Trading Southwest Yukon Southern Tutchone

	Click a category, or scroll the page

Trading

UP

 

We don’t know for sure the distances that people used to travel, but there is no question that from early years Yukon natives made long journeys to trade both among themselves and their Indian neighbors. After the white men came into their country, of course, the Indians traded with them too.

Because the natural resources were not everywhere some people of one place often had something that the people somewhere else wanted. For example, Loucheux of the Yukon Flats area of Alaska did not have many caribou, but needed caribou skins to make clothes. They got them by trading with Old Crow people or other Loucheux. Sheep and goatskins, gopher skins, salmon, red paint and raw copper are other items that people exchanged within Yukon itself.

When the Yukon Loucheux traded with the Inuit of Herschel Island and the McKenzie delta, the Inuit wanted wolverine furs for their parka hoods, and the Yukon Indians wanted walrus ivory or tough walrus skins.

They also liked some of the Inuvialut carvings and tools. Although trading sessions were usually friendly, the Loucheux sometimes had disagreements with the Inuit, especially when they thought they were not getting a fair deal.

After 1870 the Old Crow Indians also went to Herschel Island to trade with American Whaling Boats.

The Chilkoot and Chilkat who crossed the passes into the Yukon each claimed to own different routes into the interior as well as the rights to trade with specific groups of the Yukon Indians, but the details of these arrangements are not fully known. The Gaanax.adi clan of the Raven moiety and the Dakl’aweidi clan of the Eagle (Wolf) moiety at the Chilkat village of the Klukwan both claimed control of the Chilkat Pass, while the Lukaax.adi clan of the Raven (Crow) moiety of the Chilkoot said it owned the Chilkoot pass.

The Tlinget who lived at the mouth of the Taku River and at Auk Inlet, near present Juneau, Alaska, went up the Taku River every year, then crossed the height of land to trade at Atlin or Teslin Lakes. Often they went to meet Pelly, Frances Lake and Liard Kaska Indians too. A high-ranking clan member directed each Tlinget trading party.

 

Southwest Yukon

UP

 

Excerpts taken from "Through the Eyes of a Strangers" by Julie Cruikshank 1974

SOUTHWEST YUKON ( Southern Tutchone, Tagish and Tlingit speakers)

The history and culture of the southwest Yukon was very much affected by contact and trade with coastal Tlingit during the 19th century.
The earliest trade between coastal Tlingit and interior Athapaskans was partly because of the different resources available in the two different environments. Chilkat traders imported such items as spruce root blankets, cedar boxes, medicinal roots, dried clams, seaweed, "tobacco" made from crushed clamshell, abalone, dentalia and obsidian. In return, they received mountain goat wool, yellow lichen for dye, tanned caribou and moose hides, sinew, furs, spruce gum, and small amounts of raw copper.
By the time Europeans began trading on the Pacific coast...Tlingits began to concentrate on exporting furs while at the same time working European goods into their imports: calico, blankets, kettles, knives, muzzle loaders, leaf tobacco, flour and small amounts of coffee.
By the 1880's the Tlingits controlled a lucrative trade and were determined that white fur traders not cross into the interior to trade directly with Athapaskans..." (Through the Eyes of Strangers , P. 5)
... Difficulties in crossing the passes were reported in 1883 by Schwatka who was told by Tlingits that the upper Yukon was unnavigable, and by Dawson in 1887. The burning of Fort Selkirk in 1852 was an indication of the thoroughness ...which the coastal Chilkats guarded "their" trading territory.
In 1869, a Tlingit chief Kohklux...showed his detailed knowledge of the Yukon interior as far as Fort Selkirk on a map he drew. ... One of the few made by a native person rather than an outsider... Because of his familiarity with the interior, Kohklux was able to pinpoint population centres which later travellers did not see."
There were three main Tlingit tribes trading to the interior in the 19th century: Chilkats who came a 12-15 day jounry via Chilkat River, Chilkoots who crossed over the shorter, more arduous Chilkoot Pass, and taku who ascended the Taku River.
A fourth less well known route was up the Alsek River Basin. The original inhabitants of the Alsek River right down to Dry Bay were Athapaskans. But sometime prior to the arrival of Russians on the coast, Tlingits, migrating inland up the Chilkat River and then down the Alsek mixed with them. ... At one time these Dry Bay(Yakutat) Tlingit regularly came inland to hunt and trade and Athapaskans went freely down to the coast.
... the height of this trade occurred between 1840 and 1870. ...During this time the southern interior was virtually an economic colony of the Chilkat Tlingits. By 1890, ... Indians had an alternative of going to Alaska Commercial Company posts on the Yukon River to trade....Chilkats were beginning to work in canneries or were making handicrafts to sell on the coast and were less interested in making the long trip to the interior.
... Tlingit trade was one of the main forces shaping land use and subsistence patterns in the interior. Athapaskans used extensive areas of land to get products for trade and also hunted and dried and cached food along regularly used trade routes. In every area of the Yukon, trade(was)... in conjunction with land use."

 

Southern Tutchone

UP

 

SOUTHERN TUTCHONE (ALSEK- TATSHENSHINI):

A major trade and population centre in the southwest Yukon was the settlement known by its Tlingit name Neskatahin (Weskatahin) on the upper Tatshenshini River.
"Neskatahin, strategically located at the head of the two major Chilkat access routs via the Klehini and Tatshenshini Rivers, served as the main trading centre between the coastal Tlingit and the Southern Tutchone of the southwest interior of the Yukon... It served as a point of departure for inland trading excursions which honeycombed the interior."(Roback and Gates, 1973, p. 35)

An early account of the village by Glave who accompanied Frank Leslie and Jack Dalton on two trips to the interior in the 1890's is as follows:

" The village of Naska Ta Heen is the headquarters of the Gunana or Stick Indians. It is composed of a dozen houses, large and small, which in this country means accommodation for a great quantity of people, as several whole families reside in one house. At the time of our visit, all the inhabitants were down river some sixty miles at their fishing camp on the Alseck...(The houses) are built of heavy planks, hewed into shape with the native adze, the roofs either covered with rough heavy shingles or thatched with hemlock bark. They are all fitted with a large opening in the centre of the roof as an escape for smoke."(Glave, November 29, 1900, p. 310)
"Neskataheen is an important rendezvous. During the winter the natives of the interior roam over the land in small parties, hunting and trapping, but return here with their spoils of black and brown bear, black,cross, gray, white and red fox, wolverine, land otter, lynx, beaver, etc. and exchange them for blankets, guns, powder, and tabacco which the Chilkat Indians bring to them from the coast." (Glave, 1982, p. 682)