FOOTNOTES:
[5] Allen, Henry T., Military Reconnaissance in Alaska. Comp. Narr. Expl. Alas., 415-416, 446-452.
[6] Brooks, A. H., Reconnaissance in the Tanana and White River Basins. Twentieth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Surv., Washington, 1900, pt. VII, 437-438; also the Geog. and Geol. Alas., U. S. Geol. Surv. Doc. 201, 1906.
POPULATION
The native population of the Tanana has always been remarkably scarce. Dall obtained an estimate of their whole number as about 150 families.[7] Petrof, in 1880, thought they numbered perhaps seven or eight hundred;[8] Allen in 1885 estimated them at between 550 and 600;[9] Brooks, in 1898, thought there were less than 400;[10] and the 1910 United States Census gives the total number of the "Tenan-kutchin," full bloods and mix bloods, as 415.[11]
According to Brooks (Reconnaissance, 490-491), the Tanana natives were separated into two geographic contingents, the eastern or highland and the northwestern or lowland groups. The most easterly group included the Indian settlements in the vicinity of Forty-mile and Mentasta Pass trail; the northwestern comprises to-day those from Nenana to the mouth of the river.
The Tanana Indians were generally regarded by other natives as warlike and dangerous, but so far as their relation with the whites was concerned there was little justification for this notion.[12] Physically they were reported by Brooks to "average rather better than the Indians of the Yukon" (Reconnaissance, 492). There are but a few and scanty other references to them in this connection.