English, Russian, Spanish, and French place-names reflect early European exploration, but equally prominent are dozens of names from the pre-Western era. The name Alaska itself is derived from the Aleut Alaxsxa or Alaxsxix, both meaning “mainland.”
The traditional cultures of the American Arctic region are generally discussed in terms of two broad divisions: seasonally migratory peoples living on or near winter-frozen coastlines (the northern Yupiit and the Inuit) and more-sedentary groups living on or near the open-water regions of the Pacific coast (the southern Yupiit and Aleuts). [2]
Long before Bering's voyages the Tlingit Indians lived in the southern and southeastern coastal area; the Aleuts on the Aleutian Islands and the Alaska Peninsula; and the Eskimos on the Bering shore and the Arctic Ocean coast. The interior natives were the Tinneh Indians, whose language was Athabascan, that of the Plains Indians of the interior continent to the south. The Indian groups are presumably descendants of the earliest immigrants across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia, perhaps more than 15,000 years ago, and they reflect the migratory wave that reached as far as the southern extremity of South America as early as 10,000 years ago. Eskimos and Aleuts appear to be much later immigrants, having arrived, probably in boats made of animal skins, perhaps 8,000 to 3,000 years ago. All groups have been involved in the debates and adjudications over public land grants.
Seasonally migratory peoples: the northern Yupiit and the Inuit
The seasonally organized economy of Alaska peoples derived from that of their ancestors and focused on the exploitation of both sea and land resources. Traditional peoples generally followed the Thule subsistence pattern, in which summers were spent in pursuit of caribou and fish and other seasons were devoted to the pursuit of sea mammals, especially seals; food was also stored for consumption during the deepest part of winter. There were exceptions to this pattern, however. People of the Bering Strait islands, for instance, depended almost entirely on sea mammals, walrus being very important. In the specialized Alaskan whaling villages between the Seward Peninsula and Point Barrow, caribou and seals were outweighed as food resources by bowhead whales (Baleana mysticetus; see right whale). In the Brooks Range of northern Alaska, some people were year-round caribou hunters who also depended on traded sea-mammal oil as a condiment and for heat. In the Barren Grounds, west of Hudson Bay, some groups used no sea products at all, illuminating their snow houses with burning caribou fat and heating these homes with twig fires. [2]
Most shelter in winter was in substantial semisubterranean houses of stone or sod over wooden or whalebone frameworks. In Alaska, save for the far north, heat was provided by a central wood fire that was placed beneath a smoke hole; throughout the north, a large sea-mammal oil lamp served the same purpose. In 19th-century Siberia and on St. Lawrence Island, the older semisubterranean house was given up for a yurt-like structure with sod walls and a walrus-hide roof. [2]
The people nearest the Arctic Ocean relied on the snow house in winter, with most groups moving onto fresh ice fields in search of seals during that season. Caribou hunters and lake and river fishermen used the snow house on land. The caribou specialists of northern Alaska often lived through the winter in double-layered dome-shaped tents, heated like the coastal snow houses with an oil lamp; these dwellings commonly housed an extended family. [2]
Among the Yupiit a special large semisubterranean house, called a kashim by the Russians, was used for public and ceremonial occasions and as a men's residence. The kashim was the place where men built their boats, repaired their equipment, took sweat baths, educated young boys, and hosted community dances. Women had their own homes in which they worked and cared for their children. In many cases the women's homes were connected to one another and to the kashim by a system of tunnels, not all of them generally known; a number of folktales tell how canny women saved their families from raids by directing them to hidden tunnels that opened far away from the village. [2]
The institution of the kashim was stronger to the south of the Bering Strait than to its north. Kashims did not exist on St. Lawrence Island or in Siberia, nor were they found east of Point Barrow until the late 19th or early 20th century, when they began to be used by Inuit living near the Mackenzie River. [2]
Both the single-cockpit kayak and the larger open umiak were virtually universal, although they were not used the same way everywhere. The kayak was generally used as a seal-hunting craft, but, in the places where open-water sealing was limited, it was used to intercept migrating caribou as they crossed lakes and rivers. The umiak was usually a freight vessel, often rowed by women facing backward, but in whaling and walrus-hunting regions it was used as a hunting boat and paddled by a male crew facing forward. Winter transport was by sled, pulled by dogs or by both dogs and people. In most regions the number of sled dogs—which ate the same food as humans and thus were a burden in times of want—was limited, an exception being the few areas in which relative plenty was provided by whales or migrating salmon. [2]
