American. By 2018, despite statehood and the oil boom, its population had grown to an estimated 738,000.
Over the past 275 years, Alaska has seen a series of boom-and-bust “rushes” to exploit the land: rushes for fur, gold, copper, salmon, and oil. Some people came and stayed, simply because Alaska is like nowhere else—wild, extreme, and amazing. Still, the aim often has been to take the rewards of the land and sea, then enjoy them somewhere else. Many Alaskans see a recurring theme of neglect by federal authorities and exploitation by “outside interests.” While the notion is easily exaggerated, the fact remains that today, decades after becoming a state, much of Alaska’s economic fate remains under control of the Lower 48. Much of the Alaska fishing fleet, for example, is based not in Alaska, but in Washington state.
Over the past six decades, the development of a modern tourism industry has brought millions of visitors to the once-remote frontier in a veritable “tourist rush.” The more daring travelers motor north via the Alaska Highway, built during World War II. But most come by air or sea. The state-owned ferry system, the “Alaska Marine Highway,” has linked southeastern Alaska to British Columbia and Washington state since the 1960s. Each year, thousands of ferry travelers experience the stunning sea and landscapes of the Inside Passage. In the 1970s, the cruise ship industry met that same growing tourist demand by offering summertime excursions to the icy spectacles of Glacier Bay National Park and the Gulf of Alaska.
Visitors are drawn to Alaska by the region’s wild beauty and storied past. Alaska’s history has not always been happy. For traditional Native cultures as well as for some animal species, it is no exaggeration to say that at times it has been catastrophic. Yet to ignore the past denies us the chance to learn for the future. This book aims to supply a concise, informative, and entertaining account of Alaska’s history: at times heroic and surprising, foolish and sad, but always colorful and often downright thrilling.
Aleut baskets. Photo by Edward Curtis, 1899.
NATIVE TRADITIONS
ALASKA’S FIRST PEOPLES
Eskimo village, Plover Bay (Siberia). Photo by Edward Curtis, 1899.
Alaska’s original discoverers, most authorities believe, were prehistoric hunters from Siberia. In a series of periodic migrations they followed game onto a now-vanished Bering Sea land bridge that—depending on changing sea levels—sometimes connected Asia and North America to create an ancient landmass known as “Beringia.” The timing and details of these events are matters of robust debate and conjecture, fueled by ongoing climate research, language studies, archaeological discoveries, and DNA analysis.
Around 14–12,000 years ago the last ice age ended, sea levels rose, and the land bridge was permanently submerged. Alaska and Siberia were severed by the Bering Strait, 56 miles wide. As rising temperatures opened ice-free corridors in the continental interior, some hunters moved south to become ancestors of today’s lower North and South American Indians. Even earlier, recent excavations suggest, some migrants may have traveled in boats along the coast, as glaciers receded into fjords. Some later waves of land-bridge migrants stayed north, however, to become ancestors of today’s distinctive, broadly-defined Alaska Native cultures: Indian, Unangâx/ Aleut, Eskimo, and Alutiiq/Sugpiaq.
Each of these groups created its own rich spirit world and unique ways of surviving, and even prospering, in the often-harsh North. For hunters, aided by snowshoes, dogsleds, and a deep knowledge of weather patterns, the frozen landscape was a highway rather than a frightening barrier. Likewise, for coastal kayakers and canoeists, the cold ocean straits and passages became trade and communication arteries. And despite the northern latitude, the land could be generous, especially along the coasts where fish, waterfowl, and marine mammals made leisure, and even high culture, possible.
Russian fur merchants began to arrive in the 1740s. The coming of the Europeans, as elsewhere in North and South America, had a drastic impact on the Native population. Europeans unwittingly introduced measles, smallpox, and other maladies for which the Natives had no immunity. The introduction of liquor and firearms also speeded the erosion of Natives’ traditional lives. In 1741, the year Vitus Bering claimed Alaska for Russia, the Aleut population is thought to have been between 12,000 and 15,000. By 1800 it had dwindled to 2,000. A similar fate befell some other Native groups, such as the Tlingit and Haida of Alaska’s Southeast.
There were notable cases of harmony between Natives and newcomers. Contacts with outsiders, at least temporarily, actually enriched the indigenous cultures. On the Southeast coast, for example, the ready availability of iron tools encouraged an expansion of Native woodworking traditions. New wealth created by the fur trade made more frequent and lavish ceremonial feasts, or potlatches, possible.
But the sometimes-violent struggle for control of the region led inevitably to non-Native dominance. Some Russian Orthodox priests and Anglo-American missionaries made sincere, though sometimes misguided, efforts to protect and educate the Natives. Yet in Russian America, as in the Canadian and American West, the commercial drive usually won out. A favorite saying of the rough-and-ready promyshlenniki (Russian fur traders) could just as easily describe the unrestrained conduct of many of Alaska’s other foreign visitors: “God is in his heaven, and the tsar is far away.”
BAIDARKA: THE UNANGÂX WAY
Aleut kayaker of Unalaska. Drawing by John Webber, 1778.
Today’s 8,000 Aleut people descend from hunters who moved from the Alaska mainland into the Aleutian Chain some 4,500 years ago. The volcanic peaks of the Aleutian Islands sweep in a 1,200-mile arc from the western tip of the Alaska Peninsula toward Kamchatka in Siberia along the top of the “Pacific Rim.” The name “Alaska” itself may derive from the Aleut word “alaxsxag” or “agunalaksh,” meaning either “great land,” or more poetically “shores where the sea breaks its back.”
Aleutian temperatures are surprisingly mild—the most southerly island lies just north of Seattle’s latitude—but violent 125-knot winds, heavy rain, and dense fog are typical. Yet below uninviting skies the ocean abounds with life. This natural wealth drew the Aleuts toward the sea and a seafaring life.
Knowledge of pre-Russian contact Aleut life is sparse, though archaeologists are unearthing more evidence. The word “Aleut” is actually a Russian label. The people called themselves Unangâx (oo-NUNG-ah, “original people”), but under Russian rule they accepted the term Aleut—and Orthodox Christianity, a hallmark of their post-contact identity. In today’s climate of heritage revival, “Unangâx” (sing. “Unangan”) is increasingly used, though “Aleut” remains common. In many ways the best authority on Aleut folkways is Father Ivan Veniaminov, who worked as a Russian Orthodox priest among the Aleuts in the 1820s and 1830s, leaving detailed and enlightening notes on their culture. The people lived in earthen lodges (called barabaras by the Russians) and mummified and entombed some of their elite dead in caves where volcanic heat aided preservation. Aleut women were remarkable basket makers and seamstresses, weaving elegant watertight containers from island grasses and fashioning all-weather clothing from the skins of birds and marine animals. The men were consummate masters of maritime hunting, perfectly adapted to their marine world. In this they exemplified the qualities that strike us today as so remarkable about Alaska’s Native peoples: their ingenious, creative use of the environment and their harmonious adjustment to nature’s rhythms.
Using harpoons and wearing steam-bent visors made of carved and painted
