Tikchik village: a nineteenth century riverine community in ... - Cluster

332 FIELDIANA: ANTHROPOLOGY, VOLUME 56As was the case with the Russian period, precisely what the tradershad to offer the people in terms of material goods is not known indetail. Merchandise inventories for the Nushagak post have notturned up in any of the archival depositories where records of theAlaska Commercial Company are known to exist and it seems fairlycertain that these records were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquakeand fire. From scattered sources, however, it is possible topiece together an uncertain picture of popular trade items in southwesternAlaska as a whole during the early phases of the Americanperiod. E. W. Nelson mentions that when he traveled from St. Michaelto the mouth of the Kuskokwim River in 1878 he took along"leaf tobacco, ammunition, beads, brass jewelry, needles and othersmall wares" in order to purchase ethnographic specimens (Nelson,1882, p. 661). In the 1880's the Moravian missionary W. H. Weinlandlisted tobacco, tea, drilling, needles, powder, lead, knives, axes,hardtack, twine for fish nets, sugar, flour, cooking utensils, old armymuskets, and sheet iron tea kettles as the most popular trade items(Oswalt, 1963, pp. 110-111).We have previously noted the extensiveinventory of the Alaska Commercial Company post at Tyonekin 1902, but it is doubtful if Nushagak had a similar inventory earlyin the American period. During the 1870's and 1880's it seems certainthat the people of Tikchik and other villages in the area possessedthe material apparatus of aboriginal Eskimos with the additionof relatively few trade items.One possible source of trade goods for all the Nushagak RiverEskimos was from the prospectors and miners who searched for goldalong the river and its tributaries. Actually the Nushagak Rivernever played an important part in the mining history of Alaska.No major stampedes were ever recorded for the river and the Nushagakwas never an access route to any important gold fields. Andyet, as early as 1887 prospectors were making their way up the riverand concentrating their activities along the Mulchatna. Undoubtedly,some of these prospected along the Nuyakuk and may havevisited Tikchik. But they were very few in number and probablyhad little to offer the Eskimos in the way of trade goods. The veryfact that a few miners may have reached the village and perhapstraded some of their possessions for meat and fish merely emphasizesthe rarity of contact between Eskimos and whites in this area up tothe turn of the century.Of far greater impact on allthe peoples of the Nushagak Riverregion was the commercial fishing industry that began to develop in