The bow and arrow were the standard tools of land hunters. Seals and walrus were taken from shore with a thrown harpoon tipped with a toggling head—an asymmetrical point with a line affixed, shaped to twist sidewise in the wound as the detachable shaft pulled loose. Kayak-based seal hunters used specialized harpoons with fixed barbs rather than toggling heads; these were often cast with the spear-thrower or throwing board, a flat trough of wood that cradled the butt of the dart and formed an extension of the thrower's arm, increasing the velocity of the thrown projectile. The whaling umiak was manned by a professional crew; it was directed by the boat's owner, or umialik, and a marksman who wielded a heavy harpoon with a detachable toggling head and line attached to sealskin floats. [2]
Generally, American Eskimo recognized kin on both the paternal and maternal sides of the family to about the degree of second cousin. Marriage with cousins was frowned upon by most groups although permitted by some; certain groups also emphasized paternal kin over maternal. On St. Lawrence Island and in Siberia, however, there were patrilineal clans—named groups of all people related in the male line. In Siberia marriage could not be contracted by two members of the same clan, although on St. Lawrence such a rule was not enforced. There the walrus- and whale-hunting crews were composed of clansmen, the senior male became clan chief, and the chief of the strongest local clan acted as the village chief. [2]
Among other groups there was no formal position of chief, the closest to an exception being the umialik of the Inupiat. In addition to owning the boat used for whaling, the umialik was the employer of a whaling crew, recruiting his men for their professional ability and acting as benefactor to them and their families. In many villages each umialik and his crew controlled a kashim. The title of umialik was also used in some villages not devoted to whaling, especially in the northern Alaskan interior, where the umialik was the organizer of a caribou-hunting team. The position of umialik was not inherited but was gained by skilled entrepreneurs, and it brought no control over anyone but the umialik's own crew (and then only to the extent that an individual chose to remain a crew member). South of the Bering Strait the title was rarely used. [2]
Religious beliefs were based on animism; all things—animate or otherwise—were believed to have a living essence. Thus, all humans, animals, plants, and objects had souls or spirits, which might be related to one another in a hereafter, details of the location of which varied from group to group. Courtesies given to freshly killed animals promoted their reincarnation as new animals of the same species. The souls of humans were subject to interference from other spirits, and soul loss meant illness or even death. There also were ideas of human reincarnation. The name of a deceased person was given to a child who “became” that person by being addressed with kinship terms appropriate to the deceased. [2]
Traditionally, all people were in contact with the spirit world; they carried amulets of traditional or individual potency, experienced dreams, devised songs or other words of power, and achieved special relationships with particular spirit-beings. Men and women who were especially adept at such contact became shamans; they were called on to cure the sick by recovering lost soul-stuff, to foretell the future, to determine the location of game, and so forth—all with the help of powerful spirit familiars. [2]
Shamans were also expected to contact a few more strongly personified spirit-beings, such as the female being (whose name and attributes varied from group to group) who governed important land or sea mammals; when game was scarce, the shaman might cajole her into providing more bounty. In Greenland the shaman was also an entertainer whose séances, escape tricks, and noisy spirit helpers could enliven a long winter's night in the communal house (see shamanism). [2]
Sedentary peoples: the southern Yupiit and the Aleuts
These groups made use of the sod-covered and semisubterranean house, the skin-covered kayak and the umiak, and fishing and hunting apparatus similar to those of the northern Yupiit and the Inuit. Yet, like many neighbouring Northwest Coast Indians, they focused almost exclusively on aquatic resources and had a hierarchical society comprising formal chiefs (apparently inherited in the male line), other elites, commoners, and a class of slaves that was generally composed of war captives. Although the Yupik-speaking people of the Kodiak region maintained kashims that seem to have functioned generally like those of the north and were said to be “owned” by local chiefs, the Aleut-speaking groups had no similar structure. Unfortunately, the region's conquest by Russian fur hunters eradicated many details of indigenous life before they could be thoroughly recorded. [2]
Historical Developments
The European colonization of the American Arctic flowed inland from the coasts of western and southwestern Alaska. The discussions below consider these major areas of colonization. [2]
Southern and southwestern Alaska
