to the west and Northern 

Tutchone-speaking Dineh who exploited the area to the east and north of the White River. The 

extension of road access from Whitehorse to Mayo in 1950 led the Hudson’s Bay Company to 

close its trading post at the mouth of the Stewart River, and some of the Northern Tutchone Dineh 
The Consolidation of State Authority in the Chisana River Basin 111 

who lived in that area moved to take up residence along with other Dineh at Snag village, after the 

Canadian Department of Indian Affairs amalgamated the Stewart River and Snag Indian Act Bands 

(Easton et al. 2013), beginning the contemporary integration of these two language groups within 

a single community. These people became the core ancestors of the modern Indian Act Band of 

the White River First Nation of Beaver Creek, but not before a twenty-five year period of forced 

assimilation with the Native settlement at Burwash in order to reduce the administrative costs 

of the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs.47 This experience was to have lasting effects on the 

internal social relationships between these Dineh and their external political relationships with the 

federal government (Easton et al. 2013; Nadasdy 2004). 

The highway also allowed for the regulation of border crossings for the first time. However, since

the American customs was stationed at Tok and the Canadian station was on the highway about a mile 

south of the Snag Creek bridge, enforcement was intermittent until the establishment of the ALCAN 

border station on the 141st meridian in 1972. As a result, some Dineh continued to pass back and forth 

from the lower Chisana River basin up the Mirror and Scottie Creek tributaries to hunt and fish. But not

all: Customs agents visited the villages to inform the residents that if they were living on one side or the 

other of the line they were not to cross it to trap or hunt, and many Dineh began to self-restrict their 

movements under the fear of being caught and punished. The Snag customs station was close enough to 

the border for Canadian agents to patrol it with regularity and prohibit cross-border entry of a variety of 

goods, including county foods and potlatch gifts (Easton n.d.). This was a one-way prohibition, however; 

traditional Native commodities of truck and barter were allowed freely into the United States from Canada 

under a provision of the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation (the Jay Treaty), which the United 

States yet recognizes. Canada has always refused to recognize the application of the Jay Treaty provisions 

since its federation, maintaining its Parliament has never approved it, a technical point based on the fact 

the 1794 treaty was between the United States and Great Britain (Case 1984; Isaac 1999). 

Another serious effect of the increased accessibility of the borderlands by state representatives 

was the enforcement of new regulations to manage fur trapping and recreational, commercial, and 

subsistence hunting and fishing, a topic of enormous complexity and significant differences on either side

of the border. In general, however, the Dineh on both sides of the border felt similar effects. 

Subsistence hunting allowances for aboriginal people had been allowed in both jurisdictions 

during most of the 20th century; however, the sale of wild game had been managed in Alaska since 

the first Alaska Game Act of 1902 and restricted to the periods of open season hunting specified 

in the Act’s regulations. In Yukon there was little regulation of market hunting until its sudden 

prohibition in 1947, thereby ending a source of capital and goods for Dineh since the initiation of 

contact with whites in the previous century. Trapping regulations and trapline registration were 

introduced earlier in Alaska (1920) and enforced with more vigor. In Canada little was done to 

interfere with the principal foundation of the Yukon Native’s peripheral relationship with the 

external capitalist economy – the federal government position being that they were “best left as 

Indians” (Coates 1991) – until the introduction of trapline registration in 1949 and enforcement of 

additional trapping regulations in 1950. (Mitchell 1997:179-192; McCandless 1985).

The post-highway restrictions of the game market were not entirely a conservationist reaction 

to over-hunting but had a commercial element embedded in them as well. The improvements in the 

efficient transport of foodstuffs, which the highway allowed, stimulated commercial interests in expanding

commodity sales in the Yukon. Newly emergent notions of the superior sanitary and health benefits

of industrially produced foods, lobbying by merchants, and conservation concerns enmeshed into an 

unrecognized collusion of interests in closing the wild game market in Yukon and combined with the new 

paternalism of actively working to change the life ways of Yukon Natives to more closely mimic that of the 

expanding post-war white community. 

47 Draft Statement of Claim by the White River First Nation on “Wrongful Amalgamation” to the Government of Canada. 

White River First Nation, Beaver Creek. No date. 
112 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

The recognition of traplines had been asked for by Native trappers for some years previous 

in an effort to protect their traditional fur harvest areas from encroachment by non-Native trappers. 

Its implementation, however, had precisely the opposite effect. Registration came with requirements, 

in particular paying annual registration fees and demonstrating continued use. Failure to meet these 

requirements would lead to the trapline being regarded as lapsed and open for registration to another 

interested party. Some traplines were lost when the Native users failed to register them, pay their fees, or 

provide evidence of use to the central bureaucrats in Whitehorse (Coates and Morrison 1988:266-268). 

Restrictions were also introduced to hunting, fishing, and trapping within the areas granted to commercial

big-game hunting operations, and the enforcement of provisions of international conservation treaties, 

such as the Migratory Bird Treaty, was expanded into the borderlands (McCandless 1985).

Several Upper Tanana Dineh recall their fear during continued use and occupation of the 

lower Chisana River after the highway made increased enforcement of hunting regulations possible. 

They camouflaged the roof of the high cache at High Cache with branches, for fear that planes flying 

overhead were game wardens looking for Native hunting camps. Another said that for years he only 

ate moose meat in the bush and in the dark, since it had been obtained out of season and was illegal; 

he would cache it some distance from the village and sneak out at night to eat (Easton n.d.). 

Besides stricter hunting regulations, the increased pressure brought to bear on wild game 

by non-Native transient hunters led to the establishment of parks, game preserves, and wildlife 

refuges during the subsequent decades. The Kluane Game Sanctuary southeast of the White River was 

converted into Kluane National Park in 1972, while the area to the northwest of the White River to 

the international border remained designated a game sanctuary. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and 

Preserve, encompassing the upper course of the Chisana River, and Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge, 

which embraces the lower course of the river, were established in 1980 with the passage of the Alaska 

National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), bringing land management of the entire Chisana 

River basin under the purview of the National Park Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The 

main exceptions were Native Allotments and Native Corporation lands conveyed under the provisions 

of ANCSA; however, these lands represent a paltry proportion of the total area (Bleakley 2002). 

Title VIII of ANILCA provided for preferential subsistence hunting rights to be granted to “rural 

Alaska residents” on federal public lands in Alaska. “In some sense ANILCA is a ‘settlement’ of Alaska 

Native fishing and hunting rights, because it affords the predominately Native population of rural Alaska

a unique set of protections and preferences for off-reservation subsistence uses of wildlife. However, 

ANILCA is unique in the field of United States Indian legislation because it also extends these same

protections to non-Native rural residents who participate in the predominately Native subsistence 

economy” (Case 1984:26). What ANILCA did not anticipate was the near impossibility of integrating this 

federal legislation with politically defined Alaska citizen interests as represented by the State of Alaska, a

contest that remains unresolved to this day (Norris 2002). In sum, the post-highway period introduced 

a wide variety of political, legal, social, and economic factors that combined to dramatically reduce the 

availability of wild game and fish in support of Native subsistence needs.

