18 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 102 



on their retui-n downstream would paddle fearfully under the ice. 

 The coUapse of the ice is said to have created a great flood that 

 drowned many people in Dry Bay. There were also ice-dammed 

 lakes formed at the headwaters of the Alsek River, and a Southern 

 Tutchone informant reported that his mother had twice seen the ice 

 break and the water rush out in a flood, the first occurrence being 

 about 1842, according to his estimate. 



Retreat of the Icy Bay glacier did not begin until about 1904 

 (Plafker and Miller, 1958). Oiu- informants said that this was be- 

 cause a dead Tsimshian sea otter hunter had been eviscerated (to 

 preserve his body) and his entrails buried at Guyot Bay ("Tsimshian 

 Bay"), just inside the northwest point of Icy Bay. This happening 

 was evidently after 1890 and before the death of Yakutat Chief 

 George in 1903. 



Although we have no Yakutat traditions concerning the topography 

 at Lituya Bay, Tarr and Martin (1914, p. 10) estimate that the glaciers 

 advanced about 3 to 3% miles between 1786, the time of LaPerouse's 

 visit, and 1906. About 1850 a flotilla of canoes, said to have come 

 from the Akwe River, were overturned in Lituya Bay and all the oc- 

 cupants drowned. Possibly this disaster was caused by giant flood 

 waves, evidence of which could be dated at 1853 or 1854 through a 

 ring count of trees that had sprung up on the devastated area (Miller, 

 1960, pp. 67 f.). 



Still farther south, the ice in Glacier Bay on the north shore of 

 Cross Sound has retreated about 55 miles since the latter part of the 

 18th century. Prior to that, there was a long period of recession when 

 the glaciers were even smaller than they are now (Field, 1932, p. 371). 

 The advance of the ice which destroyed a Tlingit town in this area 

 recorded in one story by Swanton (1909, pp. 337 f.) may be the move- 

 ment of the ice to its maximum extension in the 18th century. 



A very important recent geological event was the Yakutat earth- 

 quake, which lasted for 3 weeks dm-ing September 1899. Although 

 the center of this disturbance was 15 to 30 miles up the bay, waves 

 washed away the native graveyard at Point Turner on Khantaak 

 Island and threatened the mission at Yakutat. Avalanches fell all 

 along the shore between EJiight Island and Point Latouche, and giant 

 waves in this area destroyed forests over 40 feet above sea level. The 

 earthquake also produced considerable changes in sea level, although 

 apparently not at Yakutat itseK or on the foreland to the east. At 

 the extreme western end of Phipps Peninsula there was subsidence of 

 7 feet, and some stretches of shore north of Knight Island were 

 similarly depressed. Other areas along the eastern shore were raised 

 from 1 to 7 feet; Haenke Island rose 17 to 19 feet, and the west side of 

 Disenchantment Bay reached a maximum elevation of 47 feet. The 



