page_title: History of Alaska
section_title: Prehistory of Alaska
hierarchical_section_title: History of Alaska / Prehistory of Alaska
caption_attribution_description: Photograph of Nowadluk/Nowadlook (Nora) Ootenna wearing a coat with a fur collar. Ootenna was an Inupiat woman who was a popular subject for Alaskan photographers around the time - [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. She was has been mentioned as the daughter of James Keok[8] (.doc) (though their recorded birth dates makes this unlikely [9]) and she was married to George Ootenna[10] who were natives of Cape Prince of Wales[11] and worked as reindeer herders[12] (a business in which Lomen Bros was the main investor in Alaska)[13]. The Glenbow archive places most of the photos of her there.[14] Nora was born in 1885 and as of the 1910 Census she lived in Port Clarence (essentially Cape Prince of Wales).[15]
context_page_description: The history of Alaska dates back to the Upper Paleolithic period, when foraging groups crossed the Bering land bridge into what is now western Alaska. At the time of European contact by the Russian explorers, the area was populated by Alaska Native groups. The name "Alaska" derives from the Aleut word Alaxsxaq, meaning "mainland".
  The U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. In the 1890s, gold rushes in Alaska and the nearby Yukon Territory brought thousands of miners and settlers to Alaska. Alaska was granted territorial status in 1912 by the United States of America.
  In 1942, two of the outer Aleutian Islands—Attu and Kiska—were occupied by the Japanese during World War II and their recovery for the U.S. became a matter of national pride. The construction of military bases contributed to the population growth of some Alaskan cities.
  Alaska was granted U.S. statehood on January 3, 1959.
  In 1964, the massive "Good Friday earthquake" killed 131 people and leveled several villages.
  The 1968 discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay and the 1977 completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline led to an oil boom.
context_section_description: Paleolithic families moved into northwestern North America before 10,000 BC across the Bering land bridge in Alaska (see Settlement of the Americas). Alaska became populated by the Inuit and a variety of Native American groups. Today, early Alaskans are divided into several main groups: the Southeastern Coastal Indians (the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian), the Athabascans, the Aleut, and the two groups of Eskimos, the Inupiat and the Yup'ik.
  The coastal migrants from Asia were probably the first wave of humans to cross the Bering land bridge in western Alaska, and many of them initially settled in the interior of what is now Canada. The Tlingit were the most numerous of this group, claiming most of the coastal Panhandle by the time of European contact and are the northernmost of the group of advanced cultures of the Pacific Northwest Coast renowned for its complex art and political systems and the ceremonial and legal system known as the potlatch. The southern portion of Prince of Wales Island was settled by the Haidas fleeing persecution by other Haidas from the Queen Charlotte Islands (which are now named Haida Gwaii and part of British Columbia). The Aleuts settled the islands of the Aleutian chain approximately 10,000 years ago.
  Cultural and subsistence practices varied widely among native groups, who were spread across vast geographical distances.
caption: An Inupiaq woman, Nome, Alaska, c. 1907.
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