A final post-highway effect has been continued military activity in the area after the Second 

World War, as a variety of training ranges were established in “the wilds of Alaska.” This has 

led to a number of problems, including restricted access, regular large- and small-scale military 

exercises, the disposal of unused munitions and other harmful pollutants across the landscape, and 

affront to Native spiritualism in the case of exercises being held in areas of importance within clan 

mythologies. Recently, some effort has been made to address some of these issues by the American 

military (Diane Hansen, personal communication). 

In conclusion, the building of the Alaska Highway dramatically affected the lives of the 

Upper Tanana Dineh, not the least of which was the assumption of authority by the State over the 

lands of the Chisana River basin and the lives of its traditional inhabitants. Perhaps the most bitter 
The Consolidation of State Authority in the Chisana River Basin 113 

recollection of the ability of the State to enforce its administrative authority is the failed potlatch 

for Mary Eikland in 1981, when hundreds of blankets and other potlatch goods were seized by 

Canadian Customs agents as illegal importations from American resident relatives and friends 

travelling to her funeral potlatch in Beaver Creek, Yukon. As a result, the Upper Tanana have not 

held a proper potlatch ever since on the Canadian side, and a few elderly American Dineh never 

returned across the border again. The loss of one of the defining elements of their cultural identity 

as Dineh is heavily felt in Yukon. Fortunately, ever resourceful in developing the means to sustain, 

confirm, and celebrate their unity as a distinctive Dineh society and culture they have adapted to the 

new circumstances by holding this important ceremony for Canadian resident Upper Tanana Dineh 

in Northway or Tanacross, where the tradition continues to flourish.
 

114 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

CONCLUSION 

My people help each other. Someone there [in Alaska] wants to bring me fur coat, 

shirt, that’s what I like. Rabbit skin, martin, potlatch food. They [customs] want 

tax. It hurts my heart.... Where do government people think I came from? A hole in 

the ground? ... Who is that Queen Elizabeth anyway? Who made her? We are Queen 

here, we all are Queens, Native people. (Bessie John, speaking to representatives of 

Canadian Customs in Beaver Creek). 

The existence of the international border dividing the land and people of the Upper 

Tanana Dineh between two different nation-states remains a vexing issue for the descendants of 

the aboriginal occupants of the Chisana River basin. The resentment of the arbitrary imposition 

of the boundary between Canada and the United States upon the lands of the Upper Tanana Dineh 

is deep, separating as it did “Our Great People” from each other with different laws, education, 

and regulations over their activities. Today, many Dineh work hard to maintain their filial and 

clan relationships across the border, travelling or telephoning regularly between Beaver Creek, 

Northway, Tanacross, Tetlin, Mentasta, Chitina, Whitehorse, Fairbanks, and other places where 

relatives and friends have settled, bringing gifts of the land, sharing memories and contemporary 

experience, and consolidating a continued ethnic identity as the Dineh of the borderlands, whose 

territory encompasses the Chisana River basin. 

And while their dispersal from the Chisana River basin, by the variety of factors described in 

this report, has resulted in a serious erosion of contemporary knowledge of the area’s history, use, 

and potential among many younger Dineh, 

considerable contemporary attachment 

to this land remains. It is embodied in the 

practices of the Dineh who still live on and 

off the land in the area of the borderlands 

in order to “keep the land open,” of parents 

who take their children regularly out to the 

borderlands for evening walks “just to look 

around,” during which they are told their 

Dineh history and taught the Dineh Way. Much 

of this contemporary attachment and practice 

is invisible to the casual outside observer, 

non-Natives believing that the integration of 

television, automobiles, homeboy fashions, 

and hip-hop music demonstrates the final 

assimilation of the Dineh into western 

capitalist consumer culture. But the image is 

a chimera, unreflective of the social, cultural, 

and spiritual beliefs and practices which, 

though unarguably changed by history, 

remain unalterably Dineh in nature (see also 

Easton 2007b). 

In July of 1994 I sat with Mrs. Bessie 

John outside her home in Beaver Creek, 

passing the afternoon working spruce root 

I had collected for her the day before into 

Figure 37. Bessie John trimming Spruce Root, 

Beaver Creek, Yukon, 2004. Photo by N. A. Easton. 
Conclusion 115

basketry thread in the old way, using knife, tooth, and fingernail. Along the way we talked about the 

education of the young, although in retrospect I realize she was also talking about the education 

of people like me. Indian people need to teach their young themselves at home by talking their 

language and sharing their knowledge, she said. By way of example, she told me how the night 

before her granddaughter had come over to ask for some medicine for her mother. The young 

girl spoke to her in English. Bessie replied in Upper Tanana – “I don’t understand you. Speak my 

language” – at which her granddaughter repeated her request in a halting Upper Tanana. Bessie 

then got up and hugged her, told her how good she was, and got medicine for the mother. 

“This is the way my great people taught their children. Grandma, grandfather, mother, father, 

all speak their language to their kids at home. They put them in bed early and tell them stories. If 

Indian people did that our children would be all right.” 

After a moment of silence, she said, “There is lots of White people who are dead in this land 

now,” she said, meaning, I think, that the “English” were here to stay.” There’s two now,” placing 

her hands together and then opening them and moving them a little away from each other, “Indian 

people and English,” raising each hand in turn for emphasis and then laying them open, palm up on 

the table side by side. “Both together are here and our children need their ABCs from school and I 

teach my grandchildren here.” 

“Indian and White,” she repeated, now holding her hands apart and then bringing them 

together to join as an intertwined clasping of her fingers, “both live here on this earth. We got to 

share with you this place here, for all people, Africans, Chinese, White, and Indian. We all work 

together for a good life here. My grandchildren go to White school, learn to read, math, and I tell 

them my life and then together we gonna make this world a beautiful, beautiful place.... Then I can 

go on my trail to heaven.” 
116 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

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130 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Appendix 1 – Census Records of the Upper Tanana Basin 

The geographic isolation of the Chisana basin prior to the construction of the Alaska 

Highway in the mid-1940s has left us with an imperfect accounting of the region’s Native 

population in official government censuses. Fortunately, early explorers, missionaries, traders, and 

anthropologists conducted a variety of censuses during their time in the region. 