In 1728 the Russian tsar Peter I (the Great) supported an expedition to the northern Pacific. Led by Vitus Bering, the expedition set out to determine whether Siberia and North America were connected and, if not, whether there was a navigable sea route connecting the commercial centres of western Russia to China. Although poor visibility limited the results of this voyage, subsequent Russian journeys determined that the Pacific coast of North America was home to a seemingly inexhaustible population of sea otters. Russian entrepreneurs quickly seized on the opportunity to garner sea otter pelts, known for their lush feel and superior insulating qualities, as these were at the time almost the only items for which the Chinese were willing to engage in trade with Russia. [2]
Russian rule was established in the region quickly and often brutally. Perhaps the worst atrocities occurred in 1745, when a large party of Russian and Siberian hunters overwintered in the Aleutian Islands; members of the party engaged in such wholesale murder and sexual assault that they were later charged in the Russian courts and punished. Similar incidents of violent conquest occurred throughout the region, andover the next several decades the indigenous population was forced into virtual slavery. Russian administrators recognized native expertise in capturing sea otters and so negotiated with the hunters during the first part of the colonial era (albeit on an unequal basis given the colonizers' imposing firepower). However, these more or less voluntary levels of fur production proved inadequate for commercial trading. By 1761 the Russians had instituted a village-based quota system; they remained unsatisfied with the results and soon took entire villages hostage as a way to ensure the docility of Aleut and Yupik men, nearly all of whom were impressed into service as hunters.
This created intense hardship for the elders, women, and children left behind. Hunting had provided most of their subsistence, and, with the hunters away or exhausted, many communities suffered from malnourishment or starvation in addition to the epidemic diseases that characterized European conquest throughout the Americas. Within a century of initial contact, the Aleut-speaking population had declined to no more than 2,000; at least 80 percent of their original number were gone. Around Kodiak Island and the Pacific coast, the decrease in roughly the same period was to about 3,000, a loss of about two-thirds. On the Bering Sea, where the fur trade was less intense, the loss was limited to about one-third or one-half of the population, all of it coming in the 19th century.
In 1799 the Russian-American Company was granted what amounted to governance of the Russian colonies in the North Pacific. The company undertook a period of expansion and eventually ruled thousands of miles of coast, from the Bering Sea to northern California. Russian Orthodox missionaries arrived at about the same time. They observed the brutalities committed against indigenous peoples, reported these to the tsar, and worked to ameliorate the horrendous conditions in the hostage villages. Although protective language was placed in the company's second charter, enforcement was haphazard. Nonetheless, and perhaps because the priests were clearly their advocates, many Aleuts and Yupiit converted to Orthodox Christianity.
The U.S. government purchased Russian America in 1867 and subsequently imposed its assimilationist policies on Native Alaskans (see Alaska Purchase). Various forms of pressure were applied to ensure that native communities shifted from subsistence to wage labour, from the use of their own languages to English, and from Russian Orthodox traditions to mainline Protestantism, among other things.
As elsewhere in the United States, these policies undermined indigenous traditions and generally caused local economies to shift from self-sufficiency and sustainability to a reliance on outside capital. As the sea otter neared extinction, some Yupik and Aleut communities shifted to the hunting of other fur-bearing mammals, such as seals and Arctic foxes. As among the neighbouring Northwest Coast Indians, other groups used their knowledge of local fisheries to ensure employment. These strategies met with various levels of success, but the native communities often faced circumstantial difficulties: demand for furs collapsed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and fishermen had to cope with natural cycles in the population levels of various kinds of fish, the vagaries of consumer taste, and competition from better-equipped Euro-Americans. [2]
By the mid-20th century, international politics were also affecting large numbers of indigenous Alaskans. World War II saw the removal of whole Native Alaskan communities under the aegis of protection and national defense. After the war, having in some cases endured years of difficult “temporary” conditions, those who returned to their homes found them in disrepair and in some cases ransacked. The Cold War ensured that the military presence in Alaska would continue to grow until the late 20th century; new facilities were often placed on property that indigenous groups used and regarded as their own, creating further hardships. [2]
Northern Alaska
The region from the Bering Strait northward and east to the Mackenzie River was untouched by Russians, but after the mid-19th century it was visited by great numbers of European and Euro-American whalers, who imported both disease and alcohol; the native population declined by two-thirds or more between 1850 and 1910.
