Ahtna History
ANSCA Established Ahtna, Inc
In 1971 Congress passed landmark legislation with the
establishment of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). This act
changed the traditional role historically played by the federal government.
Rather than perpetuate the reservation system, the act established corporate
ownership of assets to ensure long-term profitability and financial independence
for Native Alaskans.
ANCSA established twelve regional Alaska Native Corporations (ANC) including
Ahtna, Inc and over 200 individual village corporations. Later a thirteenth
regional ANC was formed. Eventually the US Government ceded 44 million acres of
land and paid $962.5 million to ANC corporations. As of December 1998 a total of
1,528,000 acres of land has been conveyed to Ahtna, Inc. from an entitlement of
1,770,000 under the Act. Title 13 CFR 124.3 now defines Alaska Native
Corporations (ANC’s) as Tribal Entities.
Seven of the eight village corporations within the Ahtna
region are now merged with Ahtna, Inc. With this merger came a strong unity and
vision of the future for Ahtna’s 1,249 shareholders. Ahtna, Inc. strives to
provide its shareholders with a variety of benefits including employment and
professional development opportunities.
In general, the Alaska Native Corporations, including Ahtna have integrated very
successfully into the national business community.
The Ahtna Region
The Ahtna region is a vast area covering a large portion of the
Alaskan Interior. Although the region is relative in size to the state of West
Virginia it has only one-six hundredth of the population. The region is
accessible by four of the six Alaska Highway systems including the Denali,
Parks, Richardson, and Glenn Highways. These roads form a network connecting the
largest population centers within the Ahtna region. Two major national parks,
Denali and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve also fall within the
Ahtna region. Denali National Park’s main attraction is Mt McKinley. Locally
known by its Athabascan name “Denali” meaning “the great one,” McKinley is the
highest peak in North America. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve is
the largest National Park in the United States and the home of nine peaks over
14,000 ft. The Park also encompasses the largest group of glaciers in North
America. The Malaspina glacier alone covers an area larger than the state of
Rhode Island.
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline passes through four villages within
the region, traversing the Copper River region for its final 200 mile long
journey to Valdez on Prince William Sound. A diverse group of wildlife can be
found throughout the region including grizzly bears, black bears, moose,
caribou, wolves, fox, lynx, wolverine, Dall Sheep and a variety of salmon
including the prized Copper River King Salmon. The two largest communities
within the Ahtna region are Glennallen and Copper Center.
The Ahtna People
Historically the Ahtna People are Athabascan Indians, who settled the Copper
River Basin region over 7000 years ago. The Athabascan people traditionally
lived in Interior Alaska, an expansive region that begins south of the Brooks
Mountain Range and continues down to the Kenai Peninsula. There are eleven
linguistic groups of Athabascans in Alaska. Athabascan people have traditionally
lived along five major river ways: the Yukon, the Tanana, the Susitna, the
Kuskokwim, and the Copper River drainages. Athabascans were highly nomadic,
traveling in small groups to fish, hunt and trap.
Today, the Athabascan people live throughout Alaska and the Lower 48, returning
to their home territories to harvest traditional resources. The Athabascan
people call themselves ‘Dena,’ or ‘the people.’ In traditional and contemporary
practices Athabascans are taught respect for all living things. The most
important part of Athabascan subsistence living is sharing. All hunters are part
of a kin-based network in which they are expected to follow traditional customs
for sharing in the community.
The
Athabascans traditionally lived in small groups of 20 to 40 people that moved
systematically through the resource territories. Annual summer fish camps for
the entire family and winter villages served as base camps. Depending on the
season and regional resources, several traditional house types were used.
The Athabascans have matrilineal system in which children
belong to the mother's clan, rather than to the father's clan, with the
exception of the Holikachuk and the Deg Hit'an. Clan elders made decisions
concerning marriage, leadership, and trading customs. Often the core of the
traditional group was a woman and her brother, and their two families. In such a
combination the brother and his sister's husband often became hunting partners
for life. Sometimes these hunting partnerships started when a couple married.
Traditional Athabascan husbands were expected to live with the wife's family
during the first year, when the new husband would work for the family and go
hunting with his brothers-in-law. A central feature of traditional Athabascan
life was (and still is for some) a system whereby the mother's brother takes
social responsibility for training and socializing his sister's children so that
the children grow up knowing their clan history and customs.
Traditional clothing reflects the resources of the environment. For the most
part, clothing was made of caribou and moose hide. Moose and caribou hide
moccasins and boots were important parts of the wardrobe. Styles of moccasins
vary depending on conditions. Both men and women are adept at sewing, although
women traditionally did most of skin sewing. Traditional regalia varies from
region to region. Regalia may include men’s beaded jackets, dentalium shell
necklaces (traditionally worn by chiefs), men and women’s beaded tunics and
women’s beaded dancing boots.
Canoes were made of birch bark, moose hide, and cottonwood. All Athabascans used
sleds --with and without dogs to pull them – snowshoes and dogs as pack animals.
Trade was a principle activity of Athabascan men, who formed trading
partnerships with men in other communities and cultures as part of an
international system of diplomacy and exchange. Traditionally, partners from
other tribes were also, at times, enemies, and traveling through enemy territory
was dangerous.
Although Ahtna’s region is remote and sparsely populated, it
has an incredible display of glaciers, rich salmon streams, mountain ranges and
dramatic Alaskan history.