The use of these records is not without problems, however. Among these are the following: 

• The use of English equivalents of Native names, or no name at all, such as recording 

simply “Wife,” “four children,” or “Old Mama,” for example. 

• The use of different names for the same people or the same name for different people. Among 

the Upper Tanana Dineh, any one individual was known by a variety of both personal names 

and nicknames. In addition, the appropriate name to call an individual was informed by 

kinship relationships. A man might be called X by a younger man from another clan, Y by 

his maternal niece, and Z by his male cross-cousin of similar age with whom he hunts, for 

example. As well, many people were known by a variety of English names as well. The last 

resident Upper Tanana Dineh of the upper Chisana basin, for example, has been variously 

recorded as “Scottie Creek Joe,” “Chisana Joe,” “Joe Justin,” and “Joe Austin.” 

• The recording of children as birth children of the person they are living with, rather than 

their adoptive status. At a social level this is not a particular problem, since adoption of 

orphaned children and the “giving” of an infant to childless couples or couples deemed 

more capable of raising the child in the case of young unwed mothers was a common 

social practice among the Upper Tanana and resulted in the creation of a fictive kinship 

linkage socially recognized as legitimate. 

• Inconsistencies in date and place of birth. The inconsistencies in birthdate can be 

accounted for by the general disregard in recording precise numbers of years in Upper 

Tanana culture; people were infants, children, adults, and Elders, standing in relative 

older or younger status with any other person. The inconsistencies in birthplace can 

be accounted for by a number of factors. A principal factor must be differences in place 

of birth, place of childhood, and place of current residence. To ask the question “where 

are you from” of a nomadic people who live at many different places in the course of a 

year, let alone over the course of a lifetime, is extremely problematic. Another source is 

the lack of correspondence between English and Upper Tanana geography. For example, 

an individual may be identified as being born at “Scottie Creek” in one record and at 

“Chisana” in another. This might mean they were born at Big Scottie Creek village, which 

lies on Scottie Creek at its confluence with the Chisana River, or one of several camps or 

villages along the east side of the lower Chisana River, or simply a difference between 

where one was born and where one was principally raised. Finally, as the mapping of 

primary villages shows, there were a number of villages along Scottie Creek, none of 

which would have an English name and thus all of these villages are possible candidates 

for actual location of birth. 

• Inconsistencies between numbers in tables and summary totals: The numbers in the 

pages that follow are reproduced from the cited source documents. In some cases, there 

may be inconsistencies between the numbers in the tables and the summary totals. This 

reflects inconsistences in the source documents.

Despite these problems, the records contain much that is surely accurate or relatively so, 

and they are of considerable interest as a result. 
1A - Census of Upper Tanana, Collected by Robert McKennan, winter of 1929/30 131 

 

1A – Census of Upper Tanana, Collected by Robert McKennan, 

winter of 1929/30 

The Robert Addison McKennan Papers in the Archives at the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, 

University of Alaska Fairbanks consist of field notes, mostly torn out of a small flip book (approx. 

7 by 3 1/2 inches) and cut or torn to be re-arranged in topical files, generated by his fieldwork in 

the region in the winter of 1929-30 and a second, shorter trip through the area in 1964, as well as 

letters and notes collected from other sources. 

The following represents his record of census for the area, which he collected in 1929/30. 

Upper Nabesna – Chisana 

1. Old Mama 

2. Joe – Polly 2 small girls 

3. John – Lucy Jack = grown son 

4. Titus – Corrine Ed = 14 year old son Charley = grown son 

5. Andy – Lily Belle 2 small children, 1 male, 1 female 

Men = 6 Female = 5 Children = 5 Total = 16 

Last Tetling 

1. Old Albert 

2. Old Lucy Daughter, son 

3. Old Lady 

4. Chief Luke – Helen 

5. Alfred – Lucy one small boy 

6. Bill – Helen 5 children = 2 male, 3 female 

Men = 5 Women = 6 Children = 7 Total = 18 

Tetling 

1. Old Joseph 2 grown daughter 2 small daughters 

2. Martha Titus – grown son 

3. Andrew David and Lucy 3 children (2 female, 1 male) 

4. Walter David and Lena 1 child (male) 

5. Big John and Jessie 1 son 

6. Joe John and Jessie 2 children (female) 

7. Paul Joe and Annie 4 girls 

8. Chief Peter and Eva adopted boy 

9. Jimmie Joe and Jennie 1 child (female) 

Men = 9 Women = 10 Children = 15 Total = 34 

Mouth of Nabesna 

1. Old Lady grown daughter 

2. Mrs. Northway Maggie (grown daughter) Lee Northway 

3. Bill Northway and Liza 1 grown girl 1 adopted girl 

4. Walter Northway and Lily 4 children (1 male, 3 female) 

5. Steve Northway and Edna 2 children (female) 

6. Chief Sam and Bessie 3 children (2 male, 1 female) Fred Sam 

7. Frank Sam and Annie 3 children (2 male, 1 female) 
132 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

1B – List of Residents of Nabesna and Scottie Creek, 1937, by the 

Episcopal Church 

This list of residents of Nabesna and Scottie Creek was compiled for the Episcopal church, 

quite likely by Miss Lucy Wright. It may be the basis of the census in McKennan’s field archives, but 

it differs in both detail – listing specific children of parents, for example – and in facts (some people 

do not appear in both lists). Together the two provide a fairly comprehensive census of the region in 

the winter of 1937-38. The list of birthdays is from the same archival source. 

Last Name First Name Birthdate Birthplace Father Mother Comments 

Albert [Peter?] 1887(?) Nab 

wife? Elsie Old Anna 

Northway Northway 

Albert Pauline April, 1911 Nab [Peter?] Elsie 

Albert 

Oscar 10-8-18 Nab [Peter?] Elsie 

Albert 

Northway 1-10-20 Nab [Peter?] Elsie 

Albert 

Ada 12-25-23 Nab [Peter?] Elsie 12-24-23, 

Albert from Ada 

Gallon 

Daniel 12-10-25 Nab [Peter?] Elsie 

Albert 

Abraham 12-10-25 Nab [Peter?] Elsie 

Albert 

Alice 12-6-27 Nab [Peter?] Elsie 

Albert 

Kenneth 9-6-29 Nab [Peter?] Elsie 

Albert 

Jennie 8-15-33 Nab [Peter?] Elsie 

Albert 

Roger 4-1-37 Nab [Peter?] Elsie 

Albert 

16 children altogether includes Dick, and from Ada G. 