Intensive whaling, and later the hunting of walruses, depleted some of the major food sources of far northern communities and in some cases created localized hardship. However, whalers often recognized the technical skills of the northern Yupiit and the Inuit and arranged for various kinds of partnership; a Euro-American might reside with a local family for a winter, gaining food, shelter, and company while the family would gain labour-saving technology, such as metal knives, steel needles, and rifles.
Widespread difficulties arose with the imposition of assimilationist policies by the United States and later, after the discovery of gold, oil, and mineral resources in the region. By the late 19th century, church-sponsored experiments in reindeer herding were promoting assimilation in northern Alaska. These ventures generally failed due to their incompatibility with the local culture; people were accustomed to moving widely across the landscape but also had the habit of returning frequently to their home communities, a practice that quickly caused overgrazing near settlements. In addition, Euro-American entrepreneurs generally had enough capital to crowd out native reindeer operations. Gold strikes on Canada's Klondike River in 1896 and near Nome, Alaska, in 1898 shifted attention away from indigenous economic development, incidentally providing many northern Native Alaskans with a welcome opportunity to return to traditional modes of subsistence.
As in western and southwestern Alaska, the northern parts of Alaska saw an increase in military facilities during and after World War II. By the 1950s and '60s, concerns about environmental degradation and land seizures caused Native Alaskans to file lawsuits to halt the development of oil and other resources. These suits eventually led to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, in which the United States agreed to provide to Alaskan natives some $962.5 million and 44 million acres of land, all to be administered through native-run corporations. For administrative purposes and to encourage local development, the state was divided among 12 regional native corporations (seven of them Inuit or Yupik, one Aleut, and the rest Indian), each including a series of village corporations in which individual natives were sole shareholders. A 13th corporation serves Native Alaskans who reside outside the state. The corporations have promoted housing, local schools, satellite communications facilities, medical facilities, and programs directed at alcohol abuse and have provided a training ground for native politicians active in state government, where they represent an increasingly sophisticated native citizenry.
Contemporary developments
During the 20th century, indigenous populations throughout the American Arctic were regenerating. After World War II, national health systems reduced both chronic and acute infections, and populations doubled between 1950 and 1980. Early 21st-century population estimates indicated that the total population of persons self-identified as Inuit, Yupik, or Aleut stood at about 130,000 individuals in Canada and the United States, with approximately 45,000 additional individuals in Greenland.
For native peoples throughout the Arctic, a key development from the late 20th century onward has been their sophisticated activism and increasing transnationalism. They were heavily involved in the broad global push for indigenous, or “Fourth World,” rights that had begun by the late 1960s and was encouraged by the civil rights movements of the so-called First World and the new independence of the formerly colonized Third World. In 1977 the Inuit Circumpolar Conference was formed by the Inuit peoples of Greenland, Canada, and Alaska; in 1983 it was recognized officially by the United Nations. By the early 21st century it represented some 150,000 individuals of Inuit and Yupik heritage, including those of Siberia. The Aleut International Association, a sister group, formed in 1998. These organizations are particularly active in promoting the preservation of indigenous cultures and languages and in protecting the northern environment from global warming and resource exploitation. They are two of the six indigenous associations and eight member states with permanent membership status in the Arctic Council, an international forum for intergovernmental research, cooperation, and advocacy that works frequently with the United Nations.
The first wave of immigration from the “South 48”—which occurred in the decade before World War I as an aftermath of the gold rush—was a response to Alaska's initial concentration on its mineral, fish, and timber resources. The discovery of oil fields and the emergence of Alaska as an international air crossroads added impetus to the influx of the 1940s and '50s and construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline to that of the 1960s and '70s. By 1980 only about 20 percent of the white population of the state was born in Alaska.
Of the current population about one-seventh are Eskimos, Aleuts, and Indians. The remaining citizenry includes military personnel and their families and a melting pot of mixed American, Russian, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, and other nationalities.
