Southeastern Alaskan Indian Research— Garfield 33 



continue to exercise aboriginal rights to provide themselves 

 with food. Indian claims were vigorously refuted by cannery 

 and other industrial and business interests. Both sides employed 

 expert researchers and a vast amount of material from pub- 

 lished sources was collected. Translators, sociologists, lawyers 

 and anthropologists compiled extensive records dating from 

 eighteenth century explorers and traders to contemporary 

 sources. For the first time a systematic compilation was made 

 of Tlingit and Haida customs of utilization and inheritance of 

 land, streams, beach and salt -water resource areas. Changes in 

 food economy and in the extent to which areas were used from 

 the date of the Alaska purchase to the present -were documented 

 from published sources, augmented by testimony of elderly 

 Indians of customary usage as related to them by parents and 

 grandparents. 



A further point at issue was the legal one of the status of 

 Tlingit and Haida tribes under Russian rule, hence the status 

 they occupied -when the territory was ceded to the United 

 States. Russian documents were translated and pertinent sec- 

 tions extracted to support the argument that no territorial rights 

 of the Indians were recognized by the Russians. Whatever the 

 outcome so far as Indian claims are concerned, much valuable 

 material was compiled relating to the economy, resource utili- 

 zation, kinship affiliations and functions of the Haida and 

 Tlingit. 



A coordinated plan of research for southeastern Alaska is 

 now needed to make use of material already accumulated. Such 

 a plan should include consideration of theoretic problems bear- 

 ing on the relationship between this and other native areas, 

 the dynamics of culture growth that made this an area of com- 

 plex cultures, and the processes of acculturation operating at 

 the present time. This goal can best be attained, in the opinion 

 of the writer, by a coordinating committee serving as a clearing 

 house and source of information, not in the role of directing or 

 supervising research. The committee would lay out a tentative 

 plan, with first consideration to traits that are fast disappearing. 

 A report on current and contemplated field work and a list of 