Lily others 

Albert Oscar 10-8-18 Nab [Peter?] Elsie 

Albert 

wife Mary Oct 1919 Last Tetlin Dawson Lucy 

Luke 

Albert Mary Jean 4-4-37 Nab Oscar Albert Mary 
 

 Last Name First Name Birthdate Birthplace Father Mother Comments 

Demit Elisha 1867 (?) Kechemstuk Jack Demit 

wife Bertha 1897 Scottie Crk John Annie John 

Demit Fred 9-1-24 Nab Bertha 

Demit Jessie 11-30-28 Nab Elisha Bertha 

Demit Palace 8-30-31 Nab Elisha Bertha 

[Polly] 

Demit Herbert 9-5-35 Nab Elisha Bertha 

Allen 

Demit Doriss 11-2-36 Nab Elisha Bertha 

Demit Esau 1912 Charlie 

Demit 

Mary Sam died 11-1-

38 

Demit Joe Charlie 3-7-10 Nab Charlie 

Demit 

Mary Sam 

wife Laura 1910 Last Tetlin Old North- Anna 

(Eliza) way Northway 

Louise 2-4-28 Last Tetlin Joe Charlie Laura 

Demit 

James 2-3-30 Last Tetlin Joe Charlie Laura 

Demit 

Carl 3-15-32 Gardiner Joe Charlie Laura 

Crk Demit 

Carrie 1-19-35 Nab Joe Charlie Laura 

Demit 

Eula 11-23-37 Nab Joe Charlie Laura died 

Demit 

Joslyn 2-27-38 Nab Joe Charlie 

Demit 

Laura 

Isaac Follet Mansfield Chief Isaac died 11-6-

(Philp) 38 

[wife?] Pauline April 1911 Nab Peter Albert Elsie 

Northway 

John Annie 1862 Scottie Crk John 

Bertha 

Demit 

Martha 

Demit 

1B - List of Residents of Nabesna and Scottie Creek, 1937, by the Episcopal Church 133 
134 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Last Name First Name Birthdate Birthplace Father Mother Comments 

Pauline in Shushana 

[Polly] with 2 

children 

Kye Andrew Scottie Crk Bill Kye Laura 

wife Maggie 11-8-14 Nabesna Old North- Anna John 

way 

Kye Dora 11-13-38 Nab Andrew Kye Maggie 

Mark Joe Mansfield Big Mark Agnes J. 

wife Martha Scottie Crk John Annie 

[John] 

Mark Agnes 5-8-33 Chisana R. Joe Mark Martha 

Mark John 12-17-36 Nabesna Joe Mark Martha 

Mark Pauli 12-8-38 Nabesna Joe Mark Martha 

Flushman 

Joe 

Northway Anna Scottie Crk John 

Northway William Old Anna [John] 

Northway 

Northway Walter Old Anna [John] 

Northway 

Northway Stephen Old Anna [John] 

Northway 

Northway Elsie Old Anna [John] 

Northway 

Northway Laura Demit Old Anna [John] 

Northway 

Northway Maggie Kye Old Anna [John] 

Northway 

Northway William 1884 Nab Old Anna [John] 

Northway 

wife Laura 1887 Tetlin Big John Jessie Tega 

(Eliza) 

Sarah Jan [?] 

Northway Walter 1885 Old Anna [John] 

Northway 
1B - List of Residents of Nabesna and Scottie Creek, 1937, by the Episcopal Church 135

Last Name First Name Birthdate Birthplace Father Mother Comment 

wife Lily [John] Scottie Crk John 

Northway Eva 6-6-19 Nabesna Walter N. Lily 

Northway Celia 11-2-23 Nabesna Walter N. Lily 

Northway Ena 7-10-25 Nabesna Walter N. Lily 

Northway Harry 11-15-27 Nabesna Walter N. Lily died 1938 

Northway Martha Nov 1931 Nabesna Walter N. Lily 

Northway Selina 2-6-33 Ladue Crk Walter N. Lily 

Northway Theodore 10-26-35 Nabesna Walter N. Lily 

Northway Lee 1-6-38 Nabesna Walter N. Lily 

Northway Stephen Old 

Northway 

Anna [John] 

wife Edna B. Mark Agnes 

Northway Arthur 12-27-28 Nabesna Stephan Edna 

Northway Alfred 2-7-30 Ladue Creek Stephan Edna 

Northway Avis 2-12-31 Ladue Creek Stephan Edna 

Northway Ester 12-13-23 Tanacross Stephan Edna nurse 

Northway Aubrey 1-27-35 Nabesna Stephan Edna 

Northway Harley [no entry] 

Northway Harold 5-5-37 Nabesna Stephan Edna 

Titus Frank 1914 Scottie Crk Titus [no entry] 

wife Emma 1914 Nab Charlie D. Mary Sam 

Titus Bernice 

Pauline 

6-12-36 Nab [Frank] 

Titus 

Emma 

Titus Kathleen 25-8-37 [no entry] [Frank] 

Titus 

Emma 

John Titus about 60 

[1877] 

Scottie Crk Titus [no entry] 

wife Lucy (dead) 1884 Nab Albert [no entry] 

br Frank see above 

Lena 

Titus Lena [n.e.] Scottie Crk Titus Lucy Albert 

Titus Albert [n.e.] Scottie Crk Titus Lucy Albert 

Titus Laurence [n.e.] Scottie Crk Titus Lucy Albert 
136 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Last Name First Name Birthdate Birthplace Father Mother Comments 

Sam Chief 1863 Nab 

1st wife ? died 1937 Frank 

2nd wife Bessie about 38 

[1900] 

Scottie Crk 16 when 

married 

Sam Helen 11-21-18 Nab Chief Sam Bessie 

Sam Mary 10-8-21 Nab Chief Sam Bessie 

Sam Andrew 3-5-28 Nab Chief Sam Bessie 

Sam Silas 2-11-31 Nab Chief Sam Bessie 

Sam Frank 1885 Nab Chief Sam Bessie* 

wife Annie c. 31 [1906] Tetlin Big John Jessie Tega 

Sam David 9-1-25 Nab Frank Sam Annie 

Sam Susie 9-12-27 Nab Frank Sam Annie 

Sam Julias 9-4-28 Gardiner 

Crk 

Frank Sam Annie 

Sam Samuel 10-3-30 Nab 

Sam Roy 6-1-34 Nab Frank Sam Annie 

Sam Adam 12-23-36 Nab Frank Sam Annie 

Sam Harry 1-7-39 Nab Frank Sam Annie 

Charlie Peter Mentasta Mentasta 

Charlie 

? 

wife Mary 10-8-20 Chief Sam Bessie 

Alice Marie 10-26-38 Nab Peter 

Charlie 

Mary 

* Frank Sam was son of Chief Sam’s first wife, not Bessie (Ruth Sam to N. A. Easton, 3 July 2003).

