de Laguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUTAT BAY AREA, ALASKA 7 



then filled with ice. Here the Gmexqwan met and intermarried with 

 some Qalyix-Kagwantan who were moving eastward by canoe. 



The extensive icefields of Bagley and Bering (or Guyot?) Glaciers 

 which the emigrants had to cross, as well as mountain ridges up to 

 5,000 feet high, might seem to present an insuperable barrier and so 

 cast doubt not only upon this tradition, but also upon the report that 

 copper from the interior was carried to the coast via a "shortcut" to 

 the mouth of the Duktoth River at Cape Yakataga. Don J. Miller, 

 of the U.S. Geological Survey, who knew this whole area thoroughly, 

 assured us, however (letters of October 30 and December 6, 1957), 

 that not only was the route possible, but that it had actually been 

 followed by prospectors in the early 1900's on the basis of the Indian 

 legend. The natives would have come up the Tana River (a southern 

 tributary of the Chitina), up Granite Creek or Tana Glacier, and then 

 over Bagley and Bering Glaciers, and down the Duktoth River to the 

 coast. Miller furnished some details of the prospectors' journeys, the 

 fijst of which were made in 1905 and 1906. Crossing the glaciers took 

 from 3 days to ahnost 3 weeks. One of the men found a piece of spht 

 wood, 2 feet long, on a moraine (of Bering Glacier?), apparently left 

 there by the Indians (cf. also Moffit, 1918, p. 77). Miller reports 

 the ice along most of the route as "relatively smooth and little cre- 

 vassed — really good traveling, as glaciers go." 



Native accounts vary as to how long the Qmexqwan and their 

 spouses stayed near Icy Bay, but eventually they came to Yakutat 

 Bay, which was then largely covered by a glacier. They crossed the 

 bay, walking over the ice according to some informants or using skin 

 boats according to others. The islands in the bay and the eastern 

 shore were already owned by a group or groups, variously identified 

 as Chugach or as Indian. Our most knowledgeable informant called 

 them the Hmyedi, a Raven sib (presumably Eyak-speaking) , although 

 there may have been other small tribes in the area. From them, the 

 Copper River immigrants acquired by purchase the territory along 

 the shores of Yakutat Bay, including the stream, K^'ack ("Humpback 

 Salmon" in Eyak), from which the sib takes its present name. 

 Payment was made in copper which they had brought from the 

 Copper River. After selling their lands, the Hmyedi are said to 

 have emigrated to southeastern Alaska, although we suspect that 

 some of them merged with the K^'ackqwan. 



One group with hunting camps on Yakutat Bay and settlements 

 along Lost and Situk Rivers to the east were called the Tlaxayik- 

 ( "Yakutat Bay")-Teqwedi. They were an Eyak-speaking group 

 closely related to, or possibly a branch of, the Galyix-Kagwantan, 

 and w^ere responsible for the destruction of the Russian post at 

 Yakutat in 1805. Slightly prior to this, the first of the Thngit 



