de Laguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUTAT BAY AREA, ALASKA 33 



some inforniants to have spread to Yakutat from southeastern Alaska 

 before the arrival of the fu'st Europeans. 



After Old Town was abandoned, the main K^'ackqwan village was 

 at Nessudat on Lost River, and Knight Island was used only as a 

 camping place for hunting parties. 



There are also confused stories of raids on Knight Island by the 

 Chugach and by the mixed Athabaskan-Tiingit Indians from Dry 

 Bay. It was unpossible to secure details, and while some raids were 

 apparently prehistoric, others were later, but we do not Imow whether 

 Old Town was involved in any of them. In these stories, Teqwedi 

 are mentioned as living or camping on Knight Island, and as having 

 fortified the rocky islet, "Little Fort," nearby, but it is not clear 

 whether Tlingit Teqwedi or Eyak-speaking Tlaxayik-Teqwedi are 

 meant. 



THE SITE 



The site of Old Town (map 6), on the southernmost point of Knight 

 Island, consists of four trash mounds, seven house pits, and numerous 

 smaller pits (for caches, bathhouses, etc.), scattered over an area of 

 3 or 4 acres. A small stream that presumably supphed drinking 

 water to the inhabitants flows along the northeastern border of the 

 site and enters a httle cove 500 feet to the east. The major portion of 

 the site is an open grassy flat, bordered by a spruce-hemlock forest. 

 In the clearing, besides ryegrass, there is a luxuriant growth of sphag- 

 num moss, wildcelery, sahiionberry and elderberry bushes, short grass, 

 and patches of nettles. In historic times the area is said to have been 

 covered with wild strawberries, but the forest has encroached within 

 the memory of the older natives and there are now many young trees 

 in the clearing. Part of the site (Mounds C and D, and House Pit 7) 

 lies within a matureforest growth apparently several hundred years old. 



The underlying soil is composed of banded beach sands, evidently 

 elevated above sea level within relatively recent geologic times. 

 Several low sand ridges that traverse the site from southwest to 

 northeast, or that lie southeast of it, seem to represent former beach 

 lines. The most prominent of these, just southeast of the site, was 

 probably the shoreline at the time of habitation, and seems to have 

 been raised during the earthquake of 1899. The axis of tilting ran 

 directly through the site, so that the shore to the east of datum B 

 (map 6) was elevated, while the land immediately to the west was 

 depressed. A maximum elevation of 7 feet was noted by Tarr and 

 Martin (1914, p. 106) at the cove three-fourths of a mile east of the 

 site, and there was a subsidence of 5 feet on the south shore about an 

 equal distance to the west. Fortunately the quake and the waves 

 that accompanied it did no serious damage to the archeological re- 

 mains, except at the southwestern edge where an indistinct depression 