Scottie Creek 

Last Name First Name Birthdate Birthplace Father Mother Comments 

Austin Bill 

(Chisana) 

Scottie Crk 

wife Maggie Scottie Crk 

girl child died 1938 

Frank Andy Scottie Crk Frank Sc. Crk 

wife died 

Frank Celia 1934 Scottie Crk Andy Frank 

Frank Alfred 1936 Scottie Crk Andy Frank 
1B - List of Residents of Nabesna and Scottie Creek, 1937, by the Episcopal Church 137 

Last Name First Name Birthdate Birthplace Father Mother Comments 

Kye Bill 1895 Scottie Crk Kye --

wife Laura 1898 Scottie Crk -- --

Andrew 1918 Scottie Crk Bill Kye Laura 

Percy 1932 Scottie Crk Bill Kye Laura 

Mary 1936 Scottie Crk Bill Kye Laura 

John Little 1885 Scottie Crk John 

wife Old Lucy (1862) Scottie Crk 

wife Celia 1914 Scottie Crk Old John Lucy 2 children 

John Joe 1916 Scottie Crk Little John Lucy died 1938 

John Bessie 1927 Scottie Crk Little John Lucy 

John John 1937 Scottie Crk Little John Celia 

Source: Episcopal Diocese of Alaska, 1887; Subgroup III Parish Records, 1896 - ; St. Timothy's 

Mission Records, 1937-1976, Miscellaneous Records, 1937-1972. Series 2/Box 2/Folder 2 – Census, 

Upper Tanana River, St. Timothy's Mission, Tanacross Alaska, 1937 1939. 
138 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

1C – Elder’s Birthdays and Indian Names Collected by the 

Episcopal Church 

The two tables that follow were drawn from handwritten letters from Miss Lucy Wright to 

Mrs. MacIntosh, wife of the Episcopalian missionary at Tanacross, which are found in the Episcopal 

Church records from St. Timothy's Mission. The first table comes from a letter about the need to get 

information in order to apply for old age pensions for Natives of the region and provides a list of 

Elder’s birthdays. The second table provides a list of Elder’s Dineh language names. The notes in the 

“Comments” column are my own. 

Letter to mrs. mcintosh from Lucille Wright, tanacross, 23 Nov 1937: 

“The following is a list of the ages as I have them on my census:” 

Name Born Place Father Mother Comments 

Anna 

Northway 

1857 ? Scotty Creek Scotty Creek Scotty Creek 

Annie Johnie 1862 Nabesna ? Mrs. Northway’s Sister ? 

Old Joseph 1862 Last Tetlin ? ? 

Big John 1865 Tetlin ? ? 

Little John 1854 Last Tetlin ? ? 

Ada Paul 

(Sutah) 

1857 Mentasta ? ? 

Chief Sam died Oct 16 

Old Albert 1861 Tetlin 

Old Sam 

Thomas 

1862 Mansfield ? ? 1859 older 

than Paul 

Big Frank 1863 Minto Minto ? 

Chief Henry 1872 Good Pastor Good Pastor ? older than big 

John 

Gert 

Johnathan 

? Mansfield oldest 

Lucy John 1862 Mentasta next to Gert 

Old Paul 1859 Wood River 

Julia Paul 1861 Mansfield

Bessie Walters 1871 Mansfield

- 4 or 5 years between Old Paul and Big Frank

- Old Laura older than [?”henry” or “harry”] and Bessie Walter 
1C - Elder’s Birthdays and Indian Names Collected by the Episcopal Church 139 

Letter to mrs. mcintosh, from Lucille Wright, 15 dec 1937:

“Chief Peter and Chief Luke have given me the names” 

Name Place Indiann Name Age Comments 

Little John Last Tetlin Dah teel’ 83 

Gert Tega Albert Last Tetlin O tes ‘ a 70 [Tabessa Jean 

(Titus David)] 

Old Albert Last Tetlin Tul ‘ sno 76 

Ada Paul Last Tetlin Sutah ‘ 80 [hu, died 1934 

(TD)] 

Joseph Tetlin Da gin ‘ di tahk 75

Big John Tetlin Kay nish’ sta ni 72 [see tape with 

TD] 

Annie John Nabesna Tsay’ni gag ‘a 75

Anna Northway Tsaw ‘ cheel ‘ 80 

Big Frank Tanacross Tsay gay’ tahk’ 74 

Old Paul Tanacross stut ‘ tahk 

Julia Paul Tanacross Na to ‘ sie 76 [David Paul’s 

mother (TD)] 

Old Gert 

Johnathan 

Sing Sang’ (Cheth 

Tsing’) 

Old Eva Sing ta sah (Cheth 

tha’) 

Sarah Bob Chok ni’ 

Old Lucy John Tah tsis’ nah’ 75

Bessie Walter Te talse’ 

Old Sam Thomas Gehl’ tahk 80 

Grandma Healy Jah habe’ma 

Josie Healy Hutnah 70 

Old Saline Thek thas’ between 65 and 

70 

Blind Jim Healy Je Thu’nth’ ta 65 – 70

Little Old 

Whiteman 

Na ji jah’ 90 – 100 
140 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Name Place Indian Name Age Comments 

Bessie Thomas Delth Thu ne’ na 

Annie Thomas The thus ka 

Notes: Annie John and Anna Northway were sisters. Anna Northway was Ada’s mom’s mom, i.e., Ada’s 

maternal grandmother. Her name was Ts'ok klay. (Ada Gallon to N. A. Easton, 15 November 1997.)

Source: Episcopal Diocese of Alaska, 1887; Subgroup III Parish Records, 1896 - ; St. Timothy's 

Mission Records, 1937-1976, Miscellaneous Records, 1937-1972. Series 2/Box 2/Folder 2 – Census, 

Upper Tanana River, St. Timothy's Mission, Tanacross Alaska, 1937 1939. 
1D - Census 1937-38 for Scottie Creek, Nabesna, Tetlin, and Last Tetlin, 1938 141 

1D - Census 1937-38 for Scottie Creek, Nabesna, Tetlin, and 

Last Tetlin, 1938 

The following tables present an unattributed record of census for the Upper Tanana area 

found in McKennan’s field notes, dated 1938.