There are four distinct Alaska Native groups with ties to the lands of
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Historically, the Ahtna and Upper
Tanana Athabascans resided in the interior of the park. The Eyak and the Tlingit
lived in villages on the coast of the Gulf of Alaska. No one knows for sure when
humans first reached the Copper River Basin of Interior Alaska, but by 8,000
years ago, caribou hunters began visiting Tangle Lakes, located at the head of
the Gulkana River, fifty miles northwest of the park boundary. As glacial ice
retreated, humans eventually entered the Wrangell Mountains. Archaeological
evidence has established a record of continuous human presence in the middle
Copper Basin for the past 1,000 years, although it was probably occupied much
earlier.
The Ahtna population in the Copper Basin was small and
scattered because game was never plentiful enough to support large groups. Ahtna
natives traveled the river corridors, foothills, and passes of what we currently
refer to as the Wrangell Mountains for several hundred years prior to European
arrival in the area. They lived in semi-permanent camps, leaving for weeks at a
time to hunt and to gather berries, birch wood, and other resources. Trade
routes with other native peoples were well established. Copper, found near the
present-day town of McCarthy, was used for tools and for trade with other native
groups. Most villages contained twenty to forty members of a familial clan and
were situated where a major tributary entered the Copper River. There were two
larger villages: Taghaelden (Taral) near the mouth of the Chitina River, and
Nataelde (Batzulnetas) on Tanada Creek along the route leading northward to the
Tanana and Yukon Rivers.
Today the Ahtna, Upper Tanana, Eyak and Tlingit live in or near many of the same
villages they did historically. Several villages have government relationships
with the National Park Service. Natives and non-Natives who have customarily and
traditionally engaged in subsistence activities within the park and live in
local, rural communities continue to pursue those activities now. This allows
Native people to pass on to future generations traditional ways of life that are
closely tied to place.
First Contacts
European exploration of the Copper Basin began in the early 1780s. During a
period of considerable expansion, Russians traveled from their bases in the
Aleutian Islands and Kenai Peninsula along the southern coast of Alaska in
search of new sources of fur. The huge Copper River was noticed relatively
quickly. The first written record of the drainage appears in 1783, when a small
party under the command of Leontii Nagaev reported seeing the river's mouth. No
one is certain when the first Russian ascended the Copper River, but Dmitri
Tarkhanov appears to have reached the mouth of the Chitina River in 1796. He
conducted a census and wintered in the Ahtna village of Taral. By 1819, the
Russians had established a trading post called Copper Fort in the area.
In 1847-48, the Russian American company tried to examine the rest of the Copper
Basin. Assigned the task of traversing from the mouth of the Copper to the Yukon
River, Ruf Serebrennikov and his entire party was killed by the Ahtna near the
village of Batzulnetas in the summer of 1848. The Russians appear to have made
no further efforts to explore the region.
The first recorded geographic observations of the western Wrangell Mountains
were made by Lt. Henry T. Allen of the U.S. Army in 1885. In March of that year,
Allen and three companions landed at the mouth of the Copper River and began one
of the most remarkable journeys in the history of Alaskan exploration. Mapping
as they went, the party ascended the Copper River around the west end of the
Wrangell Mountains, crossed the Alaska Range through Suslota Pass, and then
proceeded down the Tetlin, Tanana, Koyukuk, and Yukon Rivers to the Bering Sea
just in time to catch the last boat to leave the Alaska coast before freeze-up
in early September. Allen's party was the first scientific expedition to cross
the Alaska Range from the Gulf of Alaska to the Yukon River.
Before going north over the Alaska Range divide into the Tanana River Valley,
Allen explored the upper Copper River Basin, the Chitina River Valley, and the
western Wrangell Mountains. He named the Chitina and the Chitistone Rivers (both
names incorporating the Athabascan word "chiti," meaning "copper") and
established friendly relations with Chief Nicolai and his Copper River group of
Ahtna Indians. He measured the heights and named many of the high Wrangell
peaks, including Mount Blackburn, Mount Drum, and Mount Sanford, during his long
summer sojourn in the area.
After Allen's exploration, several scientific parties explored the Wrangell
Mountains area. The team of Lt. Frederick Schwatka of the U.S. Army and
geologist C.W. Hayes of the U.S. Geological Survey reached the Chitina River
Valley by way of the White River and Skolai Pass in 1891.
Spurred by these early explorations and the influx of prospectors during the
Klondike gold discoveries in Canada, the U.S. Geological Survey and the War
Department notably increased their efforts to make topographic and geologic maps
of the country. U.S. Geological Survey geologist F.C. Schrader accompanied the
1898 U.S. Army survey led by Capt. William Abercrombie up the Copper River and
into the Wrangell Mountains. That same year, U.S. Geological Survey geologist
W.C. Mendenhall joined U.S. Army Capt. Edwin Glenn's expedition from Cook Inlet
up the Matanuska River into the Copper River Basin. Alfred Brooks and William
Peters of the U.S. Geological Survey and Oscar Rohn and A.H. McNeer of the War
Department conducted separate expeditions to the Nabesna and Chisana areas on
the north side of the Wrangell Mountains in 1899.
Some of the information for this summary has been gathered from The Alaska
Native Heritage Center’s website,
http://www.alaskanative.net/34.asp and The Official National Park Service
Website for the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve
http://www.nps.gov/wrst/history.htm (July 21, 2006).