Fig. 1. Coudahwot and Yehlh-gouhu, Chiefs of the Con-nuh-ta-di.
Photograph copyrighted by Winter and Pond.
INTRODUCTION.
Upon the discovery of the Northwest Coast of America, the Tlingit were found in possession of Southeastern Alaska with possibly the exception of the southernmost portion of Prince of Wales Island, which had been wrested from them by invading Haida from Masset on the Queen Charlotte Islands, during the latter half of the eighteenth century. From the testimony of the early explorers, this occupation seems to have been of sufficient age to have developed a racial type, speaking the same tongue, acknowledging established laws, and bound by like conventions. What knowledge we can gather of their origin and early life from their family traditions, songs, and geographical names, although fragmentary and vague, consistently tells of a uniform northward migration by water, along the coast and through the inland channels from the Tsimshian peninsula and Prince of Wales Island, which was constantly augmented by parties of Interior people descending the greater rivers to the sea.
An indefinite belief in an earlier coast population is current among the older people, and in confirmation of this, they refer to some family songs and local names still used but not understood. As the Tlingit are unquestionably a mixed race, this aboriginal element must have been absorbed and contributed its racial characteristics to the evolution of the present race.
The social organization of the Tlingit is founded on matriarchy and is dependent upon two exogamic parties, the members of which intermarry and supplement each other upon the many ceremonial occasions that mark their intercourse. The one claiming the Raven crest is known particularly among the northern Tlingit as Klar-de-nar, "one party," the other, more generally represented by the Wolf emblem has several names, local in character, referring to old living places, as Shen-ku-ka-de, "belonging to Shenk," Sit-ka-de, "belonging to Sit," said to refer to the separation of the people after the flood when this branch settled at Sit, Gee-ya-de, etc. Outside of these there is one family claiming the Eagle crest that has no phratral standing, the members of which, as strangers, marry indiscriminately in either division, but in all cases the children belong to the mother's clan.
The two parties are subdivided into fifty-six existing consanguineal families or clans, and the names of some other's now extinct are remembered. Each of these, while retaining its phratral functions and privileges, is absolutely independent in government, succession, inheritance, and territory, and besides the phratral crest common to all, assumes others that are fully as prominent and often more in evidence. Within the family there is a well-defined aristocracy wholly dependent upon birth, from which the chiefs are chosen, an intermediate class consisting of those who have forced themselves to the front, through wealth, character, or artistic ability, and the poorer people. In earlier days there were many slaves who had no recognized rights.
Geographically considered, there are sixteen tribal divisions known as kwans, a contraction of ka (man) and an (land-lived on or claimed). These are purely accidental aggregations, with little cohesion, a grouping of one or more families of each phratry through migratory meeting or continual intermarriage, that live together in fixed villages for mutual protection and social advantages, but recognize no tribal head or authority, each family being a unit in itself. Very often the bitterest feuds existed between families within the tribe and of the same phratry, although if attacked by a stranger people all would unite for mutual protection.
Of these several tribes the Chilkat-kwan has been the most prominent since our acquaintance with Alaska. The relative importance of a primitive people measured by an abundant food supply, natural resources and geographic position as to favorable trade conditions was fully satisfied in their case. In their country about the head of Lynn Canal, with its two river systems flowing from lakes, the spawning beds of countless salmon furnished a nutritious and limitless staple food which was augmented by various other sea fish and seal in the inlets; bear, goat, and smaller mammals on the land; and exhaustless berry patches on the mountain sides. Their commanding position at the head of the inland channels controlling the mountain passes to the interior, gave them the monopoly of the fur trade of the upper Yukon Valley, and the placer copper fields of the White River region. These products, unknown to the coastal area, were economically important in primitive days, and after the advent of Europeans the increased demand for furs, and their greater value, made this trade even more lucrative. That they fully realized its value is demonstrated by their determination to retain control of it, for when the Hudson's Bay Company established the factory of Fort Selkirk at the mouth of the Pelly River in 1852, a war party under the celebrated Chief Chartrich, trailed in some three hundred miles, surprised, captured, and burned the post, and warned the occupants against any further encroachment upon their established zone of trade, and they continued to enjoy these rights until the discovery of the Klondike gold fields, when the influx of whites over-ran the country and destroyed their industries.
The earliest mention of this people occurs in a report of the Russian Pilot Ismaïlof who, when visiting Yakutat in 1788, notes the presence of a large body of Chilkat. In 1794 a boat expedition from Vancouver's vessels, while exploring the head of Lynn Canal, met with a hostile reception from a considerable number of natives and only averted trouble by a hasty retreat. Lieutenant Whitby, the commander of the party, was told of eight chiefs of great consequence who had their homes on and about the Chilkat River, indicating an extensive population.