Nabesna: Population=79 

Name Birthdate Mother Father Birtplace Comments 

Albert, Peter 1887 Anna 

Northway 

Old Northway Nabesna 

wife Elsie 

10 children 1911-37 

Albert, Oscar 1918 Old Albert Nabesna 

wife Mary 1919 Lucy Dawson Luke Last Tetling 

1 child 1937 Nabesna 

Demit, Elisha 1867? Jack Demit Ketchumstock 

wife Berta 1897 Annie John John Scotty Creek 

5 children ? – 1936 Nabesna 

Fred John 1924 Nabesna 

Demit, Easu 1912 Mary Sam Charlie Demit Nabesna 

Demit, Joe 

Charlie 

1910 Nabesna 

wife Laura 

Eliza 

1910 Anna 

Northway 

Old Northway Last Tetling 

6 children 1928-38 L. Tetling 2, 

Gardener Crk 

1, Nabesna 3 

Isaac, Follet Chief Isaac Mansfield 

Lake 

wife, Pauline 1911 Elsie 

Northway 

Peter Albert Nabesna 

John, Anne 1862 John Scotty Creek 

3 children 

Bertha Demit 

Martha Demit 

Kye, Andrew Laura Bill Kye Scotty Creek 

wife, Maggie 1913 Anna John Old Northway Nabesna 

1 child 1938 Nabesna 

Mark, Joe Agnes J. Big Mark Mansfield 

Lake 
142 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Name Birthdate Mother Father Birthplace Comments 

wife Martha Annie John 

3 children 1933-38 Nabesna 2, 

Chisana R. 1 

Northway, 

Annie 

1867 Scotty Creek 

6 children Nabesna 

Northway, 

William 

1884 Anna Old Northway Nabesna 

wife, Laura 

Eliza 

1887 Jessie Tega Big John Tetlin 

1 child 

Northway, 

Walter 

1885 Annie Old Northway Nabesna 

wife Lily John Scotty Creek 

8 children 1919-38 Nabesna 

Northway, 

Stephen 

1906 Anna Old Northway Nabesna 

wife Edna Big Mark Mansfield 

Lake 

6 children 1928-1937 Tanacross 1, 

Ladue Crk 1, 

Nabesna 4 

Titus, Frank 1914 Titus Scotty Creek 

wife Emma 1914 Mary Sam Charlie Demit Nabesna 

2 children 1936-38 

Titus, John 1880 Titus Scotty Creek 

wife Lucy 1884 Albert Nabesna 

3 children 

Sam, Chief 1863 Nabesna 

1st wife, Lou 

Frank 

2nd wi, Bessie 1897 Scotty Creek 

4 kids 1918-31 Nabesna 

Sam, Frank 1885 Bessie Chief Sam Nabesna 

wife Annie 1907 Jessie Tega Big John Tetlin 

6 children 1925-39 Nabesna 

Charlie, Peter Mentasta Lake 

wife, Mary 1920 Bessie Chief Sam Nabesna 

Jackson, Elisha 
1D - Census 1937-38 for Scottie Creek, Nabesna, Tetlin, and Last Tetlin, 1938 143 

Name Birthdate Mother Father Birthplace Comments 

wife, Bertha 

Johnnie 

5 children 1928-36 

scottie creek: Population=14 

Name Birthdate Mother Father Birthplace Comments 

Austin, Bill 

(Chisana) 

Scotty Creek 

wife, Maggie 

Frank, Andy (widower) Scotty Creek 

2 children 1934-36 

Kye, Bill 1895 Scotty Creek 

wife Laura 1898 Scotty Creek 

3 children 1918-36 Snake Creek ?snake = snag? 

wife Eliza 1910 

John, Little 1885 Scotty Creek 

wife, old Lucy 

3 children 1914-27 

2 grandchild 1937 

tetlin: Population=81 (including Last Tetling) 

Name Birthdate Mother Father Birthplace Comments 

David, Martha 1893 Tetlin 

David, Titus 1909 Tetlin 

wife, Jessie 1909 Maggie Demit Walter Isaac Ketchumstuk

 4 children 1932-38 Tanacross, 3 

David, Andrew Tetlin 

wife, Lucy 1896 Jessie Tega Big John Tetlin

 4 children 1926-38 Tetlin

 1 child 1917 Maggie Luke 

David, Lena 1913 Jessie Tega Big John Tetlin widow of 

Walter David

 2 children 1931-38 Tetlin 

David, Kitty Gert Tega Last Tetlin widow of 

Peter David

 2 children 1922-25 Tetlin 
144 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Name Birthdate Mother Father Birthplace Comments 

David, Ada Albert widow of 

Charlie David

 1 child 1913 Tetlin 

David, Helen 1925 Susie Paul David Chena 

David, Patrick 1932 Susie Paul David Chena 

John, Big 1865 Tetlin 

wife, Jessie 

Tega 

1869 Chisana River

 6 children 1913-18 Tetlin 

Joe, Chief 

Peter 

1876(?) Copper River 

1st wife, Eva Copper River 

Paul 1890 Eva Peter Joe Tetlin 

Lily 1915 Eva Peter Joe Tetlin 

2nd wife, 

Annie 

1906 Last Tetlin

 6 children Last Tetlin 2, 

Tetlin Lake 4 

Joe, Jimmy Chief Joe Tetlin 

wife Jenny Chief David Tetlin

 2 children 1924 Nabesna 

1930 Tetlin 

Joseph, Old 1862 Last Tetlin 

wife Mary

 2 children ? & 1923 Tetlin 

Mark, David 1912 Mansfield

wife Jessie 1902(?) Lucy Dawson Luke Last Tetlin

 2 children 1934-36 Nabesna 

Paul, Titus 1911 Julia Old Paul Mansfield

wife Agnes 

Joseph 

1915

 1 son 1937 Tetlin 

Joe, Paul 

wife Annie 1906 

5 children 1927-36 Tetlin 
1D - Census 1937-38 for Scottie Creek, Nabesna, Tetlin, and Last Tetlin, 1938 145

Last Tetlin 

Name Birthdate Mother Father Birthplace Comments 

Adams, Alfred 1895 Anna Charlie Adams Tetlin 

wife Lucy 1902 Helen Chief Luke Last Tetlin

 6 children 1922-38 Tetlin 1, Last 

Tetlin 5

John, Little 1854 Last Tetlin 

2 children 1910 & ? 

Luke, Chief 1867 Mentasta Lake 

wife Helen 1882 Last Tetlin 

Paul, Little Tetlin 

wife, Ellen Last Tetlin

 7 children 1919-1932 Last Tetlin 

Paul, Ada 1857 Mentasta Lake 

Albert, Old Tetlin 

wife, Gert Tega 1867 Tega Chisana River Mo may be 

“Lega” 

Source: Robert Addison McKennan Papers. Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of 

Alaska Fairbanks. Series 2 /Box 12 / Folder 2. 
146 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Appendix 2 – Walter Northway’s Account of His Clan History 

In recording his family’s history as he knew it, Walter Northway identified the origins of 

several Upper Tanana Dineh sib or clan groupings. This excerpt from his life history is included 

as a separate Appendix for that reason. Additionally, it is an excellent portrayal of the continuous 

movement of Dineh individuals and families as they search for better subsistence opportunities and 

appropriate spouses to marry, the initiation of social relations with strangers and their maintenance 

with kin, and a general curiosity for the world external to their immediate experience (a curiosity 

which I believe is reflected in the Dineh interest in the supernatural world as well). 

