de Lnguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUTAT BAY AREA, ALASKA H 



The Russian post at Yakutat (actually on a lagoon inside the 

 southeast point of the bay) was begun in 1795 and fortified the 

 following year. In 1800 a second post, or blockhouse, was built on 

 Monti Bay, near the present mission or near the entrance to the 

 x\nkau lagoons where the first post was located. In 1802 the In- 

 dians attacked an Aleut hunting party at Dry Bay and accused the 

 Russians of robbing graves, a charge which is still remembered. Our 

 informants also listed other grievances: the failure of the Russians 

 to pay for the land they occupied; closing the stream (with a fish 

 weir?) between the Ankau lagoons and Summit Lake to the east, which 

 seriously interfered with the natives' supply of fish; taking children 

 with promises to educate them but actually using them as slaves; 

 and, lastly, appropriating native women at their pleasure. As a 

 result, the Russian post was finally destroyed in 1805, and all but a 

 few of the occupants were killed. The same year the Yakutat again 

 invaded Prince William Sound, but this war party was annihilated by 

 the Chugach. (For the Chugach version, see Birket-Smith, 1953, pp. 

 141 f.) 



In 1806 Campbell rescued an Aleut man and his wife whom the 

 Yakutat had captured, and took two Indians to Kodiak as hostages. 

 Our informants also told how the Ttaxayik-Teqwedi leader of the 

 attack on the Russian fort was taken to Kodiak. It was not until 

 the following year, however, that the widow and children of the 

 Russian commander were liberated, together with a few other 

 survivors. 



After this a period followed in which there were few close contacts 

 with Europeans, except when trading parties went from Yakutat to 

 Nuchek in Prince William Sound, or to Sitka, or even to Prince 

 Rupert and other distant, southern trading posts. We have few 

 records of European visitors to Yakutat until about 1880, except for 

 the Russian cartographers, Boolingin in 1807 and Khromchenko in 

 1823, the British navigator, Belcher, in 1837, and the U.S. Coast 

 Survey in 1874. Although the ocean off the coast was a famous 

 whaling ground, vessels seldom put in to shore. 



The first American traders began to appear at Yakutat shortly 

 before 1880. At that time, a White man was killed and his Indian 

 slayer taken to Portland on a gunboat. Later, the U.S.S. Adams 

 landed a party of prospectors at Yakutat, and between 1883 and 1886 

 there were goldminers working the black sands of Khantaak Island 

 and the ocean beach. Trading schooners began to caU regularly, 

 and parties attempting to cUmb Mount Saint Elias stopped at Yakutat 

 to recruit porters with almost equal regularity. A Dr. Ballou ran a 



