The earliest oral tradition recounting the arrival of Europeans in Alaska dates to 1786. The L'uknax.adi Coho clan, who had stopped at Lituya Bay on their way to trade with the Yakutat Tlingits, saw two ships, which they believed to be great birds with white wings. Historical records reveal that the ships were under the command of the French explorer La Pérouse. The written accounts indicate that the Russians were the first Europeans to reach Alaska, arriving in 1741. La Pérouse's record of his visit identifies two issues of significance to the Tlingits. The Tlingits sought to establish economic relations because they wanted to trade for iron. They also made it clear that they were the owners of the land, and they sold the French an island for their use. This encounter set the stage for the next two hundred years of Indian-white relations in Alaska, which—in addition to the Athabaskan, Tlingit, and Haida Indians—would involve the Inupiat and Yupiks and their ancestral cousins, the Aleuts.
Until the late 1800s, most of the encounters between native peoples and Europeans occurred in the southern coastal regions of Alaska. The Inupiat, Yupiks, and Athabaskans lived in the interior regions and along the western and northern coasts and had little or no contact with the Russians. They were unaware that their country had been claimed by the Russians and then sold to the United States.
Native-white relations in Alaska were structured by economic, political, religious, and educational activities. The objectives of Alaska Natives were fairly uniform. They wanted to maintain their traditional cultures, to protect ownership of their land, and to benefit from the technology and economic opportunities made available by the arrival of white people in Alaska. The Russian policy toward Alaska Natives, with the exception of the Aleuts, was generally consistent with these objectives. The Russians claimed Alaska through discovery, but they exercised little or no control over the land or its people. The Americans, however, changed this policy and set an intrusive course. The conflict between Native and American objectives led to open confrontations in Southeast Alaska and less than amicable relationships elsewhere.
From the first, outsiders and Alaska Natives have viewed the region and its cultures from very different—virtually opposite—perspectives. Newcomers have sought to "develop" and "civilize" a territory that the indigenous people have always seen as their home.
See also
Fishing and Hunting Rights;
Indian-White Relations in The United States, 1900 to the Present;
Subarctic Tribes.
David S. Case, Alaska Natives and American Laws (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1984); Frederica de Laguna, Under Mount Saint Elias: The History and Culture of the Yakutat Tlingit (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1972); Steve J. Landon, The Native People of Alaska (Anchorage: Greatland Graphics, 1987).
Rosita Worl
Tlingit
Juneau, Alaska