Clans 

My [paternal] grandfather, Natuu, came from way up in Canada. The people had 

a talk among themselves to decide their clan name. They started in a place in Canada 

called Xaaguu. As they walked through the top of the Wrangell Mountains (we call 

them Theetsąą Tł′aat [“copper (rock) headwaters”]), they stopped to build a fire on 

a small hill to have tea. A silver fox came running into camp where they were making 

tea. One of the men killed the fox. 

After they killed the fox, my grandmother and great-grand mother asked for the 

tail of the silver fox to use as a swatter to keep the mosquitoes away. This is how my 

grandmother and great-grandmother′s clan got their name, Naagat Ts′ąįy, meaning 

Silver Fox. 

They [another group, representing Walter′s maternal grandfather] started off 

from a mountain in Canada that stands alone, Shya′ Naaltaał [meaning “where the 

lice shoot down” – M. Tyone], located six miles from Burwash Landing Lake [Kluane 

Lake]. As they were walking, they picked up a half-eaten fish tail. They carried it 

around. This is how my grandmother′s and great-grandmother′s people got their 

real clan [moiety] name, Ch′ąą [meaning “clan”], which includes Wolf, Swan, and Sea 

Gull. [There are different kinds of Ch′ąą. Ch′ąą ch′ikeemaan means outlying Ch′ąą

clan. Ch′ąą ch′itoonyaa means middle or highest Ch′ąą clan – M. Tyone.] 

They left the place where they found the fish tail and went on to a place called

Niith′uu, located farther down from Shya′ Naaltaał. As they were traveling from Niith′uu, 

they stopped to make a fire. Suddenly they heard voices coming down the river. Most of

the men hid in the woods. My grandfather Tsuuł Ta′, also known as Stsaaiy Tsuuł, was the 

only one that stayed by the fire. He heard the voices coming closer. Grandfather Tsuuł Ta′, 

mother′s father, went down to the river and saw gahchaa′, something like a piece of rabbit 

fur, floating down the river towards him. It looked like the cotton that floats on the river.

There were voices talking and yelling inside the fur. 

Grandfather Tsuuł Ta′ cut down a branch and made a hook. As the gahchaa′ came 

closer to the bank, Grandfather hooked it and pulled it out. The voices stopped. Then 

he called for the rest of the people to come down to the riverbank. They started 

taking it apart. They cut and unwound it to take it apart. People that look like us 

came out of that piece of rabbit fur. 

The gaachaa′iin [“piece of rabbit-skin people”] were very mad and wanted to 

fight. Grandfather said to them, “Wait! We are few. Let us put our name together as 

one. We want to be as one family. That is why we pulled you ashore.” That is how 

they got their name as one clan [moiety]. From there they left together and became 

one big clan. 
Appendix 2 - Walter Northway’s Account of His Clan History 147 

They traveled and stayed with Enoak′s father in Canada. After leaving there, they 

came to a nice place to make a camp, called Theek′at. After they stayed for a while, 

some of the people moved and made camp farther down near a creek. They sent 

word back that there were a lot of fish in the creek. Men started gathering rocks 

and took them down into the creek to make a rock fence or fishing weir. Meanwhile 

the women started pulling roots to make a fishnet. This is how that place became 

known as Theek′at, meaning rock fishing place. In our language ′kat means “fish 

trap.” You may know this place today as Scottie Creek Village. And the creek Theek′at 

Niign, where they built the ′kat, is half of Scottie Creek. They also made another 

camp, known as Ts′oogut Gaaiy, meaning “little twisted spruce tree,” the name for 

Little Scottie Creek located near the Canadian border. Not too far from this place is 

another camp, called Ts′oogut Choh, meaning “big twisted spruce tree,” or Big Scottie 

Creek as you know it. Some families stayed at Ts′oogut Choh, while the rest went on 

to Ts′oogut Gaaiy. My [maternal] grandfather went to a place called Lįį Thi′ Th′an 

Nah′įįh, meaning “looking at the dog′s skull or head bone.” They made camp there 

for a while. Then they went on and made a camp called Kelt′uudn Mann′, meaning 

“water Lily lake.” Another name for the lake is Nahtsįą′ Ts′ih-chuut, meaning “we 

grabbed wolverine.” This is the lake in Canada known as Paper Lake. 

As my grandparents were coming down towards Northway, my grandmother 

gave birth to my mother and her brothers and sisters. She named mother 

Ts′attłeegn, later known as Anna.... 

Andy Frank and Bill John′s fathers were from a place near Tanacross called 

Dihthaadn, meaning Mansfield. They moved to Canada, where they married and built 

their homes. They became the Tsisyuu clan. 

My dad, T′aaiy Ta′, and his older brother went up into Canada to visit relatives. 

T′aaiy Ta′ found a girl whose name was Ts′attłeegn. He told his dad, “I found a 

girlfriend in Canada who wants me for her husband.” 

He stayed with his dad for a while, then decided to go back to Canada. 

Grandfather Natuu told my dad, “I want you to watch her and see how well she can 

work. See how well she can do everything.” 

My dad then went back and lived near her family. He did all the work for her 

family and kept an eye on her for almost one year. Grandfather wanted to know how 

well she worked before he would let my dad marry Ts′attłeegn. 

Dad went home and told my grandfather, “She is a good worker. She doesn′t do 

anything wrong, she sews a lot, and she weaves snowshoes.” 

My grandfather was satisfied. They were ready for marriage. 

My dad went to Canada and brought her back to his village. Mom and Dad 

moved to K′ehthiign, the old-time village at fish camp where she gave birth to Bill,

Lee, Walter, Elsie, Danny, Laura, Stephen, and Maggie. These are our English names 

we received later. 

K′ehthiign, meaning “lake or stream outlet” and the name of the creek between 

Charlieskin Creek and Moose Creek, was not originally our village. It was the village 

of lots of old people. Tsee K′ee Keltseh was our village, but Jimmie Joe and those old 

people all moved to different locations from K′ehthiign. Then my dad and others 

moved in and became the second generation there. 

My uncle got married and moved to a place called Xaal. This was located 

near the Moose Creek bridge near fish camp. He moved there and made a village 

because there were a lot of fish. From there they moved to K′ehthiign. Then to K′ąįy′ 
148 An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin 

Daathiign, the place that Charlieskin Creek, Moose Creek, and K′ehthiign come 

together. They also moved to Chąąłaiy, known now as Charlieskin. My father then 

moved to Charlieskin, too. This is when my mother and her relatives of the clan 

Ch′ąą were marrying my dad′s relatives. 

