de Laguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUT AT BAY AREA, ALASKA 9 



baskans (Olson, 1936, p. 214). He is said to have "organized" the 

 coastal groups and to have given them the names of Thngit sibs, such 

 as QanAxtedi, Kagvvantan, and so on. He also gave the maximum 

 number of eight potlatches, a feat not afterward equaled at Yakutat. 

 All of these stories suggest that while the earher inhabitants of the 

 Gulf of Alaska may have had matrilineal sibs and moieties (perhaps 

 rather loosely organized, hke those of the Copper River Atna), it was 

 the Tlingit immigrants to Yaloitat who introduced the fully devel- 

 oped patterns of Thngit social and ceremonial Hfe. According to 

 some informants, Xatgawet was also a shaman and acquired one of 

 his famihar spirits from a Tsimshian colleague, a story which suggests 

 the northward diffusion of shamanistic practices. 



Some informants say that Xatgawet bought Knight Island for his 

 Qmexqwan wives and children, and that he assisted his brother-in- 

 law in founding the village on that island and named it T'ukwan, or 

 Tt'Alv'^-'an "Old Town," after the famous Chilkat village (Klukwan). 

 Our best infonnant maintains, however, that Xatgawet hved much 

 later, after the Russians had been expelled. He is said to have been 

 the grandfather of a woman who died shortly after 1900 and the 

 great-grandfather of a woman who was bom in 1874. Furthermore, 

 it is denied that he had anything to do with Knight Island, but hved 

 on Lost River. Giving him a post-Russian date would place him in 

 the period in which Tlingit had replaced Eyak speech at Yakutat. 

 It is possible that the traditions are confused because there were 

 several persons with the same name. In any case, the first Thngit 

 trade with Yakutat antedated the visits of the first European ex- 

 plores in the last quarter of the 18th century, for it was already 

 well established at the time of the explorations of Ismailov and 

 Bocharov to Yakutat in 1788, witness the arrogant behavior of the 

 Thngit chief, Yelxak ("Ilchak"), from Chilkat (Shelikhov, 1793, 

 pp. 228-229, 233-237; and in Coxe, 1803, pp. 324-325, 329-332). 



There is no doubt that the fur trade in the late 18th and early 19th 

 centuries stimulated the northward expansion of the Tlingit. Asso- 

 ciated with the diffusion of Thngit trading patterns and the Tlingit 

 language, many other aspects of Thngit culture must have been 

 spread, probably including the style of potlatches, of peace ceremonies, 

 and of shamanism and witchcraft. All of these would have been 

 reflected in such items of material culture as the large multifamily 

 hneage house with totemic crests on carved house posts and painted 

 screens, and ceremonial regaha of all kinds. The Thngit also intro- 

 duced the Haida-derived style in secular songs, and shamans' spirit 

 songs in Tsimshian. Thngit trade also brought to the Yakutat 

 people large canoes of southern manufacture (Haida and Nootka), 

 Tsimshian-made dance headdresses, dentalia, abalone, and flat-headed 