From Nabesna into the Yukon 

Theetsąą Tł′aat, meaning “rocky area” [“copper headwaters”], is the name of the 

Wrangell Mountains. This was my grandfathers′ name, or the name that has come 

down from my grandfather. 

My dad′s two nephews got married up in Nabesna area. They were told who 

to marry. The women were not their choice. From there Jisht′iin married my dad′s 

niece. They had two children. Of his sons, two of them lived in the Copper area near 

the Wrangell Range, where my uncle Alfred stayed. He was Bertha Demit’s dad. 

He had a daughter, who had Mary, who later married Huston Sanford. They had 

two children who now live in Mentasta. This is how we started scattering out from 

Naateel at the head of Copper River and on. An old woman named Ch′ihihjee lives 

there. Also another old lady, named Tł′a′ Suus. These were their old-time Indian 

names. This is how my mom′s clan mixed with their clan up in Nabesna. 

From there along the mountain were Huh Shii Ta′ and his dad. There were four 

families. Then on along the mountains is a place called Tahth′ąįy, meaning “lots of 

wood or dry wood sticking up in a lake or river.” From that area they are intermixed 

with my mom′s clan and Lilly Northway′s clan. Their names intermixed with each 

other and they were adopted as one clan [moiety]. 

My grandma and my mother and other women went to the upper Chisana or 

Theetsąą′ Tł′aat. They were all dressed up and had on dentalia shells. They were 

dressed very well. People in that area did not like them showing off with their best. 

This was against their custom. Because of this, the women were punished. The 

people got together to poke a copper awl through the earlobes of the women that 

dressed up, as a punishment. 

From there one of the clan’s grandchildren moved to the Dot Lake area with 

my grandma’s clan name. From there my grandpa, nicknamed K′ost′un [meaning 

“short neck”; his real Indian name was Ts′isdaalees, meaning “carry rocks” – M. 

Tyone], traveled on to Eagle and no one knew which way he traveled. He ended up 

in Mentasta and settled there, making a village. From surrounding areas they joined 

him. The Elders told him, “If they ask you what your clan name is, you tell them 

Ts′exaatneeiy, meaning ‘we settled down at a place.’” His uncle gave him this name 

representing them. 

My grandpa′s niece is Katie John′s mother. She had Katie and from there 

Mentasta grew again. In the Copper area, from the same family, they are growing 

again stronger. They are intermingled with Tsisyuu [Ch′icheel is another name for 

the same clan – M. Tyone] from his dad and his relative Katie John. Baak′aa′nakaah 

Ta′ and his brother Ts′ildiil Ta′ were among the old people who left K′ehthiign and 

went towards Valdez. Baak′aa′nakaah Ta′ was the leader of the people who moved 

to Mentasta. 

The youngest brother went to Tazlina. His name was Douglas. Then between 

those two brothers was a brother named Diłts′ił Ta′ who used to stay in Gulkana. 

One brother stayed in Tetlin. This was Chief Peter′s dad. 

K′ost′un′s son, Yiikaałta, is from Dot Lake. His son is Xaal Ta′. Someone set fire to 
Appendix 2 - Walter Northway’s Account of His Clan History 149 

his cache, so he moved to Tanacross. After this, they all moved to different locations, 

and Chief Isaac moved into Dot Lake. 

Three places are known for Chief Isaac, Teegucheegn [Kechumstuk], Dot Lake, 

and Dihthaadn [Lake Mansfield]. His mom′s clan and his dad′s clan from that area 

are still strong. The other clans from before are not strong there anymore. 

Chief David′s father moved to Tetlin from Nat′aaiy Yaat, the mountain up on the 

other side of Chisana. That is how Tetlin became Chief David′s home. 

My uncle′s nephew was married into Dawson. Somehow from there came Alfred 

Adam. 

Then they intermixed into clans, which made the clans stronger. No one can 

say that they are stronger than us. Dawson, Yukon, Tanacross, Dot Lake, Mentasta, 

Tetlin, and through Copper Center to Valdez. All from one family – Natuu and my 

grandmother Ts′ist′e′ Dishin [meaning “old woman medicine person” – M. Tyone]. 

The clan mixed from Yukon to Northway, Dot Lake to Mentasta through Copper 

area. The highest person, recognized as the chief, stayed at Moose Creek, which is 

Northway. 

After everyone scattered from Grandfather and Grandmother, many stayed in 

K′ehthiign near Northway Village of today. Many years later many of the people had 

died. The village again started up by only eight adults and I don′t know how many 

children. The adults were my mom and dad [T′aaiy Ta′ and Anna], my brother Bill 

Northway, my sister Elsie Albert, Chief Sam′s sister, Chief Sam, Frank Sam, and me. 

Bill Northway married Eliza John. They had children, but only Sarah Gabriel is 

alive today. They were traveling to Dawson, only one day away, when they lost their 

little boy. They brought him back to Northway to bury him. 

I married Lilly John. From there the village grew again. I was born June 10, 1876, 

near Moose Creek, where we call it K′ehthiign. I was the third child out of eight. I 

had three sisters, Elsie, Laura, and Maggie. I had four brothers, Bill, Lee, Danny and 

Stephen. My grandmother was Ts′ist′e′, meaning “Old Medicine Woman.” My father 

was T′aaiy Ta′, meaning “Strongman.” Later he was called Northway. My mother was 

Ts′attłeegn, a nickname meaning “funny blanket,” because when she was born they 

wrapped her in a ragged blanket. Her real name was Ts′atch′iil. Later she was known 

as Anna. 

(From Yarber and Madison 1987:29-36. Reprinted with permission of Yvonne Yarber Carter and 

Curt Madison.) 
 

National Park Service Wrangell-St. Elias 

U.S. Department of the Interior National Park and Preserve 

Titus David, Tetlin, Alaska, 1995. Photograph by N. A. Easton. 

...the Dineh of the upper Tanana River basin of the 

Yukon-Alaska borderlands conceive of themselves as 

having occupied the region in which they live “since 

time immemorial.” Their existence as Dineh—”People”— 

attests to this belief.... To Dineh it is self-evident that 

they have been present in the region, since the settling of 

the world by human beings. Within their own accounting, 

the world that Dineh occupy was created in the distant 

past by the Creator and molded into its present form 

through the activities of Taatsan—Raven. This origin 

belief is a variation of the “earth diver motif” in which 

the earth is made by mud brought up from the bottom of 

a body of water. 

—Norman Alexander Easton 

Quote abridged